Skip to main content

Full text of "Works"

See other formats 


Edition  de  Luxe 


THE   WORKS 

OF 

LORD    MORLEY 

IN 

FIFTEEN  VOLUMES 
VOLUME  XIV 


BURKE 


BY 


JOHN   VISCOUNT   MORLEY 

O.M. 


MACMILLAN   AND  CO.,  LIMITED 

ST.  MARTIN'S  STREET,  LONDON 

1921 


COPYRIGHT 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 


PAGE 

EARLY  LIFE  AND  FIRST  WRITINGS  .         .  i 


CHAPTER   II 

IN  IRELAND — PARLIAMENT — BEACONSFIELD       . 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  CONSTITUTIONAL  STRUGGLE      .         .         .         .         .         -37 

CHAPTER  IV 

THE    ROCKINGHAM    PARTY — PARIS — ELECTION    AT    BRISTOL — 

THE  AMERICAN  WAR       .......       59 

CHAPTER   V 

ECONOMICAL  REFORM— BURKE  IN  OFFICE — FALL  OF  HIS  PARTY       83 

CHAPTER   VI 

BURKE  AND  HIS  FRIENDS         .......     101 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE    NEW    MINISTRY — WARREN    HASTINGS — BURKE'S    PUBLIC 

POSITION          .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .118 


vi  BURKE 

CHAPTER   VIII 

PAOK 

THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION       .         .         .         .         .         .         -139 

CHAPTER  IX 

BURKE    AND    HIS    PARTY — PROGRESS    OF   THE    REVOLUTION — 

IRELAND — LAST  YEARS    .         .         .         .  .         .172 

CHAPTER   X 

BUKKE'S  LITERARY  CHARACTER        .         .         .  200 


INDEX .         .         .     209 


CHAPTER  I 

EARLY   LIFE,    AND   FIRST  WRITINGS 

IT  will  soon  be  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  since 
Burke  first  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
and  it  is  eighty-five  years  since  his  voice  ceased 
to  be  heard  there.1  Since  his  death,  as  during  his 
life,  opinion  as  to  the  place  to  which  he  is  entitled 
among  the  eminent  men  of  his  country  has  touched 
every  extreme.  Tories  have  extolled  him  as  the 
saviour  of  Europe.  Whigs  have  detested  him  as 
the  destroyer  of  his  party.  One  undiscriminating 
panegyrist  calls  him  the  most  profound  and  com- 
prehensive of  political  philosophers  that  has  yet 
existed  in  the  world.  Another  and  more  dis- 
tinguished writer  insists  that  he  is  a  resplendent 
and  far-seeing  rhetorician,  rather  than  a  deep 
and  subtle  thinker.  A  third  tells  us  that  his 
works  cannot  be  too  much  our  study,  if  we  mean 
either  to  understand  or  to  maintain  against  its 
various  enemies,  open  and  concealed,  designing  and 

1  Written  in  1867. 

NOTE. — The  present  writer  published  a  study  on  Burke  some  twenty  years 
ago.  It  was  almost  entirely  critical,  and  in  no  sense  a  narrative.  The  volume 
that  is  now  submitted  to  my  readers  first  appeared  in  the  series  of  English 
Men  of  Letters.  It  is  biographical  rather  than  critical,  and  not  more  than 
about  a  score  of  pages  have  been  reproduced  in  it  from  the  earlier  book. 
Three  pages  have  been  inserted  from  an  article  on  Burke  contributed  by 
me  to  the  new  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica ;  and  I  have  to 
thank  Messrs.  Black  for  the  great  courtesy  with  which  they  have  allowed 
me  to  transcribe  the  passage  here.  These  borrowings  from  my  former  self, 
the  reader  will  perhaps  be  willing  to  excuse,  on  the  old  Greek  principle 
that  a  man  may  once  say  a  thing  as  he  would  have  it  said,  Sis  5£  oik  frdtxerai 
— he  can  hardly  say  it  twice. — J.  M.  (1888). 

1  B 


2  BURKE 

mistaken,  the  singular  constitution  of  this  fortunate 
island.  A  fourth,  on  the  contrary,  declares  that 
it  would  be  hard  to  find  a  single  leading  principle 
or  prevailing  sentiment  in  one  half  of  these  works, 
to  which  something  extremely  adverse  cannot  be 
found  in  the  other  half.  A  fifth  calls  him  one  of 
the  greatest  men,  and,  Bacon  alone  excepted,  the 
greatest  thinker,  who  ever  devoted  himself  to  the 
practice  of  English  politics.  Yet,  oddly  enough, 
the  author  of  the  fifth  verdict  will  have  it  that  this 
great  man  and  great  thinker  was  actually  out  of 
his  mind  when  he  composed  the  pieces  for  which 
he  has  been  most  widely  admired  and  revered. 

A  sufficient  interval  has  now  passed  to  allow 
all  the  sediment  of  party  fanaticism  to  fall  to 
the  bottom.  The  circumstances  of  the  world  have 
since  Burke 's  time  undergone  variation  enough  to 
enable  us  to  judge,  from  many  points  of  view,  how 
far  he  was  the  splendid  pamphleteer  of  a  faction, 
and  how  far  he  was  a  contributor  to  the  universal 
stock  of  enduring  wisdom.  Opinion  is  slowly,  but 
without  reaction,  settling  down  to  the  verdict  that 
Burke  is  one  of  the  abiding  names  in  our  history  ; 
not  because  he  either  saved  Europe  or  destroyed 
the  Whig  party,  but  because  he  added  to  the  per- 
manent considerations  of  wise  political  thought, 
and  to  the  maxims  of  wise  practice  in  great  affairs, 
and  because  he  imprints  himself  upon  us  with  a 
magnificence  and  elevation  of  expression  that  places 
him  among  the  highest  masters  of  literature,  in 
one  of  its  highest  and  most  commanding  senses. 
Those  who  have  acquired  a  love  for  abstract 
politics  amid  the  almost  mathematical  closeness 
and  precision  of  Hobbes,  the  philosophic  calm  of 
Locke  or  Mill,  or  even  the  majestic  and  solemn 
fervour  of  Milton,  are  revolted  by  the  unrestrained 
passion  and  the  decorated  style  of  Burke.  His 
passion  appears  hopelessly  fatal  to  success  in  the 
pursuit  of  Truth,  who  does  not  usually  reveal 


EARLY  LIFE  3 

herself  to  followers  thus  inflamed.  His  ornate 
style  appears  fatal  to  the  cautious  and  precise 
method  of  statement,  suitable  to  matter  not  known 
at  all  unless  known  distinctly.  Yet  the  natural 
ardour  which  impelled  Burke  to  clothe  his  judg- 
ments in  glowing  and  exaggerated  phrase,  is  one 
secret  of  his  power  over  us,  because  it  kindles  in 
those  who  are  capable  of  that  generous  infection 
a  respondent  interest  and  sympathy.  But  more 
than  this,  the  reader  is  speedily  conscious  of  the 
precedence  in  Burke  of  the  facts  of  morality  and 
conduct,  of  the  many  interwoven  affinities  of 
human  affection  and  historical  relation,  over  the 
unreal  necessities  of  mere  abstract  logic.  Burke's 
mind  was  full  of  the  matter  of  great  truths,  copi- 
ously enriched  from  the  fountains  of  generous  and 
many  -  coloured  feeling.  He  thought  about  life 
as  a  whole,  with  all  its  infirmities  and  all  its 
pomps.  With  none  of  the  mental  exclusiveness  of 
the  moralist  by  profession,  he  fills  every  page  with 
solemn  reference  and  meaning ;  with  none  of  the 
mechanical  bustle  of  the  common  politician,  he  is 
everywhere  conscious  of  the  mastery  of  laws,  in- 
stitutions, and  government  over  the  character  and 
happiness  of  men.  Besides  thus  diffusing  a  strong 
light  over  the  awful  tides  of  human  circumstance, 
Burke  has  the  sacred  gift  of  inspiring  men  to  use  a 
grave  diligence  in  caring  for  high  things,  and  in 
making  their  lives  at  once  rich  and  austere.  Such  a 
part  in  literature  is  indeed  high.  We  feel  no  emotion 
of  revolt  when  Mackintosh  speaks  of  Shakespeare 
and  Burke  in  the  same  breath  as  being  both  of 
them  above  mere  talent.  And  we  do  not  dissent 
when  Macaulay,  after  reading  Burke's  works  over 
again,  exclaims,  "  How  admirable !  The  greatest 
man  since  Milton." 

The   precise   date   of  Burke's   birth   cannot   be 
stated   with   certainty.     All   that   we   can   say   is 


4  BURKE  CHAP. 

that  it  took  place  in  either  1728  or  1729,  and  it 
is  possible  that  we  may  set  it  down  in  one  or  the 
other  year,  as  we  choose  to  reckon  by  the  old  or 
the  new  style.  The  best  opinion  is  that  he  was 
born  at  Dublin  on  the  12th  of  January  1729  (N.S.). 
His  father  was  a  solicitor  in  good  practice,  and 
is  believed  to  have  been  descended  from  some 
Bourkes  of  County  Limerick,  .who  held  a  respect- 
able local  position  in  the  time  of  the  civil  wars. 
Burke 's  mother  belonged  to  the  Nagle  family, 
which  had  a  strong  connection  in  the  county  of 
Cork ;  they  had  been  among  the  last  adherents  of 
James  II.,  and  they  remained  firm  Catholics.  Mrs. 
Burke  remained  true  to  the  Church  of  her  ancestors, 
and  her  only  daughter  was  brought  up  in  the 
same  faith.  Edmund  Burke  and  his  two  brothers, 
Garret  and  Richard,  were  bred  in  the  religion  of 
their  father ;  but  Burke  never,  in  after  times,  lost 
a  large  and  generous  way  of  thinking  about  the 
more  ancient  creed  of  his  mother  and  his  uncles. 

In  1741  he  was  sent  to  school  at  Ballitore, 
a  village  some  thirty  miles  away  from  Dublin, 
where  Abraham  Shackleton,  a  Quaker  from  York- 
shire, had  established  himself  fifteen  years  before, 
and  had  earned  a  wide  reputation  as  a  successful 
teacher  and  a  good  man.  According  to  Burke,  he 
richly  deserved  this  high  character.  It  was  to 
Abraham  Shackleton  that  he  always  professed  to 
owe  whatever  gain  had  come  to  him  from  educa- 
tion. If  I  am  anything,  he  said  many  years  after- 
wards, it  is  the  education  I  had  there  that  has 
made  me  so.  His  master's  skill  as  a  teacher  did 
not  impress  him  more  than  the  example  that  was 
every  day  set  before  him,  of  uprightness  and  sim- 
plicity of  heart.  Thirty  years  later,  when  Burke 
had  the  news  of  Shackleton's  death  (1771),  "  I 
had  a  true  honour  and  affection,"  he  wrote,  "  for 
that  excellent  man.  I  feel  something  like  a  satis- 
faction in  the  midst  of  my  concern,  that  I  was 


i  EARLY  LIFE  5 

fortunate  enough  to  have  him  once  under  my  roof 
before  his  departure."  No  man  has  ever  had  a 
deeper  or  more  tender  reverence  than  Burke  for 
homely  goodness,  simple  purity,  and  all  the  pieties 
of  life  ;  it  may  well  be  that  this  natural  predis- 
position of  all  characters  at  once  so  genial  and  so 
serious  as  his,  was  finally  stamped  on  him  by  his 
first  schoolmaster.  It  is  true  that  he  was  only  two 
years  at  Ballitore,  but  two  years  at  that  plastic 
time  often  build  up  habits  in  the  mind  that  all  the 
rest  of  a  life  fails  to  pull  down. 

In  1743  Burke  became  a  student  of  Trinity 
College,  Dublin,  and  he  remained  there  until  1748, 
when  he  took  his  Bachelor's  degree.  These  five 
years  do  not  appear  to  have  been  spent  in  strenu- 
ous industry  in  the  beaten  paths  of  academic 
routine.  Like  so  many  other  men  of  fine  gifts, 
Burke  in  his  youth  was  desultory  and  excursive. 
He  roamed  at  large  over  the  varied  heights  that 
tempt  our  curiosity,  as  the  dawn  of  intelligence 
first  lights  them  up,  one  after  another,  with  be- 
witching visions  and  illusive  magic.  "  All  my 
studies,"  Burke  wrote  in  1746,  when  he  was  in  the 
midst  of  them,  "  have  rather  proceeded  from  sallies 
of  passion,  than  from  the  preference  of  sound 
reason  ;  and,  like  all  other  natural  appetites,  have 
been  very  violent  for  a  season,  and  very  soon 
cooled,  and  quite  absorbed  in  the  succeeding.  I 
have  often  thought  it  a  humorous  consideration  to 
observe  and  sum  up  all  the  madness  of  this  kind 
I  ha've  fallen  into,  this  two  years  past.  First, 
I  was  greatly  taken  with  natural  philosophy ; 
which,  while  I  should  have  given  my  mind  to  logic, 
employed  me  incessantly.  This  I  call  my  furor 
maihematicus.  But  this  worked  off  as  soon  as  I 
began  to  read  it  in  the  college,  as  men  by  repletion 
cast  off  their  stomachs  all  they  have  eaten.  Then 
I  turned  back  to  logic  and  metaphysics.  Here  I  re- 
mained a  good  while,  and  with  much  pleasure,  and 


6  BURKE  CHAP. 

this  was  my  furor  logicus,  a  disease  very  common 
in  the  days  of  ignorance,  and  very  uncommon 
in  these  enlightened  times.  Next  succeeded  the 
furor  historicus,  which  also  had  its  day,  but  is  now 
no  more,  being  entirely  absorbed  in  the  furor 
poeticus." 

This  is  from  one  of  Burke 's  letters  to  Richard 
Shackleton,  the  son  of  his  schoolmaster,  with  whom 
he  had  formed  one  of  those  close  friendships  that 
fill  the  life  of  generous  youth,  as  ambition  fills  an 
energetic  manhood.  Many  tears  were  shed  when 
the  two  boys  parted  at  Ballitore,  and  they  kept 
up  their  intimacy  by  a  steady  correspondence. 
They  discuss  the  everlasting  dispute  as  to  the 
ultimate  fate  of  those  who  never  heard  the  saving 
name  of  Christ.  They  send  one  another  copies 
of  verses,  and  Burke  prays  for  Shackleton's  judg- 
ment on  an  invocation  of  his  new  poem,  to  beauteous 
nymphs  who  haunt  the  dusky  wood,  which  hangs 
recumbent  o'er  the  crystal  flood.  Burke  is  warned 
by  Shackleton  to  endeavour  to  live  according  to 
the  rules  of  the  Gospel,  and  he  humbly  accepts 
the  good  advice,  with  the  deprecatory  plea  that  in 
a  town  it  is  difficult  to  sit  down  to  think  seriously. 
It  is  easier,  he  says,  to  follow  the  rules  of  the  Gospel 
in  the  country  than  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 
In  the  region  of  profaner  things  the  two  friends 
canvass  the  comparative  worth  of  Sallust  and  of 
Tully's  Epistles.  Burke  holds  for  the  historian,  who 
has,  he  thinks,  a  fine,  easy,  diversified  narrative, 
mixed  with  reflection,  moral  and  political,  neither 
very  trite  nor  obvious,  nor  out  of  the  way  and 
abstract ;  and  this  is  the  true  beauty  of  historical 
observation. 

Some  pages  of  verse  describe  to  Shackleton 
how  his  friend  passes  the  day,  but  the  reader  will 
perhaps  be  content  to  learn  in  humbler  prose  that 
Burke  rose  with  the  dawn,  and  strode  forth  into 
the  country  through  fragrant  gardens  and  the 


i  EARLY  LIFE  7 

pride  of  May,  until  want  of  breakfast  drove  him 
back  unwillingly  to  the  town,  where  amid  lectures 
and  books  his  heart  incessantly  turned  to  the 
river  and  the  fir- woods  of  Ballitore.  In  the  evening 
he  again  turned  his  back  on  the  city,  taking  his 
way  "  where  Liffey  rolls  her  dead  dogs  to  the 
sea,"  along  to  the  wall  on  the  shore,  whence  he 
delighted  to  see  the  sun  sink  into  the  waters,  gild- 
ing ocean,  ships,  and  city  as  it  vanished.  Alas,  it 
was  beneath  the  dignity  of  verse  to  tell  us  what  we 
should  most  gladly  have  known.  For, 

The  muse  nor  can,  nor  will  declare, 

What  is  my  work,  and  what  my  studies  there. 

What  serious  nourishment  Burke  was  laying  in 
for  his  understanding  we  cannot  learn  from  any 
other  source.  He  describes  himself  as  spending 
three  hours  almost  every  day  in  the  public  library ; 
"  the  best  way  in  the  world,"  he  adds  oddly  enough, 
"  of  killing  thought."  I  have  read  some  history, 
he  says,  and  among  other  pieces  of  history,  "  I 
am  endeavouring  to  get  a  little  into  the  accounts 
of  this,  our  own  poor  country," — a  pathetic  ex- 
pression, which  represents  Burke's  perpetual  mood, 
as  long  as  he  lived,  of  affectionate  pity  for  his 
native  land.  Of  the  eminent  Irishmen  whose 
names  adorn  the  annals  of  Trinity  College  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  Burke  was  only  contempor- 
ary at  the  University  with  one,  the  luckless  sizar 
who  in  the  fulness  of  time  wrote  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field.  There  is  no  evidence  that  at  this  time  he 
and  Goldsmith  were  acquainted  with  one  another. 
Flood  had  gone  to  Oxford  some  time  before.  The 
one  or  two  companions  whom  Burke  mentions 
in  his  letters  are  only  shadows  of  names.  The 
mighty  Swift  died  in  1745,  but  there  is  nothing 
of  Burke's  upon  the  event.  In  the  same  year  came 
the  Pretender's  invasion,  and  Burke  spoke  of  those 
who  had  taken  part  in  it  in  the  same  generous 


8  BURKE  CHAP. 

spirit  he  always  showed  to  the  partisans  of  lost 
historic  causes. 

Of  his  own  family  Burke  says  little,  save  that 
in  1746  his  mother  had  a  dangerous  illness.  In 
all  my  life,  he  writes  to  his  friend,  I  never  found 
so  heavy  a  grief,  nor  really  did  I  well  know  what 
it  was  before.  Burke's  father  is  said  to  have  been 
a  man  of  angry  and  irritable  temper,  and  their  dis- 
agreements were  frequent.  This  unhappy  circum- 
stance made  the  time  for  parting  not  unwelcome. 
In  1747  Burke's  name  had  been  entered  at  the 
Middle  Temple,  and  after  taking  his  degree,  he 
prepared  to  go  to  England  to  pursue  the  ordinary 
course  of  a  lawyer's  studies.  He  arrived  in  London 
in  the  early  part  of  1750. 

A  period  of  nine  years  followed,  in  which  the 
circumstances  of  Burke's  life  are  enveloped  in 
nearly  complete  obscurity.  He  seems  to  have 
kept  his  terms  in  the  regular  way  at  the  Temple, 
and  from  the  mastery  of  legal  principles  and 
methods  which  he  afterwards  showed  in  some 
important  transactions,  we  might  infer  that  he 
did  more  to  qualify  himself  for  practice  than 
merely  dine  in  the  hall  of  his  inn.  For  law,  alike 
as  a  profession  and  an  instrument  of  mental  dis- 
cipline, he  had  always  the  profound  respect  it  so 
amply  deserves,  though  he  saw  that  it  was  not 
without  drawbacks  of  its  own.  The  law,  he  said, 
in  his  fine  description  of  George  Grenville,  hi 
words  that  all  who  think  about  schemes  of  educa- 
tion ought  to  ponder,  "  is,  in  my  opinion,  one 
of  the  first  and  noblest  of  human  sciences ;  a 
science  which  does  more  to  quicken  and  invigorate 
the  understanding  than  all  the  other  kinds  of  learn- 
ing put  together  ;  but  it  is  not  apt,  except  in  persons 
very  happily  born,  to  open  and  to  liberalise  the 
mind  exactly  in  the  same  proportion." 1  Burke  was 
never  called  to  the  Bar,  and  the  circumstance 

1  American  Taxation. 


i  EARLY  LIFE  9 

that,  about  the  time  when  he  ought  to  have  been 
looking  for  his  first  guinea,  he  published  a  couple 
of  books  that  had  as  little  as  possible  to  do  with 
either  law  or  equity,  is  a  tolerably  sure  sign  that 
he  had  followed  the  same  desultory  courses  at  the 
Temple  as  he  had  followed  at  Trinity  College. 
We  have  only  to  tell  over  again  a  very  old  story. 
The  vague  attractions  of  literature  prevailed  over 
the  duty  of  taking  up  a  serious  profession.  His 
father,  who  had  set  his  heart  on  having  a  son  in 
the  rank  of  a  barrister,  was  first  suspicious,  then 
extremely  indignant,  and  at  last  he  withdrew  his 
son's  allowance,  or  else  reduced  it  so  low  that  the 
recipient  could  not  possibly  live  upon  it.  This 
catastrophe  took  place  some  time  in  1755,  —  a 
year  of  note  in  the  history  of  literature,  as  the 
date  of  the  publication  of  Johnson's  Dictionary.  It 
was  upon  literature,  the  most  seductive,  the  most 
deceiving,  the  most  dangerous  of  professions,  that 
Burke,  like  so  many  hundreds  of  smaller  men  before 
and  since,  now  threw  himself  for  a  livelihood. 

Of  the  details  of  the  struggle  we  know  very 
little.  Burke  was  not  fond  in  after  life  of  talking 
about  his  earlier  days,  not  because  he  had  any 
false  shame  about  the  straits  and  hard  shifts  of 
youthful  neediness,  but  because  he  was  endowed 
with  a  certain  inborn  stateliness  of  nature,  that 
made  him  unwilling  to  waste  thoughts  on  the  less 
dignified  parts  of  life.  This  is  no  unqualified 
virtue,  and  Burke  might  have  escaped  some  weari- 
some frets  and  embarrassments  in  his  existence,  if 
he  had  been  capable  of  letting  the  detail  of  the 
day  lie  more  heavily  upon  him.  So  far  as  it  goes, 
however,  it  is  a  sign  of  mental  health  that  a  man 
should  be  able  to  cast  behind  him  the  barren 
memories  of  bygone  squalor.  We  may  be  sure 
that  whatever  were  the  external  ordeals  of  his 
apprenticeship  in  the  slippery  craft  of  the  literary 
adventurer,  Burke  never  failed  in  keeping  for  his 


10 .  BURKE  CHAP. 

constant  companions  generous  ambitions  and  high 
thoughts.  He  appears  to  have  frequented  the 
debating  clubs  in  Fleet  Street  and  the  Piazza  of 
Covent  Garden,  and  he  showed  the  common  taste 
of  his  time  for  the  theatre.  He  was  much  of  a 
wanderer,  partly  from  the  natural  desire  of  restless 
youth  to  see  the  world,  and  partly  because  his 
health  was  weak.  In  after  life  he  was  a  man  of 
great  strength,  capable  not  only  of  bearing  the 
strain  of  prolonged  application  to  books  and  papers 
in  the  solitude  of  his  library,  but  of  bearing  it  at 
the  same  time  with  the  distracting  combination 
of  active  business  among  men.  At  the  date  of 
which  we  are  speaking,  he  used  to  seek  a  milder 
air  at  Bristol,  or  in  Monmouthshire,  or  Wiltshire. 
He  passed  the  summer  in  retired  country  villages, 
reading  and  writing  with  desultory  industry,  in 
company  with  William  Burke,  a  namesake  but 
perhaps  no  kinsman.  It  would  be  interesting  to 
know  the  plan  and  scope  of  his  studies.  We  are 
practically  reduced  to  conjecture.  In  a  letter  of 
counsel  to  his  son  in  after  years,  he  gave  him  a 
weighty  piece  of  advice,  which  is  pretty  plainly 
the  key  to  the  reality  and  fruitfulness  of  his  own 
knowledge.  "  Reading,"  he  said,  "  and  much  read- 
ing, is  good.  But  the  power  of  diversifying  the 
matter  infinitely  in  your  own  mind,  and  of  applying 
it  to  every  occasion  that  arises,  is  far  better ;  so 
don't  suppress  the  vivida  vis."  We  have  no  more 
of  Burke's  doings  than  obscure  and  tantalising 
glimpses,  tantalising,  because  he  was  then  at  the 
age  when  character  usually  either  fritters  itself 
away,  or  grows  strong  on  the  inward  sustenance 
of  solid  and  resolute  aspirations.  Writing  from 
Battersea  to  his  old  comrade,  Shackleton,  in  1757, 
he  begins  with  an  apology  for  a  long  silence  that 
seems  to  have  continued  from  months  to  years. 
"  I  have  broken  all  rules ;  I  have  neglected  all 
decorums ;  everything  except  that  I  have  never 


i  EARLY  LIFE  11 

forgot  a  friend,  whose  good  head  and  heart  have 
made  me  esteem  and  love  him.  What  appearance 
there  may  have  been  of  neglect,  arises  from  my 
manner  of  life  ;  chequered  with  various  designs  ; 
sometimes  in  London,  sometimes  in  remote  parts 
of  the  country  ;  sometimes  in  France,  and  shortly, 
please  God,  to  be  in  America." 

One  of  the  hundred  inscrutable  rumours  that 
hovered  about  Burke's  name  was,  that  he  at  one 
time  actually  did  visit  America.  This  was  just 
as  untrue  as  that  he  became  a  convert  to  the 
Catholic  faith  ;  or  that  he  was  the  lover  of  Peg 
Woffington  ;  or  that  he  contested  Adam  Smith's 
chair  of  moral  philosophy  at  Glasgow  along  with 
Hume,  and  that  both  Burke  and  Hume  were 
rejected  in  favour  of  some  fortunate  Mr.  James 
Clow.  They  are  all  alike  unfounded.  But  the 
same  letter  informs  Shackleton  of  a  circumstance 
more  real  and  more  important  than  any  of  these, 
though  i,ts  details  are  only  doubtfully  known. 
Burke  had  married — when  and  where,  we  cannot 
tell.  Probably  the  marriage  took  place  in  the 
winter  of  1756.  His  wife  was  the  daughter  of 
Dr.  Nugent,  an  Irish  physician  once  settled  at 
Bath.  One  story  is  that  Burke  consulted  him  in 
one  of  his  visits  to  the  West  of  England,  and  fell 
in  love  with  his  daughter.  Another  version  makes 
Burke  consult  him  after  Dr.  Nugent  had  removed 
to  London  ;  and  tells  how  the  kindly  physician, 
considering  that  the  noise  and  bustle  of  chambers 
over  a  shop  must  hinder  his  patient's  recovery, 
offered  him  rooms  in  his  own  house.  However 
these  things  may  have  been,  all  the  evidence  shows 
Burke  to  have  been  fortunate  in  the  choice  or 
accident  that  bestowed  upon  him  his  wife.  Mrs. 
Burke,  like  her  father,  was,  up  to  the  time  of 
her  marriage,  a  Catholic.  Good  judges  belonging 
to  her  own  sex  describe  her  as  gentle,  quiet, 
soft  in  her  manners,  and  well-bred.  She  had  the 


12  BURKE  CHAP. 

qualities  that  best  fitted  and  disposed  her  to  soothe 
the  vehemence  and  irritability  of  her  companion. 
Though  she  afterwards  conformed  to  the  religion 
of  her  husband,  it  was  no  insignificant  coincidence 
that  in  two  of  the  dearest  relations  of  his  life 
the  atmosphere  of  Catholicism  was  thus  poured 
round  the  great  preacher  of  the  crusade  against  the 
Revolution. 

About  the  time  of  his  marriage,  Burke  made  his 
first  appearance  as  an  author.  It  was  in  1756  that 
he  published  A  Vindication  of  Natural  Society,  and 
the  more  important  essay,  A  Philosophical  Inquiry 
into  the  Origin  of  our  Ideas  on  the  Sublime  and 
Beautiful.  The  latter  of  them  had  certainly  been 
written  a  long  time  before,  and  there  is  even  a 
traditional  story  that  Burke  wrote  it  when  he  was 
only  nineteen  years  old.  Both  of  these  perform- 
ances have  in  different  degrees  a  historic  meaning, 
but  neither  of  them  would  have  survived  to  our  own 
day  unless  they  had  been  associated  with  a  name 
of  power.  A  few  words  will  suffice  to  do  justice  to 
them  here.  And  first  as  to  the  Vindication  of 
Natural  Society.  Its  alternative  title  was,  A  View 
of  the  Miseries  and  Evils  arising  to  Mankind  from 
every  Species  of  Civil  Society,  in  a  Letter  to  Lord 

,   by  a  late   Noble   Writer.     Bolingbroke    had 

died  in  1751,  and  in  1754  his  philosophical  works 
were  posthumously  given  to  the  world  by  David 
Mallet,  Dr.  Johnson's  beggarly  Scotchman,  to  whom 
Bolingbroke  had  left  half-a-crown  in  his  will,  for 
firing  off  a  blunderbuss  which  he  was  afraid  to 
fire  off  himself.  The  world  of  letters  had  been 
keenly  excited  about  Bolingbroke.  His  busy  and 
chequered  career,  his  friendship  with  the  great 
wits  of  the  previous  generation,  his  splendid  style, 
his  bold  opinions,  made  him  a  dazzling  figure. 
This  was  the  late  Noble  Writer  whose  opinions 
Burke  intended  to  ridicule,  by  reducing  them  to 
an  absurdity  in  an  exaggeration  of  Bolingbroke's 


FIRST  WRITINGS  13 

own  manner.  As  it  happened,  the  public  did  not 
readily  perceive  either  the  exaggeration  in  the 
manner,  or  the  satire  in  the  matter.  Excellent 
judges  of  style  made  sure  that  the  writing  was  really 
Bolingbroke's,  and  serious  critics  of  philosophy 
never  doubted  that  the  writer,  whoever  he  was, 
meant  all  that  he  said.  We  can  hardly  help  agree- 
ing with  Godwin,  when  he  says  that  in  Burke's 
treatise  the  evils  of  existing  political  institutions, 
which  had  been  described  by  Locke,  are  set  forth 
more  at  large,  with  incomparable  force  of  reasoning 
and  lustre  of  eloquence,  though  the  declared  inten- 
tion of  the  writer  was  to  show  that  such  evils  ought 
to  be  considered  merely  trivial.  Years  afterwards, 
Bos  well  asked  Johnson  whether  an  imprudent  pub- 
lication by  a  certain  friend  of  his  at  an  early 
period  of  his  life  would  be  likely  to  hurt  him. 
"  No,  sir,"  replied  the  sage  ;  "  not  much  ;  it  might 
perhaps  be  mentioned  at  an  election."  It  is  signi- 
ficant that  in  1765,  when  Burke  saw  his  chance  of 
a  seat  in  Parliament,  he  thought  it  worth  while 
to  print  a  second  edition  of  his  Vindication,  with 
a  preface  to  assure  his  readers  that  the  design  of 
it  was  ironical.  It  has  been  remarked  as  a  very 
extraordinary  circumstance  that  an  author  who  had 
the  greatest  fame  of  any  man  of  his  day  as  the 
master  of  a  superb  style,  for  this  was  indeed  Boling- 
broke's position,  should  have  been  imitated  to  such 
perfection  by  a  mere  novice,  that  accomplished 
critics  like  Chesterfield  and  Warburton  should  have 
mistaken  the  copy  for  a  first-rate  original.  It  is, 
however,  to  be  remembered  that  the  very  bold- 
ness and  sweeping  rapidity  of  Bolingbroke's  prose 
rendered  it  more  fit  for  imitation  than  if  its  merits 
had  been  those  of  delicacy  or  subtlety  ;  and  we 
must  remember  that  the  imitator  was  no  pigmy, 
but  himself  one  of  the  giants.  What  is  certain  is 
that  the  study  of  Bolingbroke  which  preceded  this 
excellent  imitation  left  a  permanent  mark,  and 


14  BURKE 


CHAP. 


traces  of  Bolingbroke  were  never  effaced  from  the 
style  of  Burke. 

The  point  of  the  Vindication  is  simple  enough. 
It  is  to  show  that  the  same  instruments  which 
Bolingbroke  had  employed  in  favour  of  natural 
against  revealed  religion,  could  be  employed  with 
equal  success  in  favour  of  natural  as  against  what 
Burke  calls  artificial  society.  "  Show  me,"  cries 
the  writer,  "  an  absurdity  in  religion,  and  I  will 
undertake  to  show  you  a  hundred  for  one  in  political 
laws  and  institutions.  ...  If,  after  all,  you  should 
confess  all  these  things,  yet  plead  the  necessity  of 
political  institutions,  weak  and  wicked  as  they  are, 
I  can  argue  with  equal,  perhaps  superior  force, 
concerning  the  necessity  of  artificial  religion  ;  and 
every  step  you  advance  in  your  argument,  you  add 
a  strength  to  mine.  So  that  if  we  are  resolved  to 
submit  our  reason  and  our  liberty  to  civil  usurpa- 
tion, we  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  conform  as 
quietly  as  we  can  to  the  vulgar  notions  which  are 
connected  with  this,  and  take  up  the  theology  of 
the  vulgar  as  well  as  their  politics.  But  if  we  think 
this  necessity  rather  imaginary  than  real,  we  should 
renounce  their  dreams  of  society,  together  with 
their  visions  of  religion,  and  vindicate  ourselves 
into  perfect  liberty." 

The  most  interesting  fact  about  this  spirited  per- 
formance is,  that  it  is  a  satirical  literary  handling 
of  the  great  proposition  that  Burke  enforced,  with 
all  the  thunder  and  lurid  effulgence  of  his  most 
passionate  rhetoric,  five  -  and  -  thirty  years  later. 
This  proposition  is  that  the  world  would  fall  into 
ruin,  "  if  the  practice  of  all  moral  duties,  and  the 
foundations  of  society,  rested  upon  having  their 
reasons  made  clear  and  demonstrative  to  every 
individual."  The  satire  is  intended  for  an  illustra- 
tion of  what  with  Burke  was  the  cardinal  truth  for 
men,  namely,  that  if  you  encourage  every  individual 
to  let  the  imagination  loose  upon  all  subjects, 


FIRST  WRITINGS  15 

without  any  restraint  from  a  sense  of  his  own 
weakness,  and  his  subordinate  rank  in  the  long 
scheme  of  things,  then  there  is  nothing  of  all  that 
the  opinion  of  ages  has  agreed  to  regard  as  excellent 
and  venerable,  which  would  not  be  exposed  to 
destruction  at  the  hands  of  rationalistic  criticism. 
This  was  Burke's  most  fundamental  and  unswerving 
conviction  from  the  first  piece  he  wrote  down  to  the 
last,  and  down  to  the  last  hour  of  his  existence. 

It  is  a  coincidence  worth  noticing  that  only  two 
years  before  the  appearance  of  the  Vindication, 
Rousseau  had  published  the  second  of  the  two 
memorable  Discourses  in  which  he  insisted  with 
serious  eloquence  on  that  which  Burke  treats  as  a 
triumph  of  irony.  He  believed,  and  many  thousands 
of  Frenchmen  came  to  a  speculative  agreement  with 
him,  that  artificial  society  had  marked  a  decline  in 
the  felicity  of  man,  and  there  are  passages  in  the 
Discourse  in  which  he  demonstrates  this,  that  are 
easily  interchangeable  with  passages  in  the  Vindi- 
cation. Who  would  undertake  to  tell  us  from  in- 
ternal evidence  whether  the  following  page,  with  its 
sombre  glow,  is  an  extract  from  Burke,  or  an  extract 
from  the  book  which  Rousseau  begins  by  the 
sentence  that  man  is  born  free,  yet  is  he  every- 
where in  chains  ? — 

There  are  in  Great  Britain  upwards  of  a  hundred 
thousand  people  employed  in  lead,  tin,  iron,  copper,  and 
coal  mines  ;  these  unhappy  wretches  scarce  ever  see  the 
light  of  the  sun  ;  .they  are  buried  in  the  bowels  of  the 
earth  ;  there  they  work  at  a  severe  and  dismal  task, 
without  the  least  prospect  of  being  delivered  from  it ; 
they  subsist  upon  the  coarsest  and  worst  sort  of  fare ; 
they  have  their  health  miserably  impaired,  and  their  lives 
cut  short,  by  being  perpetually  confined  in  the  close 
vapour  of  these  malignant  minerals.  A  hundred  thousand 
more  at  least  are  tortured  without  remission  by  the 
suffocating  smoke,  intense  fires,  and  constant  drudgery, 
necessary  in  refining  and  managing  the  products  of  those 
mines.  If  any  man  informed  us  that  two  hundred  thousand 


16  BURKE 


CHAP. 


innocent  persons  were  condemned  to  so  intolerable  slavery, 
how  should  we  pity  the  unhappy  sufferers,  and  how  great 
would  be  our  just  indignation  against  those  who  inflicted 
so  cruel  and  ignominious  a  punishment  1  ...  But  this 
number,  considerable  as  it  is,  and  the  slavery,  with  all  its 
baseness  and  horror,  which  we  have  at  home,  is  nothing 
to  what  the  rest  of  the  world  affords  of  the  same  nature. 
Millions  daily  bathed  in  the  poisonous  damps  and  destruc- 
tive effluvia  of  lead,  silver,  copper,  and  arsenic,  to  say 
nothing  of  those  other  employments,  those  stations  of 
wretchedness  and  contempt,  in  which  civil  society  has 
placed  the  numerous  enfans  perdus  of  her  army.  Would 
any  rational  man  submit  to  one  of  the  most  tolerable  of 
these  drudgeries,  for  all  the  artificial  enjoyments  which 
policy  has  made  to  result  from  them  ?  .  .  .  Indeed  the 
blindness  of  one  part  of  mankind  co-operating  with  the 
frenzy  and  villainy  of  the  other,  has  been  the  real  builder 
of  this  respectable  fabric  of  political  society :  and  as  the 
blindness  of  mankind  has  caused  their  slavery,  in  return 
their  state  of  slavery  is  made  a  pretence  for  continuing 
them  in  a  state  of  blindness ;  for  the  politician  will  tell 
you  gravely  that  their  life  of  servitude  disqualifies  the 
greater  part  of  the  race  of  man  for  a  search  of  truth,  and 
supplies  them  with  no  other  than  mean  and  insufficient 
ideas.  This  is  but  too  true  ;  and  this  is  one  of  the  reasons 
for  which  I  blame  such  institutions. 

From  the  very  beginning,  therefore,  Burke  was 
drawn  to  the  deepest  of  all  the  currents  in  the 
thought  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Johnson  and 
Goldsmith  continued  the  traditions  of  social  and 
polite  literature  that  had  been  established  by  the 
Queen  Anne  men.  Warburton  and  a  whole  host 
of  apologists  carried  on  the  battle  against  deism 
and  infidelity.  Hume,  after  furnishing  the  arsenal 
of  scepticism  with  a  new  array  of  deadlier  engines 
and  more  abundant  ammunition,  had  betaken  him- 
self placidly  to  the  composition  of  history.  What 
is  remarkable  in  Burke's  first  performance  is  his 
discernment  of  the  important  fact  that  behind  the 
intellectual  disturbances  in  the  sphere  of  philosophy, 
and  the  noisier  agitations  in  the  sphere  of  theology, 
there  silently  stalked  a  force  that  might  shake  the 


FIRST  WRITINGS  17 

whole  fabric  of  civil  society  itself.  In  France,  as  all 
students  of  its  speculative  history  are  agreed,  there 
came  a  time  in  the  eighteenth  century  when  theo- 
logical controversy  was  turned  into  political  con- 
troversy. Innovators  left  the  question  about  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  and  busied  themselves  with 
questions  about  the  ends  and  means  of  governments. 
The  appearance  of  Burke's  Vindication  of  Natural 
Society  coincides  in  time  with  the  beginning  of  this 
important  transformation.  Burke  foresaw  from  the 
first  what,  if  rationalism  were  allowed  to  run  an 
unimpeded  course,  would  be  the  really  great  business 
of  the  second  half  of  his  century. 

If  in  his  first  book  Burke  showed  how  alive  he 
was  to  the  profound  movement  of  the  time,  in  the 
second  he  dealt  with  one  of  the  most  serious  of 
its  more  superficial  interests.  The  essay  on  the 
Sublime  and  Beautiful  fell  in  with  a  set  of  topics 
on  which  the  curiosity  of  the  better  minds  of  the 
age,  alike  in  France,  England,  and  Germany,  was 
fully  stirred.  In  England  the  essay  has  been 
ordinarily  slighted ;  it  has  perhaps  been  over- 
shadowed by  its  author's  fame  in  weightier  matters. 
The  nearest  approach  to  a  full  and  serious  treat- 
ment of  its  main  positions  is  to  be  found  in  Dugald 
Stewart's  lectures.  The  great  rhetorical  art-critic 
of  our  own  day  refers  to  it  in  words  of  disparage- 
ment, and  in  truth  it  has  none  of  the  flummery  of 
modern  criticism.  It  is  a  piece  of  hard  thinking, 
and  it  has  the  distinction  of  having  interested  and 
stimulated  Lessing,  the  author  of  Laocoon  (1766), 
by  far  the  most  definitely  valuable  of  all  the  con- 
tributions to  aesthetic  thought  in  an  age  that 
was  not  poor  in  them.  Lessing  was  so  struck 
with  the  Inquiry  that  he  set  about  a  translation 
of  it,  and  the  correspondence  between  him  and 
Moses  Mendelssohn  on  the  questions  Burke  had 
raised,  contains  the  germs  of  the  doctrine  as  to 
poetry  and  painting  which  Laocoon  afterwards 


18  BURKE  CHAP,  i 

made  so  famous.  Its  influence  on  Lessing  and 
on  Kant  was  such  as  to  justify  the  German  his- 
torian of  the  literature  of  the  century  in  bestowing 
on  it  the  coveted  epithet  of  epoch-making. 

The  book  is  full  of  crudities.  We  feel  the  worse 
side  of  the  eighteenth  century  when  Burke  tells  us 
that  a  thirst  for  Variety  in  architecture  is  sure  to 
leave  very  little  true  taste  ;  or  that  an  air  of  robust- 
ness and  strength  is  very  prejudicial  to  beauty ; 
or  that  sad  fuscous  colours  are  indispensable  for 
sublimity.  Many  of  the  sections,  again,  are  little 
more  than  expanded  definitions  from  the  dictionary. 
Any  tyro  may  now  be  shocked  at  such  a  proposi- 
tion as  that  beauty  acts  by  relaxing  the  solids  of 
the  whole  system.  But  at  least  one  signal  merit 
remains  to  the  Inquiry.  It  was  a  vigorous  enlarge- 
ment of  the  principle,  which  Addison  had  not  long 
before  timidly  illustrated,  that  critics  of  art  seek 
its  principles  in  the  wrong  place  so  long  as  they 
limit  their  search  to  poems,  pictures,  engravings, 
statues,  and  buildings,  instead  of  first  arranging 
the  sentiments  and  faculties  in  man  to  which  art 
makes  its  appeal.  Addison's  treatment  was  slight 
and  merely  literary ;  Burke  dealt  boldly  with  his 
subject  on  the  base  of  the  most  scientific  psychology 
that  was  then  within  his  reach.  To  approach  it  on 
the  psychological  side  at  all  was  to  make  a  dis- 
tinct and  remarkable  advance  in  the  method  of  the 
inquiry  he  had  taken  in  hand. 


CHAPTER  II 

IN   IRELAND PARLIAMENT BEACONSFIELD 

BURKE  was  thirty  years  old  before  he  approached 
even  the  threshold  of  the  arena  in  which  he  was 
destined  to  be  so  great  a  figure.  He  had  made  a 
mark  in  literature,  and  it  was  to  literature  rather 
than  to  public  affairs  that  his  ambition  turned. 
He  had  naturally  become  acquainted  with  the 
brother-authors  who  haunted  the  coffee-houses  hi 
Fleet  Street ;  and  Burke,  along  with  his  father-in- 
law,  Dr.  Nugent,  was  one  of  the  first  members  of 
the  immortal  club  where  Johnson  did  conversa- 
tional battle  with  all  comers.  We  shall,  in  a  later 
chapter,  have  something  to  say  on  Burke's  friend- 
ships with  the  followers  of  his  first  profession,  and 
on  the  active  sympathy  with  which  he  helped  those 
who  were  struggling  into  authorship.  Meanwhile, 
the  fragments  that  remain  of  his  own  attempts 
in  this  direction  are  no  considerable  contributions. 
His  Hints  for  an  Essay  on  the  Drama  are  jejune 
and  infertile,  when  compared  with  the  vigorous  and 
original  thought  of  Diderot  and  Lessing  at  about 
the  same  period.  He  wrote  an  Account  of  the  Euro- 
pean Settlements  in  America.  His  Abridgment  of  the 
History  of  England  comes  down  no  further  than  to 
the  reign  of  John.  A  much  more  important  under- 
taking than  his  history  of  the  past  was  his  design 
for  a  yearly  chronicle  of  the  present.  The  Annual 
Register  began  to  appear  in  1759.  Dodsley,  the 

19 


20  BURKE  CHAP. 

bookseller  of  Pall  Mall,  provided  the  sinews  of  war, 
and  gave  Burke  a  hundred  pounds  a  year  for  his 
survey  of  the  great  events  that  were  then  passing 
in  the  world.  The  scheme  was  probably  born  of 
the  circumstances  of  the  hour,  for  this  was  the 
climax  of  the  Seven  Years'  War.  The  clang  of 
arms  was  heard  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe,  and 
in  East  and  West  new  lands  were  being  brought 
under  the  dominion  of  Great  Britain. 

In  this  exciting  crisis  of  national  affairs,  Burke 
began  to  be  acquainted  with  public  men.  In  1759 
he  was  introduced,  probably  by  Lord  Charlemont, 
to  William  Gerard  Hamilton,  who  only  survives  in 
our  memories  by  his  nickname  of  Single-speech. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  made  many  speeches  in 
Parliament,  and  some  good  ones,  but  none  so  good 
as  the  first,  delivered  in  a  debate  in  1755,  in  which 
Pitt,  Fox,  Grenville,  and  Murray  all  took  part, 
and  were  all  outshone  by  the  new  luminary.  But 
the  new  luminary  never  shone  again  with  its  first 
brilliance.  He  sought  Burke  out  on  the  strength 
of  the  success  of  the  Vindication  of  Natural  Society, 
and  he  seems  to  have  had  a  taste  for  good  company. 
Horace  Walpole  describes  a  dinner  at  his  house  in 
the  summer  of  1761.  "  There  were  Garrick,"  he 
says,  "  and  a  young  Mr.  Burke,  who  wrote  a  book  in 
the  style  of  Lord  Bolingbroke,  that  is  much  admired. 
He  is  a  sensible  man,  but  has  not  worn  off  his 
authorism  yet,  and  thinks  there  is  nothing  so 
charming  as  writers,  and  to  be  one.  He  will  know 
better  one  of  these  days."  The  prophecy  came  true 
in  time,  but  it  was  Burke's  passion  for  authorism 
that  eventually  led  to  a  rupture  with  his  first 
patron.  Hamilton  was  a  man  of  ability,  but  selfish 
and  unreasonable.  Dr.  Leland  afterwards  described 
him  compendiously  as  a  sullen,  vain,  proud,  selfish, 
canker-hearted,  envious  reptile. 

In  1761  Hamilton  went  to  Ireland  as  secretary 
to  Lord  Halifax,  and  Burke  accompanied  him  in 


n  IRELAND  21 

some  indefinite  capacity.  "  The  absenteeism  of 
her  men  of  genius,"  an  eminent  historian  has  said, 
"  was  a  worse  wrong  to  Ireland  than  the  absentee- 
ism of  her  landlords.  If  Edmund  Burke  had 
remained  in  the  country  where  Providence  had 
placed  him,  he  might  have  changed  the  current  of 
its  history." l  It  is  at  least  to  be  said  that  Burke 
was  never  so  absorbed  in  other  affairs  as  to  forget 
the  peculiar  interests  of  his  native  land.  We  have 
his  own  word,  and  his  career  does  not  belie  it,  that 
in  the  elation  with  which  he  was  filled  on  being 
elected  a  member  of  Parliament,  what  was  first 
and  uppermost  in  his  thoughts  was  the  hope  of 
being  somewhat  useful  to  the  place  of  his  birth 
and  education ;  and  to  the  last  he  had  in  it  "a 
dearness  of  instinct  more  than  he  could  justify  to 
reason."  In  fact  the  affairs  of  Ireland  had  a  most 
important  part  in  Burke's  life  at  one  or  two  critical 
moments,  and  this  is  as  convenient  a  place  as  we 
are  likely  to  find  for  describing  in  a  few  words  what 
were  the  issues.  The  brief  space  can  hardly  be 
grudged  in  an  account  of  a  great  political  writer, 
for  Ireland  had  furnished  the  chief  ordeal,  test,  and 
standard  of  English  statesmen. 

Ireland  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  to  England  just  what  the  American  colonies 
would  have  been,  if  they  had  contained,  besides 
the  European  settlers,  more  than  twice  their  num- 
ber of  unenslaved  negroes.  After  the  suppression 
of  the  great  rebellion  of  Tyrconnel  by  William  of 
Orange,  nearly  the  whole  of  the  land  was  con- 
fiscated, the  peasants  were  made  beggars  and 
outlaws,  the  penal  laws  against  the  Catholics  were 
enacted  and  enforced,  and  the  grand  reign  of 
Protestant  Ascendancy  began  in  all  its  odium 
and  completeness.  The  Protestants  and  landlords 
were  supreme ;  the  peasants  and  the  Catholics 
were  prostrate  in  despair.  The  Revolution  brought 

1  Froude's  Ireland,  ii.  214. 


22  BURKE  CHAP. 

about  in  Ireland  just  the  reverse  of  what  it  effected 
in  England.  Here,  it  delivered  the  body  of  the 
nation  from  the  attempted  supremacy  of  a  small 
sect.  There,  it  made  a  small  sect  supreme  over  the 
body  of  the  nation.  "  It  was,  to  say  the  truth," 
Burke  wrote,  "  not  a  revolution  but  a  conquest," 
and  the  policy  of  conquest  was  treated  as  the  just 
and  normal  system  of  government.  The  last  con- 
quest of  England  was  in  the  eleventh  century. 
The  last  conquest  of  Ireland  was  at  the  very  end 
of  the  seventeenth. 

Sixty  years  after  the  event,  when  Burke  re- 
visited Ireland,  some  important  changes  had  taken 
place.  The  English  settlers  of  the  beginning  of 
the  century  had  formed  an  Irish  interest.  They 
had  become  Anglo-Irish,  just  as  the  colonists  still 
farther  west  had  formed  a  colonial  interest  and 
become  Anglo-American.  The  same  conduct  on 
the  part  of  the  mother  country  promoted  the 
growth  of  these  hostile  interests  in  both  cases.  The 
commercial  policy  pursued  by  England  towards 
America  was  identical  with  that  pursued  towards 
Ireland.  The  industry  of  the  Anglo-Irish  traders 
was  restricted,  their  commerce  and  even  their 
production  fettered,  their  prosperity  checked,  for 
the  benefit  of  the  merchants  of  Manchester  and 
Bristol.  Crescit  Roma  Albae  minis.  "The  bulk 
of  the  people,"  said  Stone,  the  Primate,  "  are  not 
regularly  either  lodged,  clothed,  or  fed ;  and  those 
things  which  in  England  are  called  necessaries  of 
life,  are  to  us  only  accidents,  and  we  can,  and  in 
many  places  do,  subsist  without  them."  On  the 
other  hand,  the  peasantry  had  gradually  taken  heart 
to  resent  their  spoliation  and  attempted  extirpa- 
tion, and  in  1761  their  misery  under  the  exactions 
of  landlords  and  a  church  that  tried  to  spread 
Christianity  by  the  brotherly  agency  of  the  tithe- 
proctor,  gave  birth  to  Whiteboyism  —  a  terrible 
spectre,  that,  under  various  names  and  with  various 


n  IRELAND  23 

modifications,  has  ridden  Ireland  down  to  our  own 
time. 

Burke   saw  the  Protestant   traders   of  the   de- 
pendency the   victims    of   the   colonial  and  com- 
mercial system ;    the  Catholic  landowners  legally 
dispossessed  by  the  operation  of  the  penal  laws  ; 
the  Catholic  peasantry  deeply  penetrated  with  an 
insurgent  and  vindictive  spirit ;    and  the  imperial 
government  standing  very  much  aloof,  and  leav- 
ing  the    country   to   the    tender    mercies    of   the 
Undertakers  and  some  Protestant  churchmen.     The 
Anglo-Irish   were   bitterly    discontented   with   the 
mother   country ;     and   the   Catholic   native   Irish 
were  regarded  by  their  Protestant  oppressors  with 
exactly  that  combination  of  intense  contempt  and 
loathing,  and  intense  rage  and  terror,  which  their 
American  counterpart  would  have  divided  between 
the  Negro  and  the  Red  Indian.     To  the  Anglo- 
Irish   the   native    peasant   was    as    odious   as   the 
first,  and  as  terrible  as  the  second.     Even  at  the 
close  of  the  century  Burke  could  declare  that  the 
various   descriptions   of  the   people   were   kept  as 
much  apart  as  if  they  were  not  only  separate  nations, 
but  separate   species.     There   were  thousands,   he 
says,  who  had  never  talked  to  a  Roman  Catholic 
in  their  whole  lives,  unless  they  happened  to  talk 
to  a  gardener's  workman  or  some  other  labourer 
of  the  second  or  third  order ;    while  a  little  time 
before  this  they  were  so  averse  to  have  them  near 
their  persons,  that  they  would  not  employ  even 
those  who  could  never  find  their  way  beyond  the 
stables.     Chesterfield,  a  thoroughly  impartial  and 
just  observer,  said  in  1764  that  the  poor  people  in 
Ireland   were   used   worse   than    negroes   by   their 
masters  and  the  middlemen.     We  should  never  for- 
get that  in  the  transactions  with  the  English  govern- 
ment  during   the   eighteenth   century,  the   people 
concerned  were  not  the  Irish,  but  the  Anglo-Irish, 
the  colonists  of  1691.     They  were  an  aristocracy, 


24  BURKE 

as  Adam  Smith  said  of  them,  not  founded  in 
the  natural  and  respectable  distinctions  of  birth 
and  fortune,  but  in  the  most  odious  of  all  distinc- 
tions, those  of  religious  and  political  prejudices- 
distinctions  that,  more  than  any  other,  animate 
both  the  insolence  of  the  oppressors  and  the  hatred 
and  indignation  of  the  oppressed. 

The  directions  in  which  Irish  improvement 
would  move  were  clear  from  the  middle  of  the 
century  to  men  with  much  less  foresight  than 
Burke  had.  The  removal  of  all  commercial  re- 
strictions, either  by  Independence  or  Union,  on 
the  one  hand,  and  the  gradual  emancipation  of 
the  Catholics,  on  the  other,  were  the  two  processes 
to  which  every  consideration  of  good  government 
manifestly  pointed.  The  first  proved  a  much 
shorter  and  simpler  process  than  the  second.  To 
the  first  the  only  obstacle  was  the  blindness  and 
selfishness  of  the  English  merchants.  The  second 
had  to  overcome  the  virulent  opposition  of  the 
tyrannical  Protestant  faction  in  Ireland,  and  the 
disgraceful  but  deep-rooted  antipathies  of  the 
English  nation.  The  history  of  the  relation  between 
the  mother  country  and  her  dependency  during 
Burke's  life,  may  be  characterised  as  a  commercial 
and  legislative  struggle  between  the  imperial  govern- 
ment and  the  Anglo-Irish  interest,  in  which  each 
side  for  its  own  convenience,  as  the  turn  served, 
drew  support  from  the  Catholic  majority.//' 

A  Whiteboy  outbreak,  attended  by^me  usual 
circumstances  of  disorder  and  violence,  took  place 
while  Burke  was  in  Ireland.  It  suited  the  inter- 
ests of  faction  to  represent  these  commotions  as 
the  symptoms  of  a  deliberate  rebellion.  The  mal- 
contents were  represented  as  carrying  on  treasonable 
correspondence,  sometimes  with  Spain  and  some- 
times with  France ;  they  were  accused  of  receiving 
money  and  arms  from  their  foreign  sympathisers, 
and  of  aiming  at  throwing  off  the  English  rule. 


n  IRELAND  25 

Burke  says  that  he  had  means  and  the  desire  of 
informing  himself  to  the  bottom  upon  the  matter, 
and  he  came  strongly  to  the  conclusion  that  this 
was  not  a  true  view  of  what  had  happened. 
What  had  happened  was  due,  he  thought,  to  no 
plot,  but  to  superficial  and  fortuitous  circum- 
stances. He  consequently  did  not  shrink  from 
describing  it  as  criminal  that  the  king's  Catholic 
subjects  in  Ireland  should  have  been  subjected,  on 
no  good  grounds,  to  harassing  persecution,  and 
that  numbers  of  them  should  have  been  ruined  in 
fortune,  imprisoned,  tried,  and  capitally  executed 
for  a  rebellion  that  was  no  rebellion  at  all.  The 
episode  is  only  important  as  illustrating  the  strong 
and  manly  temper  in  which  Burke,  unlike  too 
many  of  his  countrymen  with  fortunes  to  make  by 
English  favour,  uniformly  considered  the  circum- 
stances of  his  country.  It  was  not  until  a  later 
time  that  he  had  an  opportunity  of  acting  con- 
spicuously on  her  behalf,  but  whatever  influence 
he  came  to  acquire  with  his  party  was  unflinchingly 
used  against  the  cruelty  of  English  prejudice. 

Burke  appears  to  have  remained  in  Ireland  for 
two  years  (1761-63).  In  1763  Hamilton,  who  had 
found  him  an  invaluable  auxiliary,  procured  for 
him,  principally  with  the  aid  of  the  Primate, 
Stone,  a  pension  of  three  hundred  pounds  a  year 
from  the  Irish  Treasury.  In  thanking  him  for  this 
service,  Burke  proceeded  to  bargain  that  the  obliga- 
tion should  not  bind  him  to  give  to  his  patron  the 
whole  of  his  time.  He  insisted  on  being  left  with 
a  discreet  liberty  to  continue  a  little  work  which 
he  had  as  a  rent-charge  upon  his  thoughts.  What- 
ever advantages  he  had  acquired,  he  says,  had  been 
due  to  literary  reputation,  and  he  could  only  hope 
for  a  continuance  of  such  advantages  on  condition 
of  doing  something  to  keep  the  same  reputation 
alive.  What  this  literary  design  was,  we  do  not 
know  with  certainty.  It  is  believed  to  have  been  a 


26  BURKE  CHAP. 

history  of  England,  of  which,  as  I  have  said,  a 
fragment  remains.  Whatever  the  work  may  have 
been,  it  was  an  offence  to  Hamilton.  With  an 
irrational  stubbornness,  that  may  well  astound  us 
when  we  think  of  the  noble  genius  he  thus  wished 
to  confine  to  paltry  personal  duties,  he  persisted 
that  Burke  should  bind  himself  to  his  service  for 
life,  and  to  the  exclusion  of  other  interests.  '  To 
circumscribe  my  hopes,"  cried  Burke,  "  to  give  up 
even  the  possibility  of  liberty,  to  annihilate  myself 
for  ever  !  "  He  threw  up  the  pension,  which  he 
had  held  for  two  years,  and  declined  all  further 
connection  with  Hamilton,  whom  he  roundly  de- 
scribed as  an  infamous  scoundrel.  "  Six  of  the 
best  years  of  my  life  he  took  me  from  every  pur- 
suit of  my  literary  reputation,  or  of  improvement 
of  my  fortune.  ...  In  all  this  time  you  may 
easily  conceive  how  much  I  felt  at  seeing  myself 
left  behind  by  almost  all  of  my  contemporaries. 
There  never  was  a  season  more  favourable  for  any 
man  who  chose  to  enter  into  the  career  of  public 
life ;  and  I  think  I  am  not  guilty  of  ostentation  in 
supposing  my  own  moral  character  and  my  in- 
dustry, my  friends  and  connections,  when  Mr. 
Hamilton  first  sought  my  acquaintance,  were  not 
at  all  inferior  to  those  of  several  whose  fortune  is 
at  this  day  upon  a  very  different  footing  from 


mine." 


It  was  not  long  before  a  more  important  open- 
ing offered  itself,  which  speedily  brought  Burke 
into  the  main  stream  of  public  life.  In  the  summer 
of  1765  a  change  of  ministry  took  place.  It  was 
the  third  since  the  king's  accession  five  years  ago. 
First,  Pitt  had  been  disgraced,  and  the  old  Duke 
of  Newcastle  dismissed.  Then  Bute  came  into 
power,  but  Bute  quailed  before  the  storm  of  calumny 
and  hate  that  his  Scotch  nationality,  and  the  sup- 
posed source  of  his  power  over  the  king,  had  raised 
in  every  town  in  England.  After  Lord  Bute,  George 


H  INTRODUCTION  TO  LORD  ROCKINGHAM  27 

Grenville  undertook  the  government.  Before  he 
had  been  many  months  in  office,  he  had  sown  the 
seeds  of  war  in  the  colonies,  wearied  Parliament, 
and  disgusted  the  king.  In  June  1765  Grenville 
was  dismissed.  With  profound  reluctance  the  king 
had  no  other  choice  than  to  summon  Lord  Rocking- 
ham,  and  Lord  Rockingham,  in  a  happy  moment 
for  himself  and  his  party,  was  induced  to  offer 
Burke  a  post  as  his  private  secretary.  Rockingham 
was  without  either  experience  or  knowledge.  He 
felt,  or  friends  felt  for  him,  the  advantage  of  having 
at  his  side  a  man  who  was  chiefly  known  as  an 
author  in  the  service  of  Dodsley,  and  as  having 
conducted  the  Annual  Register  with  great  ability, 
but  who  even  then  was  widely  spoken  of  as  nothing 
less  than  an  encyclopaedia  of  political  knowledge. 

It  is  commonly  believed  that  Burke  was  com- 
mended to  Lord  Rockingham  by  William  Fitz- 
herbert.  Fitzherbert  was  President  of  the  Board 
of  Trade  in  the  new  government,  but  he  is  more 
likely  to  be  remembered  as  Dr.  Johnson's  famous 
example  of  the  truth  of  the  observation  that  a 
man  will  please  more  upon  the  whole  by  negative 
qualities  than  by  positive,  because  he  was  the  most 
acceptable  man  in  London,  and  yet  overpowered 
nobody  by  the  superiority  of  his  talents,  made  no 
man  think  worse  of  himself  by  being  his  rival, 
seemed  always  to  listen,  did  not  oblige  you  to  hear 
much  from  him,  and  did  not  oppose  what  you 
said.  Besides  Fitzherbert's  influence,  we  have  it 
on  Burke's  own  authority  that  his  promotion  was 
partly  due  to  that  mysterious  person,  William 
Burke,  who  was  at  the  same  time  appointed  an 
Under-Secretary  of  State.  There  must  have  been 
unpleasant  rumours  afloat  as  to  the  Burke  con- 
nection, and  we  shall  presently  consider  what  they 
were  worth.  Meanwhile,  it  is  enough  to  say  that 
the  old  Duke  of  Newcastle  hurried  to  the  new 
Premier,  and  told  him  the  appointment  would  never 


28  BURKE  CHAP. 

do ;  the  new  secretary  was  not  only  an  Irish 
adventurer,  which  was  true,  but  he  was  an  Irish 
Papist,  which  was  not  true  ;  he  was  a  Jesuit,  he 
was  a  spy  from  Saint  Omer's,  and  his  real  name  was 
O'Bourke.  Lord  Rockingham  behaved  like  a  man 
of  sense  and  honour,  sent  for  Burke,  and  repeated 
to  him  what  he  had  heard.  Burke  warmly  de- 
nounced the  truthlessness  of  the  duke's  tattle. 
He  insisted  that  the  reports  his  chief  had  heard 
would  probably,  even  unknown  to  himself,  create 
in  his  mind  such  suspicions  as  would  stand  in  the 
way  of  a  thorough  confidence.  No  earthly  con- 
sideration, he  said,  should  induce  him  to  continue 
in  relations  with  a  man  whose  trust  in  him  was  not 
entire  ;  and  he  pressed  his  resignation.  To  this 
Lord  Rockingham  would  not  consent,  and  from 
that  time  until  his  death,  seventeen  years  after- 
wards, the  relations  between  them  were  those  of 
loyal  and  honourable  service  on  the  one  hand,  and 
generous  and  appreciative  friendship  on  the  other. 
Six-and-twenty  years  afterwards  (1791)  Burke  re- 
membered the  month  in  which  he  had  first  become 
connected  with  a  man  whose  memory,  he  said,  will 
ever  be  precious  to  Englishmen  of  all  parties, 
as  long  as  the  ideas  of  honour  and  virtue,  public 
and  private,  are  understood  and  cherished  in  this 
nation. 

The  Rockingham  ministry  remained  in  office 
for  a  year  and  twenty  days  (1765-66).  About  the 
middle  of  this  term  (December  26,  1765)  Burke 
was  returned  to  Parliament  for  the  borough  of 
Wendover,  by  the  influence  of  Lord  Verney,  who 
owned  it,  and  who  also  returned  William  Burke 
for  another  borough.  Lord  Verney  was  an  Irish 
peer,  with  large  property  in  Buckinghamshire ; 
he  now  represented  that  county  in  Parliament.  It 
was  William  Burke's  influence  with  Lord  Verney 
that  procured  for  his  namesake  the  seat  at  Wend- 
over.  Burke  made  his  first  speech  in  the  House 


IN  PARLIAMENT  29 

of  Commons  a  few  days  after  the  opening  of  the 
session  of  1766  (January  27),  and  was  honoured 
by  a  compliment  from  Pitt,  still  the  Great  Com- 
moner. A  week  later  he  spoke  again  on  the  same 
momentous  theme,  the  complaints  of  the  American 
colonists,  and  his  success  was  so  marked  that  good 
judges  predicted,  in  the  stiff  phraseology  of  the 
time,  that  he  would  soon  add  the  palm  of  the 
orator  to  the  laurel  of  the  writer  and  the  philo- 
sopher. The  friendly  Dr.  Johnson  wrote  to  Langton 
that  Burke  had  gained  more  reputation  than  any 
man  at  his  first  appearance  had  ever  gained  before. 
The  session  was  a  triumph  to  the  new  member, 
but  it  brought  neither  strength  nor  popularity  to 
the  administration.  At  the  end  of  it  the  king  dis- 
missed them,  and  the  Chatham  government  was 
formed — that  strange  combination  which  has  been 
made  famous  by  Burke's  description  of  it  as  a 
piece  of  joinery  so  crossly  indented  and  whimsi- 
cally dovetailed,  such  a  piece  of  diversified  mosaic, 
such  a  tessellated  pavement  without  cement,  that 
it  was  indeed  a  very  curious  show,  but  utterly  unsafe 
to  touch  and  unsure  to  stand  upon.  There  was  no 
obvious  reason  why  Burke  should  not  have  joined 
the  new  ministry.  The  change  was  at  first  one  of 
persons  rather  than  of  principles  or  of  measures. 
To  put  himself,  as  Burke  afterwards  said,  out  of 
the  way  of  the  negotiations  that  were  then  being 
carried  on  very  eagerly  and  through  many  channels 
with  the  Earl  of  Chatham,  he  went  to  Ireland  very 
soon  after  the  change  of  ministry.  He  was  free 
from  party  engagements,  and  more  than  this,  he 
was  free  at  the  express  desire  of  his  friends  ;  for 
on  the  very  day  of  his  return  the  Marquis  of 
Rockingham  wished  him  to  accept  office  under  the 
new  system.  Burke  "  believes  he  might  have  had 
such  a  situation,  but  he  cheerfully  took  his  fate 
with  his  party."  In  a  short  time  he  rendered  his 
party  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  splendid  literary 


30  BURKE  CHAP 

services  by  writing  his  Observations  on  the  Present 
State  of  the  Nation  (1769).  It  was  a  reply  to  a 
pamphlet  by  George  Grenville,  in  which  the  dis- 
appointed minister  accused  his  successors  of  ruin- 
ing the  country.  Burke,  in  answering  the  charge, 
showed  a  grasp  of  commercial  and  fiscal  details  at 
least  equal  to  that  of  Grenville  himself,  then  con- 
sidered the  first  man  of  his  time  in  dealing  with 
the  national  trade  and  resources.  To  this  easy 
mastery  of  the  special  facts  of  the  discussion, 
Burke  added  the  far  rarer  art  of  lighting  them  up 
by  broad  principles,  and  placing  himself  and  his 
readers  at  the  highest  and  most  effective  point  of 
view  for  commanding  their  general  bearings. 

If  Burke  had  been  the  Irish  adventurer  that  his 
enemies  described,  he  might  well  have  seized  with 
impatience  the  opening  to  office  that  the  recent 
exhibition  of  his  powers  in  the  House  of  Commons 
had  now  made  accessible  to  him.  There  was  not 
a  man  in  Great  Britain  to  whom  the  emoluments 
of  office  would  have  been  more  useful.  It  is  one 
of  the  standing  mysteries  in  literary  biography 
how  Burke  could  think  of  entering  Parliament 
without  any  means  that  anybody  can  now  trace, 
of  earning  a  fitting  livelihood.  Yet  at  this  time 
Burke,  whom  we  saw  not  long  ago  writing  for  the 
booksellers,  had  become  affluent  enough  to  pay  a 
yearly  allowance  to  Barry,  the  painter,  in  order  to 
enable  him  to  study  the  pictures  in  the  great 
European  galleries,  and  to  make  a  prolonged 
residence  at  Rome.  A  little  later  he  took  a  step 
that  makes  the  riddle  still  more  difficult,  and 
has  given  abundant  employment  to  wits  who  are 
maximi  in  minimis,  and  think  that  every  question 
they  can  ask,  yet  to  which  history  has  not  thought 
it  worth  while  to  leave  an  answer,  is  somehow  a 
triumph  of  their  own  learning  and  dialectic. 

In   1769   Burke   purchased  a  house   and   lands 
known  as  Gregories,  in  the  parishes  of  Penn  and 


n  PURCHASE  OF  BEACONSFIELD         31 

Beaconsfield,  in  the  county  of  Bucks.  It  has 
often  been  asked,  and  naturally  enough,  how  a 
man  who,  hardly  more  than  a  few  months  before, 
was  still  contented  to  earn  an  extra  hundred  pounds 
a  year  by  writing  for  Dodsley,  should  now  have 
launched  out  as  the  buyer  of  a  fine  house  and  estate, 
that  cost  upwards  of  twenty-two  thousand  pounds, 
could  not  be  kept  up  on  less  than  two  thousand 
five  hundred  a  year,  and  of  which  the  returns  did 
not  amount  to  one-fifth  of  that  sum.  Whence  did 
he  procure  the  money,  and  what  is  perhaps  more 
difficult  to  answer,  how  came  he  first  to  entertain 
the  idea  of  a  design  so  ill-proportioned  to  anything 
we  can  now  discern  in  his  means  and  prospects  ? 
The  common  answer  from  Burke's  enemies,  and 
even  from  some  neutral  inquirers,  might  give  an 
unpleasant  shock.  It  is  alleged  that  he  had  plunged 
into  wild  gambling  in  East  India  stock.  The  charge 
was  current  at  the  time,  and  it  was  speedily  revived 
when  Burke's  abandonment  of  his  party,  after  the 
French  Revolution,  exposed  him  to  a  thousand 
attacks  of  reckless  virulence.  It  has  been  stirred 
by  one  or  two  pertinacious  critics  nearer  our  own 
time,  and  none  of  the  biographers  have  dealt  with 
the  perplexities  of  the  matter.  Nobody,  indeed, 
has  ever  pretended  to  find  one  jot  of  direct  evidence 
that  Burke  himself  took  a  part  in  the  gambling  in 
India  or  other  stocks.  There  is  evidence  that  he 
was  a  holder  of  the  stock,  and  no  more.  But  what 
is  undeniable  is  that  Richard  Burke,  his  brother, 
William  Burke,  his  intimate,  if  not  his  kinsman, 
and  Lord  Verney,  his  political  patron,  were  all  three 
at  this  time  engaged  together  in  immense  trans- 
actions in  East  India  stock  ;  that  in  1769  the  stock 
fell  violently ;  that  they  were  unable  to  pay  their 
differences  ;  and  that  in  the  year  when  Edmund 
Burke  bought  Gregories,  the  other  three  were  utterly 
ruined,  two  of  them  beyond  retrieval.  Again,  it  is 
clear  that,  after  this,  Richard  Burke  was  engaged 


32  BURKE 


CHAP. 


in  land- jobbing  in  the  West  Indies  ;  that  his  claims 
were  disputed  by  the  government  as  questionable 
and  dishonest ;  and  that  he  lost  his  case.  Edmund 
Burke  was  said,  in  the  gossip  of  the  day,  to  be  deeply 
interested  in  land  at  Saint  Vincent's.  But  there  is 
no  evidence.  What  cannot  be  denied  is  that  an 
unpleasant  taint  of  speculation  and  financial  ad- 
ventureship  hung  at  one  time  about  the  whole 
connection,  and  that  the  adventures  invariably 
came  to  an  unlucky  end. 

Whether  Edmund  Burke  and  William  Burke 
were  relations  or  not,  and  if  so,  in  what  degree 
they  were  relations,  neither  of  them  ever  knew  ; 
they  believed  that  their  fathers  sometimes  called 
one  another  cousins,  and  that  was  all  they  had  to 
say  on  the  subject.  But  they  were  as  intimate 
as  brothers,  and  when  William  Burke  went  to  mend 
his  broken  fortunes  in  India,  Edmund  Burke  com- 
mended him  to  Philip  Francis — then  fighting  his 
deadly  duel  of  five  years  with  Warren  Hastings 
at  Calcutta — as  one  whom  he  had  tenderly  loved, 
highly  valued,  and  continually  lived  with  in  an 
union  not  to  be  expressed,  quite  since  their  boyish 
years.  "  Looking  back  to  the  course  of  my  life," 
he  wrote  in  1771,  "  I  remember  no  one  considerable 
benefit  in  the  whole  of  it  which  I  did  not,  mediately 
or  immediately,  derive  from  William  Burke."  There 
is  nothing  intrinsically  incredible,  therefore,  con- 
sidering this  intimacy  and  the  community  of  purse 
and  home  that  subsisted  among  the  three  Burkes, 
in  the  theory  that  when  Edmund  Burke  bought  his 
property  in  Buckinghamshire,  he  looked  for  help 
from  the  speculations  of  Richard  and  William. 
However  this  may  have  been,  from  them  came  no 
help.  Many  years  afterwards  (1783)  Lord  Verney 
filed  a  bill  in  Chancery  claiming  from  Edmund 
Burke  a  sum  of  £6000,  which  he  alleged  that  he 
had  lent  at  the  instigation  of  William  Burke,  to 
assist  in  completing  the  purchase  of  Beaconsfield. 


BEACONSFIELD  33 

Burke's  sworn  answer  denied  all  knowledge  of  the 
transaction,  and  the  plaintiff  did  not  get  the  relief 
for  which  he  had  prayed. 

In  a  letter  to  Shackleton  (May  1,  1768),  Burke 
gave  the  following  account  of  what  he  had  done  : 
"  I  have  made  a  push,"  he  says,  "  with  all  I 
could  collect  of  my  own,  and  the  aid  of  my  friends, 
to  cast  a  little  root  in  this  country.  I  have  pur- 
chased a  house,  with  an  estate  of  about  six  hundred 
acres  of  land,  in  Buckinghamshire,  twenty-four 
miles  from  London.  It  is  a  place  exceedingly 
pleasant ;  and  I  propose,  God  willing,  to  become 
a  farmer  in  good  earnest.  You,  who  are  classical, 
will  not  be  displeased  to  know  that  it  was  formerly 
the  seat  of  Waller,  the  poet,  whose  house,  or  part 
of  it,  makes  at  present  the  farmhouse  within  an 
hundred  yards  of  me."  The  details  of  the  actual 
purchase  of  Beaconsfield  have  been  made  tolerably 
clear.  The  price  was  twenty-two  thousand  pounds, 
more  or  less.  Fourteen  thousand  were  left  on  mort- 
gage, which  remained  outstanding  until  the  sale 
of  the  property  by  Mrs.  Burke  in  1812.  Garret 
Burke,  the  elder  brother,  had  shortly  before  the 
purchase  made  Edmund  his  residuary  legatee,  and 
it  is  guessed  that  of  this  bequest  two  thousand 
pounds  were  in  cash.  The  balance  of  six  thousand 
was  advanced  by  Lord  Rockingham  on  Burke's 
bond. 

The  purchase  after  all  was  the  smallest  part  of 
the  matter,  and  it  still  remains  a  puzzle  not  only 
how  Burke  was  #ble  to  maintain  so  handsome  an 
establishment,  but  how  he  could  ever  suppose  it 
likely  that  he  would  be  able  to  maintain  it.  He 
counted,  no  doubt,  on  making  some  sort  of  income 
by  farming.  The  Irish  estate,  which  he  had  in- 
herited from  his  brother,  brought  in  five  hundred 
a  year  (Arthur  Young's  Ireland,  ii.  193).  For  a 
short  time  he  received  a  salary  of  seven  hundred 
pounds  a  year  as  agent  for  New  York.  We  may 

D 


34  BURKE 


CHAP. 


perhaps  take  for  granted  that  he  made  as  much 
more  out  of  his  acres.  He  received  something 
from  Dodsley  for  his  work  on  the  Annual  Register 
down  to  1788.  But  when  all  these  resources  have 
been  counted  up,  we  cannot  but  see  a  great  yearly 
deficit.  The  unhappy  truth  is  that  from  the  middle 
of  1769,  when  we  find  him  applying  to  Garrick  for 
the  loan  of  a  thousand  pounds,  down  to  1794,  when 
the  king  gave  him  a  pension,  Burke  was  never  free 
from  the  harassing  strain  of  debts  and  want  of 
money.  It  has  been  stated  with  good  show  of 
authority,  that  his  obligations  to  Lord  Rockingham 
amounted  to  not  less  than  thirty  thousand  pounds. 
When  that  nobleman  died  (17g8),  with  a  generosity 
not  the  less  honourable  to  him  for  having  been  so 
richly  earned  by  the  faithful  friend  who  was  the 
object  of  it,  he  left  instructions  to  his  executors 
that  all  Burke's  bonds  should  be  destroyed. 

We  may  indeed  wish  that  all  this  had  been 
otherwise.  But  those  who  press  it  as  a  reproach 
against  Burke's  memory,  may  be  justly  reminded 
that  when  Pitt  died,  after  drawing  the  pay  of  a 
minister  for  twenty  years,  he  left  debts  to  the 
amount  of  forty  thousand  pounds.  Burke,  as  I 
have  said  elsewhere,  had  none  of  the  vices  of 
profusion,  but  he  had  the  quality  that  Aristotle 
places  high  among  the  virtues — the  noble  mean 
of  Magnificence,  standing  midway  between  the 
two  extremes  of  vulgar  ostentation  and  narrow 
pettiness.  At  least,  every  creditor  was  paid  in 
good  time,  and  nobody  suffered  but  himself.  Those 
who  think  these  disagreeable  matters  of  supreme 
importance,  and  allow  such  things  to  stand  between 
them  and  Burke's  greatness,  are  like  the  people- 
slightly  to  alter  a  figure  from  a  philosopher  of  old 
— who,  when  they  went  to  Olympia,  could  only 
perceive  that  they  were  scorched  by  the  sun,  and 
pressed  by  the  crowd,  and  deprived  of  comfortable 
means  of  bathing,  and  wetted  by  the  rain,  and 


HIS  DISINTERESTEDNESS  35 

that  life  was  full  of  disagreeable  and  troublesome 
things,  and  so  they  almost  forgot  the  great  colossus 
of  ivory  and  gold,  Phidias's  statue  of  Zeus,  which 
they  had  come  to  see,  and  which  stood  in  all  its 
glory  and  power  before  their  perturbed  and  foolish 
vision. 

There  have  been  few  men  in  history  with  whom 
personal  objects  counted  for  so  little  as  they  counted 
with  Burke.  He  really  did  what  so  many  public 
men  only  feign  to  do.  He  forgot  that  he  had 
any  interests  of  his  own  to  be  promoted,  apart 
from  the  interests  of  the  party  with  which  he 
acted,  and  from  those  of  the  whole  nation,  for 
which  he  held  himself  a  trustee.  What  William 
Burke  said  of  him  in  1766  was  true  throughout 
his  life,  "  Ned  is  full  of  real  business,  intent  upon 
doing  solid  good  to  his  country,  as  much  as  if  he 
was  to  receive  twenty  per  cent  from  the  Empire." 
Such  men  as  the  shrewd  and  impudent  Rigby 
atoned  for  a  plebeian  origin  by  the  arts  of  depend- 
ence and  a  judicious  servility,  and  drew  more  of 
the  public  money  from  the  Pay-Office  in  half  a 
dozen  quarter-days  than  Burke  received  in  all  his 
life.  It  was  not  by  such  arts  that  Burke  rose. 
When  we  remember  all  the  untold  bitterness  of 
the  struggle  in  which  he  was  engaged,  from  the 
time  when  the  old  Duke  of  Newcastle  tried  to 
make  the  Marquis  of  Rockingham  dismiss  his  new 
private  secretary  as  an  Irish  Jesuit  in  disguise 
(1765),  down  to  the  time  when  the  Duke  of  Bedford, 
himself  battening  "  in  grants  to  the  house  of 
Russell,  so  enormous  as  not  only  to  outrage  econ- 
omy, but  even  to  stagger  credibility,"  assailed  the 
government  for  giving  Burke  a  moderate  pension, 
we  may  almost  imagine  that  if  Johnson  had  imi- 
tated the  famous  Tenth  Satire  a  little  later,  he 
would  have  been  tempted  to  apply  the  poet's 
cynical  criticism  of  the  career  heroic  to  the  greater 
Cicero  of  his  own  day.  "  I  was  not,"  Burke  said, 


36  BURKE  CHAP,  n 

in  a  passage  of  lofty  dignity,  "  like  his  Grace  of 
Bedford,  swaddled  and  rocked  and  dandled  into 
a  legislator ;  Nitor  in  adversum  is  the  motto  for 
a  man  like  me.  I  possessed  not  one  of  the  qualities, 
nor  cultivated  one  of  the  arts,  that  recommend 
men  to  the  favour  and  protection  of  the  great.  I 
was  not  made  for  a  minion  or  a  tool.  As  little  did 
I  follow  the  trade  of  winning  the  hearts,  by  im- 
posing on  the  understandings  of  the  people.  At 
every  step  of  my  progress  in  life,  for  in  every  step 
was  I  traversed  and  opposed,  and  at  every  turnpike 
I  met,  I  was  obliged  to  show  my  passport,  and 
again  and  again  to  prove  my  sole  title  to  the 
honour  of  being  useful  to  my  country,  by  a  proof 
that  I  was  not  wholly  unacquainted  with  its  laws 
and  the  whole  system  of  its  interests  both  abroad 
and  at  home  ;  otherwise  no  rank,  no  toleration  even 
for  me." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    CONSTITUTIONAL   STRUGGLE 

FOREIGN  observers  of  our  affairs  looked  upon  the 
state  of  England  between  the  accession  of  George 
III.  and  the  loss  of  the  American  colonies  (1760-76) 
with  mixed  disgust  and  satisfaction.  Their  in- 
stinct as  absolute  rulers  was  revolted  by  a  spectacle 
of  unbridled  faction  and  raging  anarchy ;  their 
envy  was  soothed  by  the  growing  weakness  of  a 
power  which  Chatham  had  so  short  a  time  before 
left  at  the  highest  point  of  grandeur  and  strength. 
Frederick  the  Great  spoke  with  contempt  of  the 
insolence  of  Opposition  and  the  virulence  of  parties  ; 
and  vowed  that,  petty  German  prince  as  he  was, 
he  would  not  change  places  with  the  King  of 
England.  The  Emperor  Joseph  pronounced  posi- 
tively that  Great  Britain  was  declining,  that 
Parliament  was  ruining  itself,  and  that  the  colonies 
threatened  a  catastrophe.  Catherine  of  Russia 
thought  that  nothing  would  restore  its  ancient 
vigour  to  the  realm,  short  of  the  bracing  and 
heroic  remedy  of  a  war.  Even  at  home,  such 
shrewd  and  experienced  onlookers  as  Horace 
Walpole  suspected  that  the  state  of  the  country 
was  more  serious  than  it  had  been  since  the  Great 
Rebellion,  and  declared  it  to  be  approaching  by 
fast  strides  to  some  sharp  crisis.  Men  who  re- 
membered their  Roman  history,  fancied  they  saw 
every  symptom  of  confusion  that  preceded  the 
ruin  of  the  Commonwealth,  and  began  to  inquire 

37 


38  BURKE  CHAP. 

uneasily  what  was  the  temper  of  the  army.  Men 
who  remembered  the  story  of  the  violence  and 
insatiable  factiousness  of  Florence,  turned  again 
to  Machiavelli  and  to  Guicciardini,  to  trace  a 
parallel  between  the  fierce  city  on  the  Arno  and 
the  fierce  city  on  the  Thames.  When  the  King 
of  Sweden,  in  1772,  carried  out  a  revolution,  by 
abolishing  an  oligarchic  council  and  assuming  the 
powers  of  a  dictator,  with  the  assent  of  his  people, 
there  were  actually  serious  men  in  England  who 
thought  that  the  English,  after  having  been  guilty 
of  every  meanness  and  corruption,  would  soon, 
like  the  Swedes,  own  themselves  unworthy  to  be 
free.  The  Duke  of  Richmond,  who  happened  to 
have  a  claim  to  a  peerage  and  an  estate  in  France, 
excused  himself  for  taking  so  much  pains  to  estab- 
lish his  claim  to  them,  by  gravely  asking  who  knew 
that  a  time  might  not  soon  come  when  England 
would  not  be  worth  living  in,  and  when  a  retreat 
to  France  might  be  a  very  happy  thing  for  a  free 
man  to  have. 

The  reign  had  begun  by  a  furious  outbreak  of 
hatred  between  the  English  and  the  Scotch.  Lord 
Bute  had  been  driven  from  office,  not  merely 
because  he  was  supposed  to  owe  his  power  to  a 
scandalous  friendship  with  the  king's  mother,  but 
because  he  was  accused  of  crowding  the  public 
service  with  his  detested  countrymen  from  the 
other  side  of  the  Tweed.  He  fell,  less  from  dis- 
approval of  his  policy,  than  from  rude  prejudice 
against  his  country.  The  flow  of  angry  emotion 
had  not  subsided  before  the  whisper  of  strife  in 
the  American  colonies  began  to  trouble  the  air ; 
and  before  that  had  waxed  loud,  the  Middlesex 
election  had  blown  into  a  portentous  hurricane. 
This  was  the  first  great  constitutional  case  after 
Burke  came  into  the  House  of  Commons.  As,  more- 
over, it  became  a  leading  element  in  the  crisis  that 
was  the  occasion  of  Burke's  first  remarkable  essay 


m  THE  MIDDLESEX  ELECTION  39 

in  the  literature  of  politics,  it  is  as  well  to  go  over 
the  facts. 

The  Parliament  to  which  he  had  first  been 
returned,  now  approaching  the  expiry  of  its  legal 
term,  was  dissolved  in  the  spring  of  1768.  Wilkes, 
then  an  outlaw  in  Paris,  returned  to  England,  and 
announced  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  city. 
When  the  election  was  over,  his  name  stood  last 
on  the  poll.  But  his  ancient  fame  as  the  opponent 
and  victim  of  the  court  five  years  before,  was 
revived.  After  his  rejection  in  the  city,  he  found 
himself  strong  enough  to  stand  for  the  county  of 
Middlesex.  Here  he  was  returned  at  the  head  of 
the  poll  after  an  excited  election.  Wilkes  had 
been  tried  in  1764,  and  found  guilty  by  the  King's 
Bench  of  republishing  Number  Forty-five  of  the 
North  Briton,  and  of  printing  and  publishing  the 
Essay  on  Woman.  He  had  not  appeared  to  re- 
ceive sentence,  and  had  been  outlawed  in  con- 
sequence. After  his  election  for  Middlesex,  he 
obtained  a  reversal  of  his  outlawry  on  a  point  of 
technical  form.  He  then  came  up  for  sentence 
under  the  original  verdict.  The  court  sent  him 
to  prison  for  twenty-two  months,  and  condemned 
him  to  pay  a  fine  of  a  thousand  pounds. 

Wilkes  was  in  prison  when  the  second  session 
of  the  new  Parliament  began.  His  case  came  before 
the  House  in  November  1768,  on  his  own  petition, 
accusing  Lord  Mansfield  of  altering  the  record  at 
his  trial.  After  many  acrimonious  debates  and 
examinations  of  Wilkes  and  others  at  the  bar  of 
the  House,  at  length,  by  219  votes  against  136, 
the  famous  motion  was  passed  which  expelled  him 
from  the  House.  Another  election  for  Middlesex 
was  now  held,  and  Wilkes  was  returned  without 
opposition.  The  day  after  the  return,  the  House 
of  Commons  resolved  by  an  immense  majority 
that,  having  been  expelled,  Wilkes  was  incapable  of 
serving  in  that  Parliament.  The  following  month 


40  BURKE  CHAP. 

Wilkes  was  once  more  elected.  The  House  once 
more  declared  the  election  void.  In  April  another 
election  took  place,  and  this  time  the  government 
put  forward  Colonel  Luttrell,  who  vacated  his  seat 
for  Bossiney  for  the  purpose  of  opposing  Wilkes. 
There  was  the  same  result,  and  for  the  fourth 
time  Wilkes  was  at  the  head  of  the  poll.  The 
House  ordered  the  return  to  be  altered,  and  after 
hearing  by  counsel  the  freeholders  of  Middlesex 
who  petitioned  against  the  alteration,  finally  con- 
firmed it  (May  8,  1769)  by  a  majority  of  221 
to  152.  According  to  Lord  Temple,  this  was  the 
greatest  majority  ever  known  on  the  last  day  of  a 
session. 

The  purport  and  significance  of  these  arbitrary 
proceedings  need  little  interpretation.  The  House, 
according  to  the  authorities,  had  a  constitutional 
right  to  expel  Wilkes,  though  the  grounds  on  which 
even  this  is  defended  would  probably  be  questioned 
if  a  similar  case  were  to  arise  in  our  own  day.  But 
a  single  branch  of  the  legislature  could,  have  no 
power  to  pass  an  incapacitating  vote  either  against 
Wilkes  or  anybody  else.  An  Act  of  Parliament 
is  the  least  instrument  by  which  such  incapacity 
could  be  imposed.  The  House  might  perhaps 
expel  Wilkes,  but  it  could  not  either  legally  or  with 
regard  to  the  less  definite  limits  of  constitutional 
morality,  decide  whom  the  Middlesex  freeholders 
should  not  elect,  and  it  could  not  therefore  set 
aside  their  representative,  who  was  then  free  from 
any  disabling  quality.  Lord  Camden  did  not  much 
exaggerate,  when  he  declared  in  a  debate  on  the 
subject  in  the  House  of  Lords,  that  the  judgment 
passed  upon  the  Middlesex  election  had  given  the 
constitution  a  more  dangerous  wound  than  any 
given  during  the  twelve  years'  absence  of  Parlia- 
ment in  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  The  House  of 
Commons  was  usurping  another  form  of  that  very 
dispensing  power,  for  pretending  to  which  the  last 


PARLIAMENTARY  PRIVILEGE          41 

of  the  Stuart  sovereigns  had  lost  his  crown.  If 
the  House  by  a  vote  could  deprive  Wilkes  of  a 
right  to  sit,  what  legal  or  constitutional  impediment 
would  there  be  in  the  way,  if  the  majority  were 
at  any  time  disposed  to  declare  all  their  most 
formidable  opponents  in  the  minority  incapable  of 
sitting  ? 

In  the  same  Parliament,  there  was  another  and 
scarcely  less  remarkable  case  of  Privilege,  "  that 
eldest  son  of  Prerogative,"  as  Burke  truly  called 
it,  "  and  inheriting  all  the  vices  of  its  parent." 
Certain  printers  were  accused  of  breach  of  privilege 
for  reporting  the  debates  of  the  House  (March  1771). 
The  messenger  of  the  Serjeant-at-arms  attempted 
to  take  one  of  them  into  custody  in  his  own 
shop  in  the  city.  A  constable  was  standing  by, 
designedly,  it  has  been  supposed,  and  Miller,  the 
printer,  gave  the  messenger  into  his  custody  for 
an  assault.  The  case  came  on  before  the  Lord 
Mayor,  Alderman  Wilkes,  and  Alderman  Oliver, 
the  same  evening,  and  the  result  was  that  the 
messenger  of  the  House  was  committed.  The  city 
doctrine  was,  that  if  the  House  of  Commons  had 
a  Serjeant-at-arms,  they  had  a  Serjeant-at-mace. 
If  the  House  of  Commons  could  send  their  citizens 
to  Newgate,  they  could  send  its  messenger  to  the 
Compter.  Two  other  printers  were  collusively 
arrested,  brought  before  Wilkes  and  Oliver,  and  at 
once  liberated.  . 

The  Commons  instantly  resolved  on  stern  meas- 
ures. The  Lord  Mayor  and  Oliver  were  taken  and 
despatched  to  the  Tower,  where  they  lay  until  the 
prorogation  of  Parliament.  Wilkes  stubbornly  re- 
fused to  pay  any  attention  to  repeated  summonses 
to  attend  at  the  bar  of  the  House,  very  properly 
insisting  that  he  ought  to  be  summoned  to  attend 
in  his  place  as  member  for  Middlesex.  Besides 
committing  Crosby  and  Oliver  to  the  Tower,  the 
House  summoned  the  Lord  Mayor's  clerk  to  attend 


42  BURKE 


CHAP. 


with  his  books,  and  then  and  there  forced  him  to 
strike  out  the  record  of  the  recognisances  into  which 
their  messenger  had  entered  on  being  committed 
at  the  Mansion  House.  No  Stuart  ever  did  any- 
thing more  arbitrary  and  illegal.  The  House  deliber- 
ately intended  to  constitute  itself,  as  Burke  had 
said  two  years  before,  an  arbitrary  and  despotic 
assembly.  "  The  distempers  of  monarchy  were  the 
great  subjects  of  apprehension  and  redress  in  the 
last  century.  In  this,  the  distempers  of  Parliament." 

Burke,  in  a  speech  he  delivered  in  his  place  in 
1771,  warned  the  House  of  the  evils  of  the  course 
upon  which  they  were  entering,  and  declared  those 
to  be  their  mortal  enemies  who  would  persuade 
them  to  act  as  if  they  were  a  self-originated  magis- 
tracy, independent  of  the  people,  and  unconnected 
with  their  opinions  and  feelings.  But  these  mortal 
enemies  of  its  very  constitution  were  at  this  time 
the  majority  of  the  House.  It  was  to  no  purpose 
that  Burke  argued  with  more  than  legal  closeness 
that  incapacitation  could  not  be  a  power  according 
to  law,  inasmuch  as  it  had  neither  of  the  two  pro- 
perties of  law  :  it  was  not  known,  "  you  yourselves 
not  knowing  upon  what  grounds  you  will  vote  the 
incapacity  of  any  man  "  ;  and  it  was  not  fixed, 
because  it  was  varied  according  to  the  occasion, 
exercised  according  to  discretion,  and  no  man  could 
call  for  it  as  a  right.  A  strain  of  unanswerable 
reasoning  of  this  kind  counted  for  nothing,  in  spite 
of  its  being  unanswerable.  Despotic  or  oligarchic 
pretensions  are  proof  against  the  most  formidable 
battery  that  reason  and  experience  can  construct 
against  them.  And  Wilkes's  exclusion  endured  until 
this  Parliament — the  Unreported  Parliament,  as  it 
was  called,  and  in  many  respects  the  very  worst 
that  ever  assembled  at  Westminster — was  dissolved, 
and  a  new  one  elected  (1774),  when  he  was  once 
again  returned  for  Middlesex,  and  took  his  seat. 

The  London  multitude  had  grown  zealous  for 


POPULAR  DISORDER  43 

Wilkes,  and  the  town  had  been  harassed  by  dis- 
order. Of  the  fierce  brutality  of  the  crowd  of  that 
age  we  may  form  a  vivid  idea  from  the  unflinching 
pencil  of  Hogarth.  Barbarous  laws  were  cruelly 
administered.  The  common  people  were  turbulent, 
because  misrule  made  them  miserable.  Wilkes 
had  written  filthy  verses,  but  the  crowd  cared  no 
more  for  this  than  their  betters  cared  about  the 
vices  of  Lord  Sandwich.  They  made  common  cause 
with  one  who  was  accidentally  a  more  conspicuous 
sufferer.  Wilkes  was  quite  right  when  he  vowed 
that  he  was  no  Wilkite.  The  masses  were  better 
than  their  leader.  "  Whenever  the  people  have  a 
feeling,"  Burke  once  said,  "  they  commonly  are  in 
the  right :  they  sometimes  mistake  the  physician." 
Franklin,  who  was  then  in  London,  was  of  opinion 
that  if  George  III.  had  had  a  bad  character,  and 
John  Wilkes  a  good  one,  the  latter  might  have 
turned  the  former  out  of  the  kingdom ;  for  the 
turbulence  that  began  in  street  riots,  at  one  time 
threatened  to  end  in  revolt.  The  king  himself  was 
attacked  with  savage  invective  in  papers,  of  which 
it  was  said  that  no  one  in  the  previous  century 
would  have  dared  to  print  any  like  them  until 
Charles  was  fast  locked  up  in  Carisbrooke  Castle. 

As  is  usual  when  the  minds  of  those  in  power 
have  been  infected  with  an  arbitrary  temper,  the 
employment  of  military  force  to  crush  civil  dis- 
turbances became  a  familiar  and  favourite  idea. 
The  military,  said  Lord  Weymouth,  in  an  elaborate 
letter  addressed  to  the  Surrey  magistrates,  can 
never  be  employed  to  a  more  constitutional  purpose 
than  in  the  support  of  the  authority  and  dignity 
of  the  magistracy.  If  the  magistrate  should  be 
menaced,  he  is  cautioned  not  to  delay  a  moment  in 
calling  for  the  aid  of  the  military,  and  making  use 
of  them  effectually.  The  consequence  of  this  bloody 
scroll,  as  Wilkes  rightly  called  it,  was  that  shortly 
afterwards  an  affray  occurred  between  the  crowd 


44  BURKE  CHAP. 

and  the  troops,  in  which  some  twenty  people  were 
killed  and  wounded  (May  10,  1768).  On  the  follow- 
ing day,  the  Secretary  of  War,  Lord  Barrington, 
wrote  to  the  commanding  officer,  informing  him  that 
the  king  highly  approved  of  the  conduct  of  both 
officers  and  men,  and  wished  that  his  gracious  appro- 
bation of  them  should  be  communicated  to  them. 

Burke  brought  the  matter  before  the  House  in 
a  motion  for  a  Committee  of  Inquiry,  supported 
by  one  of  the  most  lucid  and  able  of  his  minor 
speeches.  "  If  ever  the  time  should  come,"  he 
concluded,  "  when  this  House  shall  be  found  prompt 
to  execute  and  slow  to  inquire  ;  ready  to  punish  the 
excesses  of  the  people,  and  slow  to  listen  to  their 
grievances  ;  ready  to  grant  supplies,  and  slow  to 
examine  the  account ;  ready  to  invest  magistrates 
with  large  powers,  and  slow  to  inquire  into  the 
exercise  of  them ;  ready  to  entertain  notions  of 
the  military  power  as  incorporated  with  the  con- 
stitution,— when  you  learn  this  in  the  air  of  St. 
James's,  then  the  business  is  done ;  then  the 
House  of  Commons  will  change  that  character 
which  it  receives  from  the  people  only."  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  his  motion  for  a 
Committee  was  lost  by  the  overwhelming  majority 
of  245  against  30.  The  general  result  of  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  government  from  the  accession 
of  George  III.  to  the  beginning  of  the  troubles 
in  the  American  colonies,  was  in  Burke's  own 
words,  that  the  government  was  at  once  dreaded 
and  contemned ;  that  the  laws  were  despoiled  of 
all  their  respected  and  salutary  terrors  ;  that  their 
inaction  was  a  subject  of  ridicule,  and  their  exertion 
of  abhorrence  ;  that  our  dependencies  had  slackened 
in  their  affections  ;  that  we  knew  neither  how  to 
yield,  nor  how  to  enforce  ;  and  that  disconnection 
and  confusion,  in  offices,  in  parties,  in  families,  in 
Parliament,  in  the  nation,  prevailed  beyond  the  dis- 
orders of  any  former  time. 


in  THE  PRESENT  DISCONTENTS          45 

It  was  in  the  pamphlet  on  the  Present  Discon- 
tents, published  in  1770,  that  Burke  dealt  at  large 
with  the  whole  scheme  of  policy  of  which  all  these 
irregularities  were  the  distempered  incidents.     The 
pamphlet   was   composed   as   a   manifesto   of  the 
Rockingham  section  of  the  Whig  party,  to  show, 
as  Burke  wrote  to  his  chief,  how  different  it  was 
in  spirit  and  composition  from  "  the  Bedfords,  the 
Grenvilles,  and  other  knots,  who  are  combined  for 
no  public  purpose,  but  only  as  a  means  of  further- 
ing with  joint  strength  their  private  and  indivi- 
dual  advantage."     The  pamphlet  was  submitted 
in  manuscript  or  proof  to  the  heads  of  the  party. 
Friendly    critics    excused    some    inelegancies    that 
they  thought  they  found  in  occasional  passages, 
by  taking  for  granted,  as  was  true,  that  he  had 
admitted  insertions  from  other  hands.     Here   for 
the  first  time  he  exhibited,  on  a  conspicuous  scale, 
the  strongest  qualities  of  his  understanding.     Con- 
temporaries had  an  opportunity  of  measuring  this 
strength,  by  comparison  with  another  performance 
of  similar  scope.     The  letters  of  Junius  had  startled 
the  world  the  year  before.     Burke  was  universally 
suspected  of  being  their  author,  and  the  suspicion 
never  wholly  died  out  so  long  as  he  lived.     There 
was  no  real  ground  for  it  beyond  the  two  uncon- 
nected facts,  that  the  letters  were  powerful  letters, 
and   that    Burke    had    a    powerful    intellect.     Dr. 
Johnson  admitted  that  he  had  never  had  a  better 
reason  for  believing  that  Burke  was  Junius,  than 
that  he  knew  nobody  else  who  had  the  ability  of 
Junius.     But  Johnson  discharged  his  mind  of  the 
thought,   at  the   instant  when  Burke  voluntarily 
assured  him  that  he  neither  wrote  the  letters  of 
Junius,   nor   knew   who   had   written   them.     The 
subjects  and  aim  of  those  famous  pieces  were  not 
very   different   from   Burke's   tract,   but   any   one 
who  in  our  time  turns  from  the  letters  to  the  tract, 
will  wonder  how  the  author  of  the  one  could  ever 


46  BURKE  CHAP. 

have  been  suspected  of  writing  the  other.  Junius 
is  never  more  than  a  railer,  and  very  often  he  is 
third-rate  even  as  a  railer.  The  author  of  the 
Present  Discontents  speaks  without  bitterness  even 
of  Lord  Bute  and  the  Duke  of  Grafton ;  he  only 
refers  to  persons  when  their  conduct  or  their  situa- 
tion illustrates  a  principle.  Instead  of  reviling, 
he  probes,  reflects,  warns ;  and  as  the  result  of 
this  serious  method,  pursued  by  a  man  in  whom 
close  mastery  of  detail  kept  exact  pace  with  wide 
grasp  of  generalities,  we  have  not  the  ephemeral 
diatribe  of  a  faction,  but  one  of  the  monumental 
pieces  of  political  literature. 

The  last  great  pamphlet  in  the  history  of 
English  public  affairs  had  been  Swift's  tract  On  the 
Conduct  of  the  Allies  (1711),  in  which  the  writer 
did  a  more  substantial  service  for  the  Tory  party 
of  his  day  than  Burke  did  for  the  Whig  party  of 
a  later  date.  Swift's  pamphlet  is  close,  strenuous, 
persuasive,  and  full  of  telling  strokes  ;  but  nobody 
need  read  it  to-day  except  the  historical  student, 
or  a  member  of  the  Peace  Society,  in  search  of  the 
most  convincing  exposure  of  the  most  insane  of 
English  wars.1  There  is  not  a  sentence  in  it  that 
does  not  belong  exclusively  to  the  matter  in  hand  : 
not  a  line  of  the  general  wisdom  that  is  for  all  time. 
In  the  Present  Discontents  the  method  is  just  the 
opposite  of  this.  The  details  are  slurred,  and  they 
are  not  literal.  Burke  describes  with  excess  of 
elaboration  how  the  new  system  is  a  system  of  double 
Cabinets ;  one  put  forward  with  nominal  powers  in 
Parliament,  the  other  concealed  behind  the  throne, 
and  secretly  dictating  the  policy.  The  reader  feels 
that  this  is  worked  out  far  too  closely  to  be  real.  It  is 
a  structure  of  artificial  rhetoric.  But  we  pass  over 
this  lightly,  on  our  way  to  more  solid  matter ;  to 
the  exposition  of  the  principles  of  a  constitution,  the 

1  This  was  not  Burke's  judgment  on  the  long  war  against  Louis  XIV. 
(See  Regicide  Peace,  i.) 


THE  PRESENT  DISCONTENTS         47 

right  methods  of  statesmanship,  and  the  defence  of 
party. 

It  was  Bolingbroke,  and  not  Swift,  of  whom 
Burl£e  was  thinking,  when  he  sat  down  to  the 
composition  of  his  tract.  The  Patriot  King  was 
the  fountain  of  the  new  doctrines  which  Burke 
trained  his  party  to  understand  and  to  resist.  If 
his  foe  was  domestic,  it  was  from  a  foreign  armoury 
that  Burke  derived  the  instruments  of  resistance. 
The  great  fault  of  political  writers  is  their  too  close 
adherence  to  the  forms  of  the  system  of  state  they 
happen  to  be  expounding  or  examining.  They  stop 
short  at  the  anatomy  of  institutions,  and  do  not 
penetrate  to  the  secret  of  their  functions.  An 
illustrious  author  in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth 
century  introduced  his  contemporaries  to  a  better 
way.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  at  that  epoch 
the  strength  of  political  speculation  in  this  country, 
from  Adam  Smith  downwards,  was  drawn  from 
France  ;  and  Burke  had  been  led  to  some  of  what 
was  most  characteristic  in  his  philosophy  of  society 
by  Montesquieu's  Spirit  of  Laws  (1748),  the  first 
high  manual  of  the  historic  school.  We  have 
no  space  here  to  work  out  the  relations  between 
Montesquieu's  principles  and  Burke's,  but  the 
student  of  the  Esprit  des  Lois  will  recognise  its 
influence  in  every  one  of  Burke's  .masterpieces. 

So  far  as  immediate  events  were  concerned, 
Burke  was  quick  to  discern  their  true  interpreta- 
tion. As  has  been  already  said,  he  attributed  to 
the  king  and  his  party  a  deliberateness  of  system 
that  probably  had  no  real  existence  in  their  minds. 
The  king  intended  to  reassert  the  old  right  of 
choosing  his  own  ministers.  George  II.  had  made 
strenuous  but  futile  endeavours  to  the  same  end. 
His  son,  the  father  of  George  III.,  Frederick,  Prince 
of  Wales,  as  every  reader  of  Dodington's  Diary  will 
remember,  was  equally  bent  on  throwing  off  the 
yoke  of  the  large  Whig  combinations,  and  making 


48  BURKE 


CHAP. 


his  own  Cabinets.  George  III.  was  only  continuing 
the  purpose  of  his  father  and  his  grandfather  ;  and 
there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  he  went  more 
elaborately  to  work  to  obtain  his  ends. 

It  is  when  he  leaves  the  artifices  of  a  cabal, 
and  strikes  down  below  the  surface  to  the  working 
of  deep  social  forces,  that  we  feel  the  breadth  and 
power  of  Burke's  method.  "  I  am  not  one  of 
those,"  he  began,  "  who  think  that  the  people  are 
never  wrong.  They  have  been  so,  frequently  and 
outrageously,  both  in  other  countries  and  in  this. 
But  I  do  say  that  in  all  disputes  between  them  and 
their  rulers,  the  presumption  is  at  least  upon  a  par 
in  favour  of  the  people."  Nay,  experience  perhaps 
justifies  him  in  going  further.  When  popular 
discontents  are  prevalent,  something  has  generally 
been  found  amiss  in  the  constitution  or  the  ad- 
ministration. "  The  people  have  no  interest  in 
disorder.  When  they  go  wrong,  it  is  their  error, 
and  not  their  crime."  And  then  he  quotes  the 
famous  passage  from  the  Memoirs  of  Sully,  which 
both  practical  politicians  and  political  students 
should  bind  about  their  necks,  and  write  upon  the 
tables  of  their  hearts :  "  The  revolutions  that 
come  to  pass  in  great  states  are  not  the  result  of 
chance,  nor  of  popular  caprice.  ...  As  for  the 
populace,  it  is  never  from  a  passion  for  attack 
that  it  rebels,  but  from  impatience  of  suffering." 

What  really  gives  its  distinction  to  the  Present 
Discontents  is  not  its  plea  for  indulgence  to  popular 
impatience,  nor  its  plea  for  the  superiority  of 
government  by  aristocracy,  but  rather  the  presence 
in  it  of  the  thought  of  Montesquieu  and  his  school, 
of  the  necessity  of  studying  political  phenomena  in 
relation,  not  merely  to  forms  of  government  and 
law,  but  in  relation  to  whole  groups  of  social  facts 
which  give  to  law  and  government  the  spirit  that 
makes  them  workable.  Connected  with  this,  is  a 
particularly  wide  interpretation  and  a  particularly 


THE  PRESENT  DISCONTENTS          49 

impressive  application  of  the  maxims  of  expediency, 
because  a  wide  conception  of  the  various  interacting 
elements  of  a  society  naturally  extends  the  con- 
siderations which  a  balance  of  expediencies  will 
include.  Hence,  in  time  there  came  a  strong  and 
lofty  ideal  of  the  true  statesman,  his  breadth  of 
vision,  his  flexibility  of  temper,  his  hardly  measur- 
able influence.  These  are  the  principal  thoughts 
in  the  Discontents  to  which  that  writing  owes  its 
permanent  interest.  "  Whatever  original  energy," 
says  Burke,  in  one  place,  "  may  be  supposed  either 
in  force  or  regulation,  the  operation  of  both  is  in 
truth  merely  instrumental.  Nations  are  governed 
by  the  same  methods,  and  on  the  same  principles, 
by  which  an  individual  without  authority  is  often 
able  to  govern  those  who  are  his  equals  or  superiors  ; 
by  a  knowledge  of  their  temper,  and  by  a  judicious 
management  of  it.  ...  The  laws  reach  but  a  very 
little  way.  Constitute  Government  how  you  please, 
infinitely  the  greater  part  of  it  must  depend  upon 
the  exercise  of  powers,  which  are  left  at  large  to 
the  prudence  and  uprightness  of  ministers  of  state. 
Even  all  the  use  and  potency  of  the  laws  depends 
upon  them.  Without  them,  your  Commonwealth  is 
no  better  than  a  scheme  upon  paper  ;  and  not  a 
living,  active,  effective  constitution."  Thus  early  in 
his  public  career  had  Burke  seized  that  great  anti- 
thesis he  so  eloquently  laboured  in  the  long  and 
ever  memorable  episode  of  his  war  against  the 
French  Revolution  :  the  opposition  between  arti- 
ficial arrangements  in  politics,  and  a  living,  active, 
effective  organisation,  formed  by  what  he  calls 
elsewhere  in  the  present  tract  the  natural  strength 
of  the  kingdom,  and  suitable  to  the  temper  and 
mental  habits  of  the  people.  When  he  spoke  of 
the  natural  strength  of  the  kingdom,  he  gave  no 
narrow  or  conventional  account  of  it.  He  included 
in  the  elements  of  that  strength,  besides  the  great 
peers  and  the  leading  landed  gentlemen,  the  opulent 

E 


50  BURKK 


CUAP. 


merchants  and  manufacturers,  and  the  substantial 
yeomanry.  Contrasted  with  the  trite  versions  of 
government  as  fixed  in  King,  Lords,  and  Commons, 
this  search  for  the  real  organs  of  power  was  going 
to  the  root  of  the  matter  in  a  spirit  at  once  thor- 
oughly scientific  and  thoroughly  practical.  Burke 
had,  by  the  speculative  training  to  which  he  had 
submitted  himself  in  dealing  with  Bolingbroke, 
prepared  his  mind  for  a  complete  grasp  of  the  idea 
of  the  body  politic  as  a  complex  growth,  a  manifold 
whole,  with  closely  interdependent  relations  among 
its  several  parts  and  divisions.  It  was  this  concep- 
tion from  which  his  conservatism  sprang.  Revolu- 
tionary politics,  on  the  other  hand,  have  one  of 
their  sources  in  the  idea  that  societies  are  capable  of 
infinite  and  immediate  modifications,  without  refer- 
ence to  the  deep-rooted  conditions  that  have  worked 
themselves  into  every  part  of  the  social  structure,,^/ 
The  same  opposition  of  the  positive  to/ 'the 
doctrinaire  spirit  is  to  be  observed  in  the  r£mark- 
able  vindication  of  Party,  that  fills  the  .last  dozen 
pages  of  the  pamphlet,  and  is  one  of  the  most 
courageous  of  all  Burke's  deliverances.  Party 
combination  is  exactly  one  of  those  contrivances 
which,  as  it  might  seem,  a  wise  man  would  accept 
for  working  purposes,  but  about  which  he  would 
take  care  to  say  as  little  as  possible.  There  appears 
to  be  something  revolting  to  the  intellectual  integrity 
and  self-respect  of  the  individual  in  the  systematic 
surrender  of  his  personal  action,  interest,  and 
power,  to  a  political  connection  in  which  his  own 
judgment  may  never  once  be  allowed  to  count  for 
anything.  It  is  like  the  surrender  of  the  right  of 
private  judgment  to  the  authority  of  the  Church, 
but  with  its  nakedness  not  concealed  by  a  mystic 
doctrine.  Nothing  is  more  easy  to  demolish  by 
the  bare  logical  reason.  But  Burke  was  the  sworn 
enemy  of  the  rationalism  of  politics.  He  cared 
nothing  about  the  bare  logical  reason,  until  it  had 


DEFENCE  OF  PARTY  51 

been  clothed  in  convenience  and  custom,  in  the 
affections  on  one  side,  and  experience  on  the  other. 
Not  content  with  insisting  that  for  some  special 
purpose  of  the  hour,  "  when  bad  men  combine,  the 
good  must  associate,"  he  contended  boldly  for  the 
merits  of  fidelity  to  party  combination  in  itself. 
Although  Burke  wrote  these  strong  pages  as  a  reply 
to  Bolingbroke,  who  had  denounced  party  as  an 
evil,  they  remain  as  the  best  general  apology 
ever  offered  for  that  principle  of  public  action, 
against  more  philosophic  attacks  than  Bolingbroke's. 
Burke  admitted  that  when  he  saw  a  man  acting  a 
desultory  and  disconnected  part  in  public  life  with 
detriment  to  his  fortune,  he  was  ready  to  believe 
such  a  man  to  be  in  earnest,  though  not  ready  to 
believe  him  to  be  right.  In  any  case  he  lamented 
to  see  rare  and  valuable  qualities  squandered  away 
without  any  public  utility.  He  admitted,  more- 
over, on  the  other  hand,  that  people  frequently 
acquired  in  party  confederacies  a  narrow,  bigoted, 
and  prescriptive  spirit.  "  But  where  duty  renders 
a  critical  situation  a  necessary  one,  it  is  our  business 
to  keep  free  from  the  evils  attendant  upon  it,  and 
not  to  fly  from  the  situation  itself.  It  is  surely  no 
very  rational  account  of  a  man  that  he  has  always 
acted  right,  but  has  taken  special  care  to  act  in 
such  a  manner  that  his  endeavours  could  not 
possibly  be  productive  of  any  consequence.  .  .  . 
When  men  are  not  acquainted  with  each  other's 
principles,  nor  experienced  in  each  other's  talents, 
nor  at  all  practised  in  their  mutual  habitudes  and 
dispositions  by  joint  efforts  of  business  ;  no  personal 
confidence,  no  friendship,  no  common  interest  sub- 
sisting among  them,  it  is  evidently  impossible  that 
they  can  act  a  public  part  with  uniformity,  perse- 
verance, or  efficacy." 

In  terms  of  eloquent  eulogy  he  praised  the 
sacred  reverence  with  which  the  Romans  used  to 
regard  the  necessiludo  sortis,  or  the  relations  that 


52  BURKE  CHAP. 

grew  up  between  men  who  had  only  held  office 
together  by  the  casual  fortune  of  the  lot.  He 
pointed  out  to  emulation  the  Whig  junto  who  held 
so  close  together  in  the  reign  of  Anne — Sunderland, 
Godolphin,  Somers,  and  Marlborough — who  believed 
14  that  no  men  could  act  with  effect  who  did  not 
act  in  concert ;  that  no  men  could  act  in  concert 
who  did  not  act  with  confidence  ;  and  that  no  men 
could  act  with  confidence  who  were  not  bound  to- 
gether by  common  opinions,  common  affections, 
and  common  interests."  In  reading  these  energetic 
passages,  we  have  to  remember  two  things  :  first, 
that  the  writer  assumes  the  direct  object  of  party 
combination  to  be  generous,  great,  and  liberal 
causes  ;  and  second,  that  when  the  time  came, 
and  when  he  believed  that  his  friends  were  espousing 
a  wrong  and  pernicious  cause,  Burke,  like  Samson 
bursting  asunder  the  seven  green  withes,  sundered 
the  friendships  of  a  life,  and  deliberately  broke  his 
party  in  pieces.1 

When  Burke  came  to  discuss  the  cure  for  the 
disorders  of  1770,  he  insisted  on  contenting  him- 
self with  what  he  ought  to  have  known  to  be  ob- 
viously inadequate  prescriptions.  And  we  cannot 
help  feeling  that  he  never  speaks  of  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  government  of  this  country,  without 
gliding  into  a  fallacy  identical  with  that  which  he 
himself  described  and  denounced,  as  thinking  better 
of  the  wisdom  and  power  of  human  legislation  than 
in  truth  it  deserved.  He  was  uniformly  consistent 
in  his  view  of  the  remedies  which  the  various 
sections  of  Opposition  proposed  against  the  exist- 
ing debasement  and  servility  of  the  Lower  House. 
The  Duke  of  Richmond  wanted  universal  suffrage, 
equal  electoral  districts,  and  annual  parliaments. 
Wilkes  proposed  to  disfranchise  the  rotten  boroughs, 
to  increase  the  county  constituencies,  and  to  give 
members  to  rich,  populous,  trading  towns — a  general 

1  See  on  the  same  subject,  Correspondence,  ii.  276,  277. 


BURKE'S  REMEDIES  53 

policy  that  was  accepted  fifty-six  years  afterwards. 
The  Constitutional  Society  desired  frequent  parlia- 
ments, the  exclusion  of  placemen  from  the  House, 
and  the  increase  of  the  county  representation. 
Burke  uniformly  refused  to  give  his  countenance 
to  any  proposals  such  as  these,  which  involved  a 
clearly  organic  change  in  the  constitution.  He 
confessed  that  he  had  no  sort  of  reliance  upon  either 
a  triennial  parliament  or  a  place-bill,  and  with  the 
reasonableness  which  as  a  rule  was  fully  as  remark- 
able in  him  as  his  eloquence,  he  showed  very  good 
grounds  for  his  want  of  faith  in  the  popular  specifics. 
In  truth,  triennial  or  annual  parliaments  could  have 
done  no  good,  unless  the  change  had  been  accom- 
panied by  the  more  important  process  of  amputat- 
ing, as  Chatham  called  it,  the  rotten  boroughs. 
Of  these  the  Crown  could  at  that  time  reckon  some 
seventy  as  its  own  property.  Besides  those  belong- 
ing to  the  Crown,  there  was  also  the  immense 
number  belonging  to  the  Peerage.  If  the  king 
sought  to  strengthen  an  administration,  the  thing 
needful  was  not  to  enlist  the  services  of  able  and 
distinguished  men,  but  to  conciliate  a  duke,  who 
brought  with  him  the  control  of  a  given  quantity 
of  voting  power  in  the  Lower  House.  All  this 
patrician  influence,  which  may  be  found  at  the 
bottom  of  most  of  the  intrigues  of  the  period, 
would  not  have  been  touched  by  curtailing  the 
duration  of  parliaments. 

What  then  was  the  remedy,  or  had  Burke  no 
remedy  to  offer  for  these  grave  distempers  of 
Parliament  ?  Only  the  remedy  of  the  interposition 
of  the  body  of  the  people  itself.  We  must  beware 
of  interpreting  this  phrase  in  the  modern  demo- 
cratic sense.  In  1766  he  had  deliberately  declared 
that  he  thought  it  would  be  more  conformable  to 
the  spirit  of  the  constitution,  "  by  lessening  the 
number,  to  add  to  the  weight  and  independency 
of  our  voters."  "  Considering  the  immense  and 


54  BURKE  CHAP. 

dangerous  charge  of  elections,  the  prostitute  and 
daring  venality,  the  corruption  of  manners,  the 
idleness  and  profligacy  of  the  lower  sort  of  voters, 
no  prudent  man  would  propose  to  increase  such  an 
evil." l  In  another  place  he  denies  that  the  people 
have  either  enough  of  speculation  in  the  closet,  or 
of  experience  in  business,  to  be  competent  judges, 
not  of  the  detail  of  particular  measures  only,  but 
of  general  schemes  of  policy.2  On  Burke's  theory, 
the  people,  as  a  rule,  were  no  more  concerned  to 
interfere  with  Parliament  than  a  man  is  concerned 
to  interfere  with  somebody  whom  he  has  voluntarily 
and  deliberately  made  his  trustee.  But  here,  he 
confessed,  was  a  shameful  and  ruinous  breach  of 
trust.  The  ordinary  rule  of  government  was  being 
every  day  mischievously  contemned  and  daringly 
set  aside.  Until  the  confidence  thus  outraged 
should  be  once  more  restored,  then  the  people 
ought  to  be  excited  to  a  more  strict  and  detailed 
attention  to  the  conduct  of  their  representatives. 
The  meetings  of  counties  and  corporations  ought  to 
settle  standards  for  judging  more  systematically  of 
the  behaviour  of  those  whom  they  had  sent  to  Par- 
liament. Frequent  and  correct  lists  of  the  voters 
in  all  important  questions  ought  to  be  procured. 
The  severest  discouragement  ought  to  be  given  to 
the  pernicious  practice  of  affording  a  blind  and 
undistinguishing  support  to  every  administration. 
"  Parliamentary  support  comes  and  goes  with  office, 
totally  regardless  of  the  man  or  the  merit."  For 
instance,  Wilkes's  annual  motion  to  expunge  the 
votes  upon  the  Middlesex  election  had  been  uni- 
formly rejected,  as  often  as  it  was  made  while 
Lord  North  was  in  power.  Lord  North  had  no 
sooner  given  way  to  the  Rockingham  Cabinet  than 
the  House  of  Commons  changed  its  mind,  and  the 
resolutions  were  expunged  by  a  handsome  majority 

1  Observations  on  the  State  of  the  Nation.    Works,  i.  105,  b. 
f  Speech  on  Duration  of  Parliaments. 


in       HIS  LOVE  OF  THE  CONSTITUTION      55 

of  115  to  47.     Administration  was  omnipotent  in 
the  House,  because  it  could  be  a  man's  most  efficient 
friend  at  an  election,  and  could  most  amply  reward 
his  fidelity  afterwards.     Against  this  system  Burke 
called  on  the  nation  to  set  a  stern  face.     Root  it  up, 
he  kept  crying ;    settle  the  general  course  in  which  / 
you  desire  members  to  go ;    insist  that  they  shall  / 
not  suffer  themselves  to  be  diverted  from  this  by^ 
the  authority  of  the  government  of  the  day ;    let 
lists  of  votes  be  published,  so  that  you  may  ascer- 
tain for  yourselves  whether  your  trustees  have  been 
faithful  or  fraudulent ;    do  all  this,  and  there  will 
be  no  need  to  resort  to  those  organic  changes,  those 
empirical  innovations  that  may  possibly  cure,  but 
are  much  more  likely  to  destroy. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  so  halting  a  policy 
should  have  given  deep  displeasure  to  many,  perhaps 
to  most,  of  those  whose  only  common  bond  was  the 
loose  and  negative  sentiment  of  antipathy  to  the 
court,  the  ministry,  and  the  too  servile  majority  of 
the  House  of  Commons.  The  Constitutional  Society 
was  furious.  Lord  Chatham  wrote  to  Lord  Rocking- 
ham  that  the  work  in  which  these  doctrines  first 
appeared  must  do  much  mischief  to  the  common 
cause.  But  Burke's  view  of  the  constitution  was  a 
part  of  his  belief  with  which  he  never  paltered,  and 
on  which  he  surrendered  his  judgment  to  no  man. 
"  Our  constitution,"  in  his  opinion,  "  stands  on  a 
nice  equipoise,  with  steep  precipices  and  deep  waters 
upon  all  sides  of  it.  In  removing  it  from  a  dangerous 
leaning  towards  one  side,  there  may  be  a  risk  of 
oversetting  it  on  the  other." *  This  image  was 
ever  before  his  mind.  It  occurs  again  in  the  last  , 
sentence  of  the  great  protest  against  all  change 
and  movement,  when  he  describes  himself  as  one 
who,  when  the  equipoise  of  the  vessel  in  which 
he  sails  may  be  endangered  by  overloading  it  upon 
one  side,  is  desirous  of  carrying  the  small  weight 

1  Present  Discontents. 


56  BURKE  CHAP. 

of  his  reasons  to  that  which  may  preserve  its 
equipoise.1  When  we  think  of  the  odious  mis- 
government  in  England  which  the  constitution 
permitted,  between  the  time  when  Burke  wrote 
and  the  passing  of  Lord  Sidmouth's  Six  Acts 
fifty  years  later,  we  may  be  inclined  to  class  such 
a  constitution  among  the  most  inadequate  and 
mischievous  political  arrangements  that  any  free 
country  has  ever  had  to  endure.  Yet  it  was  this 
which  Burke  declared  that  he  looked  upon  with 
filial  reverence.  "  Never  will  I  cut  it  in  pieces,  and 
put  it  into  the  kettle  of  any  magician,  in  order  to 
boil  it  with  the  puddle  of  their  compounds  into 
youth  and  vigour ;  on  the  contrary,  I  will  drive 
away  such  pretenders ;  I  will  nurse  its  venerable 
age,  and  with  lenient  arts  extend  a  parent's  breath." 
He  was  filled  with  the  spirit,  and  he  borrowed 
the  arguments,  which  have  always  marked  the 
champion  of  faith  and  authority  against  the  impious 
assault  of  reason  or  innovation.  The  constitution 
was  sacred  to  him  as  the  voice  of  the  Church  and 
the  oracles  of  her  saints  are  sacred  to  the  faithful. 
Study  it,  he  cried,  until  you  know  how  to  admire  it, 
and  if  you  cannot  know  and  admire,  rather  believe 
that  you  are  dull,  than  that  the  rest  of  the  world 
has  been  imposed  upon.  We  ought  to  understand 
it  according  to  our  measure  and  to  venerate  where 
we  are  not  able  presently  to  comprehend.  Well  has 
Burke  been  called  the  Bossuet  of  politics. 

Although,  however,  Burke's  unflinching  reverence 

for  the  constitution,  and  his  reluctance  to  lay  a 

finger  upon  it,  may  now  seem  clearly  excessive,  as 

it  did  to  Chatham  and  his  son,  who  were  great  men 

in  the  right,  or  to  Beckford  and  Sawbridge,  who 

were  very  little  men  in  the  right,  we  can  only  be 

just  to  him  by  comparing  his  ideas  with  those  that 

§     were  dominant  throughout  an  eviLreign.     While 

*    he   opposed   more   frequent   parliaments,    he    still 

1  Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution. 


m       STRUGGLE  DECIDED  IN  AMERICA      57 

upheld  the  doctrine  that  "  to  govern  according  to 
the  sense,  and  agreeably  to  the  interests,  of  the 
people  is  a  great  and  glorious  object  of  government." 
While  he  declared  himself  against  the  addition  of  a 
hundred  knights  of  the  shire,  he  in  the  very  same 
breath  protested  that,  though  the  people  might  be 
deceived  in  their  choice  of  an  object,  he  "  could 
scarcely  conceive  any  choice  they  could  make,  to 
be  so  very  mischievous  as  the  existence  of  any 
human  force  capable  of  resisting  it."  l  To  us  this 
may  seem  very  mild  and  commonplace  doctrine,  but 
it  was  not  commonplace  in  an  age  when  Anglican 
divines — men  like  Archbishop  Markham,  Dr.  Nowell 
or  Dr.  Porteus — had  revived  the  precepts  of  passive 
obedience  and  non-resistance,  and  when  such  a  man 
as  Lord  Mansfield  encouraged  them.  And  these 
were  the  kind  of  foundations  that  Burke  had  been 
laying,  while  Fox  was  yet  a  Tory,  while  Sheridan 
was  writing  farces,  and  Grey  was  a  schoolboy. 

It  is,  however,  almost  demonstrably  certain  that 
the  vindication  of  the  supremacy  of  popular  interests 
over  all  other  considerations  would  have  been  boot- 
less toil,  and  that  the  constitutional  struggle  from 
1760  to  1783  would  have  ended  otherwise  than  it 
did,  but  for  the  failure  of  the  war  against  the 
insurgent  colonies,  and  the  final  establishment  of 
American  Independence.  It  was  this  portentous 
transaction  that  finally  routed  the  arbitrary  pre- 
tensions of  the  House  of  Commons  over  the  people, 
and  put  an  end  to  the  hopes  entertained  by  the 
sovereign  of  making  his  personal  will  supreme  in 
the  Chambers.  Fox  might  well  talk  of  an  early 
Loyalist  victory  in  the  war,  as  the  terrible  news 
from  Long  Island.  The  struggle  which  began 
unsuccessfully  at  Brentford  in  Middlesex,  was  con- 
tinued at  Boston  in  Massachusetts.  The  scene  had 
changed,  but  the  conflicting  principles  were  the 
same.  The  War  of  Independence  was  virtually  a 

1  To  the  Chairman  of  the  Buckinghamshire  Meeting,  1780. 


58  BURKE  CHAP,  m 

second  English  civil  war.  The  ruin  of  the  American 
cause  would  have  been  the  ruin  also  of  the  con- 
stitutional cause  in  England ;  and  a  patriotic 
Englishman  may  revere  the  memory  of  Patrick 
Henry  and  George  Washington  not  less  justly  than 
the  patriotic  American.  Burke's  attitude  in  this 
great  contest  is  that  part  of  his  history  about  the 
majestic  and  noble  wisdom  of  which  there  can  be 
least  dispute. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   ROCKINGHAM   PARTY — PARIS ELECTION    AT 

BRISTOL — THE   AMERICAN   WAR 

THE  war  with  the  American  colonies  was  preceded 
by  an  interval  of  stupor.  The  violent  ferment  that 
had  been  stirred  in  the  nation  by  the  affairs  of 
Wilkes  and  the  Middlesex  election,  was  followed, 
as  Burke  said,  by  as  remarkable  a  deadness  and 
vapidity.  In  1770  the  distracted  ministry  of  the 
Duke  of  Grafton  came  to  an  end,  and  was  succeeded 
by  that  of  Lord  North.  The  king  had  at  last 
triumphed.  He  had  secured  an  administration  of 
which  the  fundamental  principle  was  that  the 
sovereign  was  to  be  the  virtual  head  of  it,  and  the 
real  director  of  its  counsels.  Lord  North's  govern- 
ment lasted  for  twelve  years,  and  its  career  is  for 
ever  associated  with  one  of  the  most  momentous 
chapters  in  the  history  of  the  English  nation  and  of 
free  institutions. 

Through  this  long,  eventful  period,  Burke's  was 
as  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness.  He 
had  become  important  enough  for  the  ministry  to 
think  it  worth  while  to  take  pains  to  discredit  him. 
They  busily  encouraged  the  report  that  he  was 
Junius,  or  a  close  ally  of  Junius.  This  was  one  of 
the  minor  vexations  of  Burke's  middle  life.  Even 
his  friends  continued  to  torment  him  for  incessant 
disclaimers.  Burke's  lofty  pride  made  him  slow  to 
deal  positively  with  what  he  scorned  as  a  malicious 
and  unworthy  imputation.  To  such  a  friend  as 

59 


60  BURKE 


CHAP. 


Johnson  he  did  not,  as  we  have  seen,  disdain  to 
volunteer  a  denial,  but  Charles  Townshend  was 
forced  to  write  more  than  one  importunate  letter 
before  he  could  extract  from  Burke  the  definite 
sentence  (November  24,  1771)  : — "  I  now  give  you 
my  word  and  honour  that  I  am  not  the  author  of 
Junius,  and  that  I  know  not  the  author  of  that 
paper,  and  I  do  authorise  you  to  say  so."  Nor  was 
this  the  only  kind  of  annoyance  to  which  he  was 
subjected.  His  rising  fame  kindled  the  candour  of 
the  friends  of  his  youth.  They  admonished  him 
that  he  did  not  bear  instruction ;  that  he  showed 
such  arrogance  as  in  a  man  of  his  condition  was 
intolerable ;  that  he  snapped  furiously  at  his 
parliamentary  foes,  like  a  wolf  who  had  broken 
into  the  fold ;  that  his  speeches  were  useless  de- 
clamations ;  and  that  he  disgraced  the  House  by 
the  scurrilities  of  the  bear-garden.  These  sharp 
chastenings  of  friendship  Burke  endured  with  the 
perfect  self-command,  not  of  the  cold  and  indifferent 
egotist,  but  of  one  who  had  trained  himself  not  to 
expect  too  much  from  men.  He  possessed  the  true 
solace  for  all  private  chagrins  in  the  activity  and 
the  fervour  of  his  public  interests. 

In  1772  the  affairs  of  the  East  India  Company 
and  its  relations  with  the  government  had  fallen 
into  disorder.  The  Opposition,  though  powerless 
in  the  Houses  of  Parliament,  were  often  able  to 
thwart  the  views  of  the  ministry  in  the  imperial 
board-room  in  Leadenhall  Street.  The  Duke  of 
Richmond  was  as  zealous  and  as  active  in  his 
opposition  to  Lord  North  in  the  business  of  the 
East  Indies,  as  he  was  in  the  business  of  the  country 
at  Westminster.  A  proposal  was  made  to  Burke 
to  go  out  to  India  at  the  head  of  a  commission  of 
three  supervisors,  with  authority  to  examine  the 
concerns  of  every  department,  and  full  powers  of 
control  over  the  company's  servants.  Though  this 
offer  was  pressed  by  the  directors,  Burke,  after 


THE  ROCKINGHAM  PARTY  61 

anxious  consideration,  declined  it.  What  his 
reasons  were,  there  is  no  evidence  ;  we  can  only 
guess  that  he  thought  less  of  his  personal  interests 
than  of  those  of  the  country  and  of  his  party. 
Without  him  the  Rockingham  connection  would 
undoubtedly  have  fallen  to  ruin,  and  with  it  the 
most  upright,  consistent,  and  disinterested  body 
of  men  then  in  public  life.  "  You  say,"  the  Duke 
of  Richmond  wrote  to  him  (November  15,  1772), 
"  the  party  is  an  object  of  too  much  importance  to 
go  to  pieces.  Indeed,  Burke,  you  have  more  merit 
than  any  man  in  keeping  us  together."  It  was  the 
character  of  the  party,  almost  as  much  as  their 
principles,  that  secured  Burke's  zeal  and  attach- 
ment ;  their  decorum,  their  constancy,  their  aver- 
sion to  all  cabals  for  private  objects,  their  indiffer- 
ence to  office,  except  as  an  instrument  of  power  and 
a  means  of  carrying  out  the  policy  of  their  convic- 
tions. They  might  easily  have  had  office  if  they 
would  have  come  in  upon  the  king's  terms.  A 
year  after  his  fall  from  power  Lord  Rockingham 
was  summoned  to  the  royal  closet,  and  pressed  to 
resume  his  post.  But  office  at  any  price  was  not 
in  their  thoughts.  They  knew  the  penalties  of 
their  system,  and  they  clung  to  it  undeterred. 
Their  patriotism  was  deliberate  and  considered. 
Chalcedon  was  called  the  city  of  the  blind,  because 
its  founders  wilfully  neglected  the  more  glorious  site 
of  Byzantium  which  lay  under  their  eyes.  "  We 
have  built  our  Chalcedon,"  said  Burke,  "  with  the 
chosen  part  of  the  universe  full  in  our  prospect." 
They  had  the  faults  to  which  an  aristocratic  party 
in  opposition  is  naturally  liable.  Burke  used  to 
reproach  them  with  being  somewhat  languid, 
scrupulous,  and  unsystematic.  He  could  not  make 
the  Duke  of  Richmond  put  off  a  large  party  at 
Goodwood  for  the  sake  of  an  important  division  in 
the  House  of  Lords  ;  and  he  did  not  always  agree 
with  Lord  John  Cavendish  as  to  what  constitutes 


62  BURKE  CHAP. 

a  decent  and  reasonable  quantity  of  fox-hunting 
for  a  political  leader  in  a  crisis.  But  it  was  part  of 
the  steadfastness  of  his  whole  life  to  do  his  best  with 
such  materials  as  he  could  find.  He  did  not  lose 
patience  nor  abate  his  effort,  because  his  friends 
would  miss  the  opportunity  of  a  great  political 
stroke  rather  than  they  would  miss  Newmarket 
Races.  He  wrote  their  protests  for  the  House  of 
Lords,  composed  petitions  for  county  meetings, 
drafted  resolutions,  and  plied  them  with  informa- 
tion, ideas,  admonitions,  and  exhortations.  Never 
before  nor  since  has  our  country  seen  so  extra- 
ordinary a  union  of  the  clever  and  indefatigable 
party-manager,  with  the  reflective  and  philosophic 
habits  of  the  speculative  publicist.  It  is  much 
easier  to  make  either  absolutism  or  democracy 
attractive  than  aristocracy ;  yet  we  see  how  con- 
sistent with  his  deep  moral  conservatism  was 
Burke 's  attachment  to  an  aristocratic  party,  when 
we  read  his  exhortation  to  the  Duke  of  Richmond 
to  remember  that  persons  in  his  high  station  in  life 
ought  to  have  long  views.  "  You  people,"  he  writes 
to  the  duke  (November  17,  1772),  "  of  great  families 
and  hereditary  trusts  and  fortunes  are  not  like  such 
as  I  am,  who,  whatever  we  may  be  by  the  rapidity 
of  our  growth,  and  even  by  the  fruit  we  bear,  and 
flatter  ourselves  that,  while  we  creep  on  the  ground, 
we  belly  into  melons  that  are  exquisite  for  size  and 
flavour,  yet  still  we  are  but  annual  plants  that  perish 
with  our  season,  and  leave  no  sort  of  traces  behind 
us.  You,  if  you  are  what  you  ought  to  be,  are  in 
my  eye  the  great  oaks  that  shade  a  country,  and 
perpetuate  your  benefits  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion. The  immediate  power  of  a  Duke  of  Rich- 
mond, or  a  Marquis  of  Rockingham,  is  not  so  much 
of  moment ;  but  if  their  conduct  and  example 
hand  down  their  principles  to  their  successors, 
then  their  houses  become  the  public  repositories 
and  office  of  record  for  the  constitution.  ,  I  do 


JOURNEY  TO  FRANCE  63 

not  look  upon  your  time  or  lives  as  lost,  if  in  this 
sliding  away  from  the  genuine  spirit  of  the  country, 
certain  parties,  if  possible — if  not,  the  heads  of 
certain  families — should  make  it  their  business  by 
the  whole  course  of  their  lives,  principally  by  their 
example,  to  mould  into  the  very  vital  stamina  of 
their  descendants  those  principles  which  ought  to 
be  transmitted  pure  and  unmixed  to  posterity." 

Perhaps  such  a  passage  as  this  ought  to  be 
described  less  as  reflection  than  as  imagination — 
moral,  historic,  conservative  imagination — in  which 
order,  social  continuity,  and  the  endless  projection 
of  past  into  present,  and  of  present  into  future,  are 
clothed  with  the  sanctity  of  an  inner  shrine.  We 
may  think  that  a  fox-hunting  duke  and  a  racing 
marquis  were  very  poor  centres  round  which  to 
group  these  high  emotions.  But  Burke  had  no 
puny  sentimentalism,  and  none  of  the  mere  literary 
or  romantic  conservatism  of  men  like  Chateau- 
briand. He  lived  in  the  real  world,  and  not  in  a 
false  dream  of  some  past  world  that  had  never 
been.  He  saw  that  the  sporting  squires  of  his 
party  were  as  much  the  representatives  of  ancestral 
force  and  quality  as  in  older  days  were  long  lines 
of  Claudii  and  Valerii.  His  conservative  doctrine 
was  a  profound  instinct,  in  part  political,  but  in 
greater  part  moral.  The  accidental  roughness  of 
the  symbol  did  not  touch  him,  for  the  symbol 
was  glorified  by  the  sincerity  of  his  faith  and  the 
compass  of  his  imagination. 

With  these  ideas  strong  within  him,  in  1773 
Burke  made  a  journey  to  France.  It  was  almost 
as  though  the  solemn  hierophant  of  some  mystic 
Egyptian  temple  should  have  found  himself  amid 
the  brilliant  chatter  of  a  band  of  reckless,  keen- 
tongued  disputants  of  the  garden  or  the  porch  at 
Athens.  His  only  son  had  just  finished  a  success- 
ful school  -  course  at  Westminster,  and  was  now 
entered  a  student  at  Christ  Church.  He  was  still 


64  BURKE  CHAP. 

too  young  for  the  university,  and  Burke  thought 
that  a  year  could  not  be  more  profitably  spent 
than  in  forming  his  tongue  to  foreign  languages. 
The  boy  was  placed  at  Auxerre,  in  the  house  of  the 
business  agent  of  the  Bishop  of  Auxerre.  From  the 
Bishop  he  received  many  kindnesses,  to  be  amply 
repaid  in  after  years  when  the  Bishop  came  in  his 
old  age,  an  exile  and  a  beggar,  to  England. 

While  in  Paris,  Burke  did  all  that  he  could  to 
instruct  himself  as  to  what  was  going  on  in  French 
society.  If  he  had  not  the  dazzling  reception  that 
had  greeted  Hume  in  1764,  at  least  he  had  ample 
opportunities  of  acquainting  himself  with  the  pre- 
vailing ideas  of  the  time  in  more  than  one  of  the 
social  camps  into  which  Paris  was  then  divided. 
Madame  du  Deffand  tells  the  Duchess  of  Choiseul 
that  though  he  speaks  French  extremely  ill,  every- 
body felt  that  he  would  be  infinitely  agreeable  if 
he  could  more  easily  make  himself  understood. 
He  followed  French  well  enough  as  a  listener,  and 
went  every  day  to  the  courts  to  hear  the  barristers 
and  watch  the  procedure.  Madame  du  Deffand 
showed  him  all  possible  attention,  and  her  friends 
eagerly  seconded  her.  She  invited  him  to  supper 
parties,  where  he  met  the  Count  de  Broglie,  the  agent 
of  the  king's  secret  diplomacy ;  Caraccioli,  suc- 
cessor of  nimble-witted  Galiani,  the  secretary  from 
Naples  ;  and  other  notabilities  of  the  high  world. 
He  supped  with  the  Duchess  of  Luxembourg,  and 
heard  a  reading  of  La  Harpe's  Barmecides.  It  was 
high  treason  in  this  circle  to  frequent  the  rival  salon 
of  Mademoiselle  Lespinasse,  but  either  the  law  was 
relaxed  in  the  case  of  foreigners,  or  else  Burke  kept 
his  own  counsel.  Here  were  for  the  moment  the 
headquarters  of  the  party  of  innovation,  and  here 
he  saw  some  of  the  men  who  were  busily  forging 
the  thunderbolts.  His  eye  was  on  the  alert,  now 
as  always,  for  anything  that  might  light  up  the 
sovereign  problems  of  human  government.  A 


iv  JOURNEY  TO  FRANCE  65 

book  by  a  member  of  this  circle  had  appeared 
six  months  before,  which  was  still  the  talk  of 
the  town,  and  against  which  the  government  had 
taken  the  usual  impotent  measures  of  repression. 
This  was  the  Treatise  on  Tactics,  by  a  certain  M. 
de  Guibert,  a  colonel  of  the  Corsican  legion.  The 
important  part  of  the  work  was  the  introduction, 
in  which  the  writer  examined  with  what  was  then 
thought  extraordinary  hardihood,  the  social  and 
political  causes  of  the  decline  of  the  military  art 
in  France.  Burke  read  it  with  keen  interest  and 
energetic  approval.  He  was  present  at  the  reading 
of  a  tragedy  by  the  same  author,  and  gave  some 
offence  to  the  rival  coterie  by  preferring  Guibert's 
tragedy  to  La  Harpe's.  To  us,  however,  of  a  later 
day,  Guibert  is  known  neither  for  his  tragedy  nor 
his  essay  on  tactics,  nor  for  a  memory  so  rapid  that 
he  could  open  a  book,  throw  one  glance  like  a  flash 
of  lightning  on  to  a  page,  and  then  instantly  repeat 
from  it  half  a  dozen  lines  word  for  word.  He  lives 
in  literature  as  the  inspirer  of  that  ardent  passion 
of  Mademoiselle  Lespinasse's  letters,  so  unique  in 
their  consuming  intensity  that,  as  has  been  said, 
they  seem  to  burn  the  page  on  which  they  are 
written.  It  was  perhaps  at  Mademoiselle  Lespinasse's 
that  Burke  met  Diderot.  The  eleven  volumes  of 
the  illustrative  plates  of  the  Encyclopaedia  had 
been  given  to  the  public  twelve  months  before,  and 
its  editor  was  just  released  from  the  giant's  toil 
of  twenty  years.  Voltaire  was  in  imperial  exile  at 
Ferney.  Rousseau  was  copying  music  in  a  garret 
in  the  street  that  is  now  called  after  his  name,  but 
he  had  long  ago  cut  himself  off  from  society ;  and 
Burke  was  not  likely  to  take  much  trouble  to  find 
out  a  man  whom  he  had  known  in  England  seven 
years  before,  and  against  whom  he  had  conceived 
a  strong  and  lasting  antipathy,  as  entertaining  no 
principle  either  to  influence  his  heart  or  to  guide  his 
understanding,  save  a  deranged  and  eccentric  vanity. 

F 


66  BURKE  CHAP. 

It  was  the  fashion  for  English  visitors  to  go  to 
Versailles.  They  saw  the  dauphin  and  his  brothers 
dine  in  public,  before  a  crowd  of  princes  of  the 
blood,  nobles,  abb£s,  and  all  the  miscellaneous 
throng  of  a  court.  They  attended  mass  in  the 
chapel,  where  the  old  king,  surrounded  by  bishops, 
sat  in  a  pew  just  above  that  of  Madame  du  Barri. 
The  royal  mistress  astonished  foreigners  by  hair 
without  powder  and  cheeks  without  rouge,  the 
simplest  toilettes,  and  the  most  unassuming  manners. 
Vice  itself,  in  Burke's  famous  words,  seemed  to 
lose  half  its  evil  by  losing  all  its  grossness.  And 
there,  too,  Burke  had  that  vision  to  which  we 
owe  one  of  the  most  gorgeous  pages  in  our  litera- 
ture—  Marie  Antoinette,  the  young  dauphiness, 
"  decorating  and  cheering  the  elevated  sphere  she 
just  began  to  move  in,  glittering  like  the  morning 
star,  full  of  life  and  splendour  and  joy."  The 
shadow  was  rapidly  stealing  on.  The  year  after 
Burke's  visit,  the  scene  underwent  a  strange 
transformation.  The  king  died  ;  the  mistress  was 
banished  in  luxurious  exile  ;  and  the  dauphiness 
became  the  ill-starred  Queen  of  France.  Burke 
never  forgot  the  emotions  of  the  scene  ;  they  awoke 
in  his  imagination  sixteen  years  after,  when  all  was 
changed,  and  the  awful  contrast  shook  him  with 
a  passion  that  his  eloquence  has  made  immortal. 

Madame  du  Deffand  wrote  to  Horace  Walpole 
that  Burke  had  been  so  well  received,  that  he 
ought  to  leave  France  excellently  pleased  with  the 
country.  But  it  was  not  so.  His  spirit  was  per- 
turbed by  what  he  had  listened  to.  He  came 
away  with  small  esteem  for  that  busy  fermenta- 
tion of  intellect  in  which  his  French  friends  most 
exulted,  and  for  which  they  looked  forward  to 
the  gratitude  and  admiration  of  posterity.  From 
the  spot  on  which  he  stood  there  issued  two 
mighty  streams.  It  was  from  the  ideas  of  the 
Parisian  freethinkers,  whom  Burke  so  detested,  that 


EFFECT  OF  HIS  VISIT  67 

Jefferson,  Franklin,  and  Henry  drew  the  theories 
of  human  society  that  were  so  soon  to  find  life  in 
American  Independence.  It  was  from  the  same 
ideas  that  later  on  the  revolutionary  tide  surged 
forth,  in  which  Burke  saw  no  elements  of  a  blessed 
fertility,  but  only  a  horrid  torrent  of  desolating 
lava.  In  1773  there  was  a  date  of  strange  repose 
in  western  Europe ;  the  little  break  of  stillness 
that  precedes  the  hurricane.  It  was  indeed  the 
eve  of  a  momentous  epoch.  Before  sixteen  years 
were  over,  the  American  Republic  had  risen  like 
a  new  constellation  into  the  firmament,  and  the 
French  monarchy,  of  such  antiquity  and  fame  and 
high  pre-eminence  in  European  history,  had  been 
shattered  to  the  dust.  We  may  not  agree  with 
Burke's  appreciation  of  the  forces  that  were  behind 
these  vast  convulsions.  But  at  least  he  saw,  and 
saw  with  eyes  of  passionate  alarm,  that  strong 
speculative  forces  were  at  work,  which  must  violently 
prove  the  very  bases  of  the  great  social  super- 
structure, and  might  not  improbably  break  them 
up  for  ever. 

Almost  immediately  after  his  return  from  France, 
he  sounded  a  shrill  note  of  warning.  Some  Method- 
ists from  Chatham  had  petitioned  Parliament 
against  a  bill  for  the  relief  of  dissenters  from 
subscription  to  the  Articles.  Burke  denounced 
the  intolerance  of  the  petitioners.  It  is  not  the 
dissenters,  he  cried,  whom  you  have  to  fear,  but 
the  men  who,  "  not  contented  with  endeavouring 
to  turn  your  eyes  from  the  blaze  and  effulgence  of 
light,  by  which  life  and  immortality  is  so  gloriously 
demonstrated  by  the  Gospel,  would  even  extinguish 
that  faint  glimmering  of  Nature,  that  only  comfort 
supplied  to  ignorant  man  before  this  great  illumina- 
tion. .  .  .  These  are  the  people  against  whom  you 
ought  to  aim  the  shaft  of  the  law ;  tfyese  are  the 
men  to  whom,  arrayed  in  all  the  terrors  of  govern- 
ment, I  would  say,  '  You  shall  not  degrade  us  into 


68  BURKE 

brutes.'  .  .  .  The  most  horrid  and  cruel  blow 
that  can  be  offered  to  civil  society  is  through 
atheism.  .  .  .  The  infidels  are  outlaws  of  the  con- 
stitution, not  of  this  country,  but  of  the  human 
race.  They  are  never,  never  to  be  supported,  never 
to  be  tolerated.  Under  the  systematic  attacks  of 
these  people,  I  see  some  of  the  props  of  good  govern- 
ment already  begin  to  fail ;  I  see  propagated 
principles  which  will  not  leave  to  religion  even  a 
toleration.  I  see  myself  sinking  every  day  under 
the  attacks  of  these  wretched  people."  l  To  this 
pitch  had  he  been  excited  by  the  vehement  band 
of  men,  who  had  inscribed  on  their  standard, 
Ecrasez  VInfdme. 

The  second  Parliament  in  which  Burke  had  a 
seat  was  dissolved  suddenly  and  without  warning 
(October  1774).  The  attitude  of  America  was 
threatening,  and  it  was  believed  the  ministers 
were  anxious  to  have  the  elections  over  before 
the  state  of  things  became  worse.  The  whole 
kingdom  was  instantly  in  a  ferment.  Couriers, 
chaises,  post-horses,  hurried  in  every  direction  over 
our  island,  and  it  was  noted,  as  a  measure  of  the 
agitation,  that  no  fewer  than  sixty  messengers 
passed  through  a  single  turnpike  on  one  day. 
Sensible  observers  were  glad  to  think  that,  in  con- 
sequence of  the  rapidity  of  the  elections,  less  wine 
and  money  would  be  wasted  than  at  any  election 
for  sixty  years  past.  Burke  had  a  houseful  of 
company  at  Beaconsfield  when  the  news  arrived. 
Johnson  was  among  them,  and  as  the  party  was 
hastily  breaking  up,  the  old  Tory  took  his  Whig 
friend  kindly  by  the  hand  :  "  Farewell,  my  dear 
sir,"  he  said,  "  and  remember  that  I  wish  you  all 
the  success  that  ought  to  be  wished  to  you,  and 
can  possibly  be  wished  to  you,  by  an  honest  man." 

The  words  were  of  good  omen.     Burke  was  now 

1  Speech  on  the  Relief  of  Protestant  Dissenters,  1773. 


LETTER  TO  ROCKINGHAM  69 

rewarded  by  the  discovery  that  his  labours  had 
earned  for  him  recognition  and  gratitude  beyond 
the  narrow  limits  of  a  rather  exclusive  party. 
He  had  before  this  attracted  the  attention  of  the 
mercantile  public.  The  Company  of  Merchants 
trading  to  Africa  voted  him  their  thanks  for 
his  share  in  supporting  their  establishments.  The 
Committee  of  Trade  at  Manchester  formally  re- 
turned him  their  grateful  acknowledgments  for  the 
active  part  that  he  had  taken  in  the  business  of 
the  Jamaica  free  ports.  But  then  Manchester 
returned  no  representative  to  Parliament.  In  two 
Parliaments  Burke  had  been  elected  for  Wendover 
free  of  expense.  Lord  Verney's  circumstances  were 
now  so  embarrassed,  that  he  was  obliged  to  part 
with  the  four  seats  at  his  disposal  to  men  who 
could  pay  for  them.  There  had  been  some  talk  of 
proposing  Burke  for  Westminster,  and  Wilkes,  who 
was  then  omnipotent,  promised  him  the  support 
of  the  popular  party.  But  the  patriot's  memory 
was  treacherous,  and  he  speedily  forgot,  for  reasons 
of  his  own,  an  idea  that  had  originated  with  him- 
self. Burke's  constancy  of  spirit  was  momentarily 
overclouded.  "  Sometimes  when  I  am  alone,"  he 
wrote  to  Lord  Rockingham  (September  15,  1774), 
"  in  spite  of  all  my  efforts,  I  fall  into  a  melancholy 
which  is  inexpressible,  and  to  which,  if  I  give  way, 
I  should  not  continue  long  under  it,  but  must 
totally  sink.  Yet  I  do  assure  you  that  partly,  and 
indeed  principally,  by  the  force  of  natural  good 
spirits,  and  partly  by  a  strong  sense  of  what  I  ought 
to  do,  I  bear  up  so  well  that  no  one  who  did  not 
know  them,  could  easily  discover  the  state  of  my 
mind  or  my  circumstances.  I  have  those  that  are 
dear  to  me,  for  whom  I  must  live  as  long  as  God 
pleases,  and  in  what  way  He  pleases.  Whether  I 
ought  not  totally  to  abandon  this  public  station 
for  which  I  am  so  unfit,  and  have  of  course  been 
so  unfortunate,  I  know  not."  But  he  was  always 


70  BURKE  CHAP. 

saved  from  rash  retirement  from  public  business  by 
two  reflections.  He  doubted  whether  a  man  has 
a  right  to  retire  after  he  has  once  gone  a  certain 
length  in  these  things.  And  he  remembered  that 
there  are  often  obscure  vexations  in  the  most  private 
life,  that  destroy  a  man's  peace  as  effectually  as 
anything  that  can  occur  in  public  contentions. 

Lord  Rockingham  offered  his  influence  on  behalf 
of  Burke  at  Malton,  one  of  the  family  boroughs  in 
Yorkshire,  and  thither  Burke  in  no  high  spirits 
betook  himself.  On  his  way  to  the  north  he  heard 
that  he  had  been  nominated  for  Bristol,  but  the 
nomination  had  for  certain  electioneering  reasons 
not  been  approved  by  the  party.  As  it  happened, 
Burke  was  no  sooner  chosen  at  Malton  than,  owing 
to  an  unexpected  turn  of  affairs  at  Bristol,  the  idea 
of  proposing  him  for  a  candidate  revived.  Mes- 
sengers were  sent  express  to  his  house  in  London, 
and,  not  finding  him  there,  they  hastened  down  to 
Yorkshire.  Burke  quickly  resolved  that  the  offer 
was  too  important  to  be  rejected.  Bristol  was  the 
capital  of  the  west,  and  it  was  still  in  wealth, 
population,  and  mercantile  activity  the  second  city 
of  the  kingdom.  To  be  invited  to  stand  for  so 
great  a  constituency,  without  any  request  of  his 
own  and  free  of  personal  expense,  was  a  distinction 
that  no  politician  could  hold  lightly.  Burke  rose 
from  the  table  where  he  was  dining  with  some  of 
his  supporters,  stepped  into  a  post-chaise  at  six  on 
a  Tuesday  evening,  and  travelled  without  a  break 
until  he  reached  Bristol  on  the  Thursday  after- 
noon, having  got  over  two  hundred  and  seventy 
miles  in  forty-four  hours.  Not  only  did  he  execute 
the  journey  without  a  break,  but,  as  he  told  the 
people  of  Bristol,  with  an  exulting  commemoration 
of  his  own  zeal  that  recalls  Cicero,  he  did  not  sleep 
for  an  instant  in  the  interval.  The  poll  was  kept 
open  for  a  month,  and  the  contest  was  the  most 
tedious  that  had  ever  been  known  in  the  city. 


iv   RELATIONS  WITH  HIS  CONSTITUENTS  71 

New  freemen  were  admitted  down  to  the  very  last 
day  of  the  election.  At  the  end  of  it,  Burke  was 
second  on  the  poll,  and  was  declared  to  be  duly 
chosen  (November  3,  1774).  There  was  a  petition 
against  his  return,  but  the  election  was  confirmed, 
and  he  continued  to  sit  for  Bristol  for  six  years. 

The  situation  of  a  candidate  is  apt  to  find  out 
a  man's  weaker  places.  Burke  stood  the  test. 
He  showed  none  of  the  petulant  rage  of  those 
clamorous  politicians  whose  flight,  as  he  said,  is 
winged  in  a  lower  region  of  the  air.  As  the  traveller 
stands  on  the  noble  bridge  that  now  spans  the 
valley  of  the  Avon,  he  may  recall  Burke's  local 
comparison  of  these  busy,  angry  familiars  of  an 
election,  to  the  gulls  that  skim  the  mud  of  the 
river  when  it  is  exhausted  of  its  tide.  He  gave 
his  new  friends  a  more  important  lesson,  when  the 
time  came  for  him  to  thank  them  for  the  honour 
they  had  just  conferred  upon  him.  His  colleague 
had  opened  the  subject  of  the  relations  between  a 
member  of  Parliament  and  his  constituents  ;  and 
had  declared  that,  for  his  own  part,  he  should 
regard  the  instructions  of  the  people  of  Bristol  as 
decisive  and  binding.  Burke  in  a  weighty  passage 
upheld  a  manlier  doctrine  : 

Certainly,  gentlemen,  it  ought  to  be  the  happiness  and 
glory  of  a  representative  to  live  in  the  strictest  union,  the 
closest  correspondence,  and  the  most  unreserved  com- 
munication with  his  constituents.  Their  wishes  ought  to 
have  great  weight  with  him  ;  their  opinions  high  respect, 
their  business  unremitted  attention.  It  is  his  duty  to 
sacrifice  his  repose,  his  pleasure,  his  satisfactions,  to  theirs  ; 
and  above  all,  ever,  and  in  all  cases,  to  prefer  their  interest 
to  his  own.  But  his  unbiassed  opinion,  his  mature  judg- 
ment, his  enlightened  conscience,  he  ought  not  to  sacrifice 
to  you,  to  any  man,  or  to  any  set  of  men  living.  Your 
representative  owes  you,  not  his  industry  only,  but  his 
judgment ;  and  he  betrays,  instead  of  serving  you,  if  he 
sacrifices  it  to  your  opinion. 

My  worthy  colleague  says,  his  will  ought  to  be  subservient 


72  BURKE  CHAP. 

to  yours.  If  that  be  all,  the  thing  is  innocent.  If  govern- 
ment were  a  matter  of  will  upon  any  side,  yours,  without 
question,  ought  to  be  superior.  But  government  and 
legislation  are  matters  of  reason  and  judgment,  and  not 
of  inclination;  and  what  sort  of  reason  is  that  in  which 
the  determination  precedes  the  discussion,  in  which  one 
set  of  men  deliberate  and  another  decide,  and  where  those 
who  form  the  conclusion  are  perhaps  three  hundred  miles 
distant  from  those  who  hear  the  arguments  ?  .  .  .  Authori- 
tative instructions,  mandates  issued,  which  the  member  is 
bound  blindly  and  implicitly  to  obey,  to  vote,  and  to  argue 
for,  though  contrary  to  the  clearest  convictions  of  his 
judgment  and  conscience  —  these  are  things  utterly  un- 
known to  the  laws  of  this  land,  and  which  arise  from 
a  fundamental  mistake  of  the  whole  order  and  tenor  of 
our  Constitution.1 

For  six  years  the  Bristol  electors  were  content 
to  be  represented  by  a  man  of  this  independence. 
They  never,  however,  really  acquiesced  in  the 
principle  that  a  member  of  Parliament  owes  as 
much  to  his  own  convictions  as  to  the  will  of  his 
constituents.  In  1778  a  bill  was  brought  into 
Parliament,  relaxing  some  of  the  restrictions  im- 
posed upon  Ireland  by  the  atrocious  fiscal  policy 
of  Great  Britain.  The  great  mercantile  centres 
raised  a  furious  outcry,  and  Bristol  was  as  blind 
and  as  boisterous  as  Manchester  and  Glasgow. 
Burke  not  only  spoke  and  voted  in  favour  of  the 
commercial  propositions,  but  urged  that  the  pro- 
posed removal  of  restrictions  on  Irish  trade  did 
not  go  nearly  far  enough.  There  was  none  of  that 
too  familiar  casuistry,  by  which  public  men  argue 
themselves  out  of  their  consciences  in  a  strange 
syllogism,  that  they  can  best  serve  the  country  in 
Parliament ;  that  to  keep  their  seats  they  must 
follow  their  electors ;  and  that  therefore,  in  the 
long  run,  they  serve  the  country  best  by  acquies- 
cing in  ignorance  and  prejudice.  Anybody  can 
denounce  an  abuse.  It  needs  valour  and  integrity 

1  Speech  at  the  conclusion  of  the  Poll. 


iv  RELATIONS  WITH  HIS  CONSTITUENTS  73 

to  stand  forth  against  a  wrong  to  which  our  best 
friends  are  most  ardently  committed.  It  warms 
our  hearts  to  think  of  the  noble  courage  with  which 
Burke  faced  the  blind  and  narrow  selfishness  of  his 
own  supporters.  He  reminded  them  that  England 
only  consented  to  leave  to  the  Irish  in  two  or  three 
instances  the  use  of  the  natural  faculties  that  God 
had  given  them.  He  asked  them  whether  Ireland 
was  united  to  Great  Britain  for  no  other  purpose 
than  that  we  should  counteract  the  bounty  of 
Providence  in  her  favour ;  and  whether,  in  pro- 
portion as  that  bounty  had  been  liberal,  we  were 
to  regard  it  as  an  evil  to  be  met  with  every  possible 
corrective.  In  our  day  there  is  nobody  of  any 
school  who  doubts  that  Burke's  view  of  our  trade 
policy  towards  Ireland  was  accurately,  absolutely, 
and  magnificently  right.  I  need  not  repeat  the 
arguments.  They  made  no  mark  on  the  Bristol 
merchants.  Burke  boldly  told  them  that  he  would 
rather  run  the  risk  of  displeasing  than  of  injuring 
them.  They  implored  him  to  become  their  advocate. 
"  I  should  only  disgrace  myself,"  he  said ;  "I 
should  lose  the  only  thing  that  can  make  such 
abilities  as  mine  of  any  use  to  the  world  now  or 
hereafter.  I  mean  that  authority  which  is  derived 
from  the  opinion  that  a  member  speaks  the  language 
of  truth  and  sincerity,  and  that  he  is  not  ready  to 
take  up  or  lay  down  a  great  political  system  for  the 
convenience  of  the  hour ;  that  he  is  in  Parliament 
to  support  his  ^opinion  of  the  public  good,  and  does 
not  form  his  opinion  in  order  to  get  into  Parliament 
or  to  continue  in  it."  l 

A  small  instalment  of  humanity  to  Ireland  was 
not  more  distasteful  to  the  electors  of  Bristol  than 
a  small  instalment  of  toleration  to  Roman  Catholics 
in  England.  A  measure  was  passed  (1778)  repeal- 
ing certain  iniquitous  penalties  created  by  an  Act 
of  William  the  Third.  It  is  needless  to  say  that 

1  Two  Letters  to  Gentlemen  in  Bristol,  1778. 


74  BURKE 

this  rudimentary  concession  to  justice  and  sense 
was  supported  by  Burke.  His  voters  began  to 
believe  that  those  were  right  who  had  said  that 
he  had  been  bred  at  Saint  Omer's,  was  a  Papist  at 
heart,  and  a  Jesuit  in  disguise.  When  the  time 
came,  summa  dies  et  ineluctabile  fatum,  Burke  bore 
with  dignity  and  temper  his  dismissal  from  the 
only  independent  constituency  that  he  ever  repre- 
sented. Years  before  he  had  warned  a  young  man 
entering  public  life  to  regard  and  wish  well  to  the 
common  people,  whom  his  best  instincts  and  his 
highest  duties  lead  him  to  love  and  to  serve,  but 
I  to  put  as  little  trust  in  them  as  in  princes.  Burke 
somewhere  describes  an  honest  public  life  as  carry- 
ing on  a  poor  unequal  conflict  against  the  passions 
and  prejudices  of  our  day,  perhaps  with  no  better 
_\veapons  than  passions  and  prejudices  of  our  own. 

^The  six  years  during  which  Burke  sat  in  Parlia- 
ment for  Bristol,  saw  this  conflict  carried  on  under 
the  most  desperate  circumstances.  They  were  the 
years  of  the  civil  war  between  the  English  at  home 
and  the  English  in  the  American  colonies.  George 
III.  and  Lord  North  have  been  made  scapegoats 
for  sins  that  were  not  exclusively  their  own.  They 
were  only  the  organs  and  representatives  of  all  the 
lurking  ignorance  and  arbitrary  humours  of  the 
/>.  entire  community.  Burke  discloses  in  many  places, 
*  Ithat  for  once  the  king  and  Parliament  did  not  act 
I  without  the  sympathies  of  the  mass.  In  his  famous 
speech  at  Bristol,  in  1780,  he  was  rebuking  the 
intolerance  of  those  who  bitterly  taunted  him  for 
the  support  of  the  measure  for  the  relaxation  of 
the  Penal  Code.  "It  is  but  too  true,"  he  said  in 
a  passage  worth  remembering,  "  that  the  love,  and 
even  the  very  idea,  of  genuine  liberty  is  extremely 
rare.  It  is  but  too  true  that  there  are  many  whose 
whole  scheme  of  freedom  is  made  up  of  pride,  per- 
verseness,  and  insolence.  They  feel  themselves  in 
a  state  of  thraldom,  they  imagine  that  their  souls 


iv  THE  AMERICAN  WAR  75 

are  cooped  and  cabined  in,  unless  they  have  some 
man,  or  some  body  of  men,  dependent  on  their 
mercy.  The  desire  of  having  some  one  below  them, 
descends  to  those  who  are  the  very  lowest  of  all; 
and  a  Protestant  cobbler,  debased  by  his  poverty, 
but  exalted  by  his  share  of  the  ruling  Church,  feels 
a  pride  in  knowing  it  is  by  his  generosity  alone 
that  the  peer,  whose  footman's  instep  he  measures, 
is  able  to  keep  his  chaplain  from  a  gaol.  This 
disposition  is  the  true  source  of  the  passion  which 
many  men,  in  very  humble  life,  have  taken  to  the 
American  war.  Our  subjects  in  America ;  our 
colonies ;  our  dependents.  This  lust  of  party  power 
is  the  liberty  they  hunger  and  thirst  for;  and  this 
Siren  song  of  ambition  has  charmed  ears  that  we  ; 
would  have  thought  were  never  organised  to  that 
sort  of  music." 

This  was  the  mental  attitude  of  a  majority  of 
the  nation,  and  it  was  fortunate  for  them  and  for 
us  that  the  yeomen  and  merchants  on  the  other 
side  of  the  Atlantic  had  a  more  just  and  energetic 
appreciation  of  the  crisis.  The  insurgents,  while 
achieving  their  own  freedom,  were  indirectly  en- 
gaged in  fighting  the  battle  of  the  people  of  the 
mother  country  as  well.  Burke  had  a  vehement 
correspondent  who  wrote  to  him  (1777)  that  if  the 
utter  ruin  of  this  country  were  to  be  the  conse- 
quence of  her  persisting  in  the  claim  to  tax  America, 
then  he  would  be  the  first  to  say,  Let  her  perish  ! 
If  England  prevails,  said  Horace  Walpole,  English 
and  American  liberty  is  at  an  end  ;  if  one  fell, 
the  other  would  fall  with  it.  Burke,  seeing  this, 
"  certainly  never  could  and  never  did  wish,"  as  -. 
he  says  of  himself,  "  the  colonists  to  be  subdued 
by  arms.  He  was  fully  persuaded  that  if  such 
should  be  the  event,  they  must  be  held  in  that 
subdued  state  by  a  great  body  of  standing  forces, 
and  perhaps  of  foreign  forces.  He  was  strongly 
of  opinion  that  such  armies,  first  victorious  over 


76  BURKE  CHAP. 

Englishmen,  in  a  conflict  for  English  constitutional 
rights  and  privileges,  and  afterwards  habituated 
(though  in  America)  to  keep  an  English  people  in 
a  state  of  abject  subjection,  would  prove  fatal  in 
the  end  to  the  liberties  of  England  itself."  l  The 
way  for  this  remote  peril  was  being  sedulously 
prepared  by  a  widespread  deterioration  among 
popular  ideas,  and  a  fatal  relaxation  of  the  hold 
that  they  had  previously  gained  in  the  public  mind. 
In  order  to  prove  that  the  Americans  had  no  right 
to  their  liberties,  we  were  every  day  endeavouring 
to  subvert  the  maxims  that  preserve  the  whole 
spirit  of  our  own.  To  prove  that  the  Americans 
ought  not  to  be  free,  we  were  obliged  to  depreciate 
the  value  of  freedom  itself.  The  material  strength 
of  the  government,  and  its  moral  strength  alike, 
would  have  been  reinforced  by  the  defeat  of  the 
colonists,  to  such  an  extent  as  to  have  seriously 
delayed  or  even  jeopardised  English  progress,  and 
therefore  that  of  Europe  too.  As  events  actually 
fell  out,  the  ferocious  administration  of  the  law  in 
the  last  five  or  six  years  of  the  eighteenth  century 
was  the  retribution  for  the  lethargy  or  approval 
with  which  the  mass  of  the  English  community  had 
watched  the  measures  of  the  government  against 
their  fellow-Englishmen  in  America. 

It  is  not  necessary  here  to  follow  Burke  minutely 
through  the  successive  stages  of  parliamentary 
.  /  action  in  the  American  war.  He  always  defended 
the  settlement  of  1766  ;  the  Stamp  Act  was  repealed, 
and  the  constitutional  supremacy  and  sovereign 
authority  of  the  mother  country  was  preserved 
in  a  Declaratory  Act.  When  the  project  of  taxing 
the  colonies  was  revived,  and  relations  with  them 
were  becoming  strained  and  dangerous,  Burke 
came  forward  with  a  plan  for  leaving  the  General 
Assemblies  of  the  colonies  to  grant  supplies  and 
aids,  instead  of  giving  and  granting  supplies  in 

1  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs. 


THE  AMERICAN  WAR  77 

Parliament,  to  be  raised  and  paid  in  the  colonies. 
Needless  to  say  that  it  was  rejected,  and  perhaps 
it  was  not  feasible.  Henceforth  Burke  could  only 
watch  in  impotence  the  blunders  of  government, 
and  the  disasters  that  befell  the  national  arms. 
But  his  protests  against  the  war  will  last  as  long 
as  our  literature. 

Of  all  Burke's  writings  none  are  so  fit  to  secure 
unqualified  and  unanimous  admiration  as  the  three 
pieces  on  this  deep  reactive  struggle  : — the  Speech 
on  American  Taxation  (April  19,  177$)*;  the  Speech 
on  Conciliation  with  America  (March  22,  1775) ; 
and  the  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol  (1777). 
Together  they  hardly  exceed  the  compass  of  the 
volume  that  the  reader  now  has  in  his  hands.  It  is 
no  exaggeration  to  say  that  they  compose  the  most 
perfect  manual  in  our  literature,  or  in  any  literature, 
for  one  who  approaches  the  study  of  public  affairs, 
whether  for  knowledge  or  for  practice.  They  are 
an  example  without  fault  of  all  the  qualities  that 
the  critic,  whether  a  theorist  or  an  actor,  of  great 
political  situations  should  strive  by  night  and  by 
day  to  possess.  If  the  theme  with  which  they 
deal  were  less  near  than  it  is  to  our  interests  and 
affections  as  free  citizens,  these  three  performances 
would  still  abound  in  the  lessons  of  an  incomparable 
political  method.  If  their  subject  were  as  remote 
as  the  quarrel  between  the  Corinthians  and  Corcyra, 
or  the*  war  between  Rome  and  the  Allies,  instead  of 
a  conflict  to  which  the  world  owes  the  opportunity 
of  the  most  important  of  political  experiments, 
we  should  still  have  everything  to  learn  from  the 
author's  treatment ;  the  vigorous  grasp  of  masses 
of  compressed  detail,  the;  wide  illumination  from 
great  principles  of  human  experience,  the  strong 
and  masculine  feeling  for  the  two  great  political 
\yends  of  Justice  and  Freedom,  the  large  and  generous 
interpretation  of  expediency,  the  morality,  the 
vision,  the  noble  temper.  If  ever,  in  the  fulness  of 


78  BURKE  CHAP. 

time — and  surely  the  fates  of  men  and  literature 
cannot  have  it  otherwise — Burke  becomes  one  of 
the  half-dozen  names  of  established  and  universal 
currency  in  education  and  in  common  books,  rising 
above  the  waywardness  of  literary  caprice  or  in- 
tellectual fashions,  as  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and 
Bacon  rise  above  it,  it  will  be  the  mastery,  the  eleva- 
tion, the  wisdom,  of  these  far-shining  discourses  in 
which  the  world  will  in  an  especial  degree  recognise 
the  combination  of  sovereign  gifts  with  beneficent 
uses. 

The  pamphlet  on  the  Present  Discontents  is 
partially  obscured  or  muffled  to  the  modern  reader 
by  the  space  given  to  the  cabal  of  the  day.  The 
Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution  over-abounds 
in  declamation,  and — apart  from  its  being  passion- 
ately on  one  side,  and  that  perhaps  the  wrong  one— 
the  splendour  of  the  eloquence  is  out  of  proportion 
to  the  reason  and  the  judgment.  In  the  pieces  on 
the  American  war,  on  the  contrary,  Burke  was  con- 
scious that  he  could  trust  nothing  to  the  sympathy 
or  the  prepossessions  of  his  readers,  and  this  put 
him  upon  an  unwonted  persuasiveness.  Here  it  is 
reason  and  judgment,  not  declamation ;  lucidity, 
not  passion  ;  that  produces  the  effects  of  eloquence. 
No  choler  mars  the  page  ;  no  purple  patch  dis- 
tracts our  minds  from  the  penetrating  force  of 
argument ;  no  commonplace  is  dressed  up  into  a 
vague  sublimity.  The  cause  of  freedom  is  made  to 
wear  its  own  proper  apparel  of  equity,  self-control, 
and  reason. 

Not  one,  but  all  those  great  idols  of  the  political 
market-place  whose  worship  and  service  has  cost 
the  race  so  dear,  are  discovered  and  shown  to  be 
the  foolish  uncouth  stocks  and  stones  that  they 
are.  Fox  once  urged  members  of  Parliament  to 
peruse  the  speech  on  Conciliation  again  and  again, 
to  study  it,  to  imprint  it  on  their  minds,  to  impress 
it  on  their  hearts.  But  Fox  only  referred  to  the 


THE  AMERICAN  WAR  79 

lesson  he  thought  to  be  contained  in  it,  that  repre- 
sentation is  the  sovereign  remedy  for  every  evil. 
This  is  by  far  the  least  important  of  its  lessons.  It 
is  great  in  many  ways.  It  is  greatest  as  a  remon- 
strance and  an  answer  against  the  thriving  sophisms 
of  barbarous  national  pride,  the  eternal  fallacies  of 
war  and  conquest ;  and  here  it  is  great,  as  all  the 
three  pieces  on  the  subject  are  so,  because  they  ex- 
pose with  unanswerable  force  the  deep-lying  faults 
of  heart  and  temper,  as  well  as  of  understanding, 
that  move  nations  to  haughty  and  violent  courses. 
y  The  great  argument  with  those  of  the  war  party 
f  who  pretended  to  a  political  defence  of  their  position, 
was  the  doctrine  that  the  English  government  was 
sovereign  in  the  colonies  as  at  home;  and  in  the 
notion  of  sovereignty  they  found  inherent  the  notion 
of  an  indefeasible  right  to  impose  and  exact  taxes. 
Having  satisfied  themselves  of  the  existence  of  this 
sovereignty,  and  of  the  right  they  took  to  be  its 
natural  property,  they  saw  no  step  between  the 
existence  of  an  abstract  right  and  the  propriety  of 
enforcing  it.  We  have  seen  an  instance  of  a  similar 
mode  of  political  thinking  in  our  own  lifetime. 
During  the  great  civil  war  between  the  northern  and 
southern  states  of  the  American  Union,  people  in 
England  convinced  themselves — some  after  careful 
examination  of  documents,  others  by  cursory  glances 
at  second-hand  authorities — that  the  South  had  a 
right  to  secede.  The  current  of  opinion  was  pre- 
cisely similar  in  the  struggle  to  which  the  United 
States  owed  their  separate  existence.  Now  the  idea 
of  a  right  as  a  mysterious  and  reverend  abstraction, 
to  be  worshipped  in  a  state  of  naked  divorce  from 
expediency  and  convenience,  was  one  that  Burke's 
political  judgment  found  preposterous  and  un- 
endurable. He  hated  the  arbitrary  and  despotic  y 
savour  that  clung  about  the  English  assumptions 
over  the  colonies.  And  his  repulsion  was  heightened 
when  he  found  that  these  assumptions  were  justified, 


80  BURKE  CHAP. 

not  by  some  permanent  advantage  their  victory 
would  procure  for  the  mother  country  or  for  the 
colonies,  or  that  would  repay  the  cost  of  gaining 
such  a  victory  ;  not  by  the  assertion  and  demon- 
stration of  some  positive  duty,  but  by  the  futile 
and  meaningless  doctrine  that  we  had  a  right  to  do 
something  or  other,  if  we  liked. 

The  alleged  compromise  of  the  national  dignity 
implied  in  a  withdrawal  of  the  just  claim  of  the 
government,  instead  of  convincing,  only  exasper- 
ated him.  "  Show  the  thing  you  contend  for  to  be 
reason ;  show  it  to  be  common  sense  ;  show  it  to 
be  the  means  of  attaining  some  useful  end ;  and 
then  I  am  content  to  allow  it  what  dignity  you 
please."  1  The  next  year  he  took  up  the  ground 
still  more  firmly,  and  explained  it  still  more  im- 
pressively. As  for  the  question  of  the  right  of 
taxation,  he  exclaimed,  "It  is  less  than  nothing 
in  my  consideration.  .  .  .  My  consideration  is 
narrow,  confined,  and  wholly  limited  to  the  policy 
of  the  question.  I  do  not  examine  whether  the 
giving  away  a  man's  money  be  a  power  excepted 
and  reserved  out  of  the  general  trust  of  Govern- 
ment. .  .  .  The  question  with  me  is  not  whether  you 
have  a  right  to  render  your  people  miserable,  but 
whether  it  is  not  your  interest  to  make  them  happy. 
It  is  not  what  a  lawyer  tells  me  I  may  do,  but 
what  humanity,  reason,  and  justice  tell  me  I  ought 
to  do.  I  am  not  determining  a  point  of  law ;  I 
am  restoring  tranquillity,  and  the  general  character 
and  situation  of  a  people  must  determine  what 
sort  of  government  is  fitted  for  them."  "  I  am  not 
here  going  into  the  distinctions  of  rights,"  he  cries, 
"  not  attempting  to  mark  their  boundaries.  I  do 
not  enter  into  these  metaphysical  distinctions.  / 
hate  the  very  sound  of  them.  This  is  the  true  touch- 
stone of  all  theories  which  regard  man  and  the 
affairs  of  man  :  does  it  suit  his  nature  in  general  ? — 

1  Speech  on  American  Taxation. 


THE  AMERICAN  WAR  81 

does  it  suit  his  nature  as  modified  by  his  habits  ?  " 
He  could  not  bear  to  think  of  having  legislative 
or  political  arrangements  shaped  or  vindicated 
by  a  delusive  geometrical  accuracy  of  deduction, 
instead  of  being  entrusted  to  "  the  natural  operation 
of  things,  which,  left  to  themselves,  generally  fall 
into  their  proper  order." 

Apart  from  his  incessant  assertion  of  the  prin- 
ciple that  man  acts  from  adequate  motives  relative 
to  his  interests,  and  not  on  metaphysical  specula- 
tions, Burke  sows,  as  he  marches  along  in  his  stately 
argument,  many  a  germ  of  the  modern  philosophy 
of  civilisation.  He  was  told  that  America  was 
worth  fighting  for.  "  Certainly  it  is,"  he  answered, 
"  if  fighting  a  people  be  the  best  way  of  gaining 
them."  Every  step  that  has  been  taken  in  the 
direction  of  progress,  not  merely  in  empire,  but  in 
education,  in  punishment,  in  the  treatment  of  the 
insane,  has  shown  the  deep  wisdom,  so  unfamiliar 
in  that  age  of  ferocious  penalties  and  brutal  methods, 
of  this  truth — that  "the  natural  effect  of  fidelity, 
clemency,  kindness  in  governors,  is  peace,  good-will, 
order,  and  esteem  in  the  governed."  Is  there  a 
single  instance  to  the  contrary  ?  Then  there  is  that 
sure  key  to  wise  politics, — ^Nobody  shall  persuade 
me  when  a  whole  people  are  concerned,  that  acts  of 
lenity  are  not  means  of  conciliation"  And  that  still 
more  famous  sentence, — "  /  do  not  know  the  method 
of  drawing  up  an  indictment  against  a  whole  people" 

Good  and  observant  men  will  feel  that  no  misty 
benevolence  or  vague  sympathy,  but  the  positive 
reality  of  experience,  inspired  such  passages  as  that 
where  he  says, — "  Never  expecting  to  find  perfec- 
tion in  men,  and  not  looking  for  divine  attributes 
in  created  beings,  in  my  commerce  with  my  con- 
temporaries I  have  found  much  human  virtue. 
The  age  unquestionably  produces  daring  profligates 
and  insidious  hypocrites  ?  What  then  ?  Am  I  not 
to  avail  myself  of  whatever  good  is  to  be  found 

G 


82  BURKE  CHAP,  iv 

in  the  world,  because  of  the  mixture  of  evil  that  is 
in  it  ?  .  .  .  Those  who  raise  suspicions  of  the  good, 
on  account  of  the  behaviour  of  evil  men,  are  of  the 
party  of  the  latter.  ...  A  conscientious  person 
would  rather  doubt  his  own  judgment  than  con- 
demn his  species.  He  that  accuses  all  mankind  of 
corruption  ought  to  remember  that  he  is  sure  to 
convict  only  one.  In  truth,  I  should  much  rather 
admit  those  whom  at  any  time  I  have  disrelished  the 
most,  to  be  patterns  of  perfection,  than  seek  a  con- 
solation to  my  own  unworthiness  in  a  general  com- 
munion of  depravity  with  all  about  me."  This  is 
one  of  those  pieces  of  rational  constancy  and  mental 
wholeness  in  Burke  that  fill  up  our  admiration  for 
him — one  of  the  manifold  illustrations  of  an  invin- 
cible fidelity  to  the  natural  order  and  operation  of 
things,  even  when  they  seemed  most  hostile  to  all 
that  was  dear  to  his  own  personality. 


CHAPTER  V 

ECONOMICAL    REFORM — BURKE   IN    OFFICE FALL  OF 

HIS    PARTY 

TOWARDS  1780  it  began  to  be  clear  that  the  ministers 
had  brought  the  country  into  disaster  and  humilia- 
tion, from  which  their  policy  contained  no  way  of 
escape.  In  the  closing  months  of  the  American 
war,  the  Opposition  pressed  ministers  with  a  vigour 
that  never  abated.  Lord  North  bore  their  attacks 
with  perfect  good-humour.  When  Burke,  in  the 
course  of  a  great  oration,  parodied  Burgoyne's  in- 
vitation to  the  Indians  to  repair  to  the  king's  stand- 
ard, the  wit  and  satire  of  it  almost  suffocated  the 
Prime  Minister,  not  with  shame  but  with  laughter. 
His  heart  had  long  ceased  to  be  in  the  matter,  and 
everybody  knew  that  he  only  retained  his  post  in 
obedience  to  the  urgent  importunities  of  the  king, 
whilst  such  colleagues  as  Rigby  only  clung  to  their 
place  because  the  salaries  were  endeared  by  long 
familiarity.  The  general  gloom  was  accidentally 
deepened  by  the  hideous  outbreak  of  fanaticism 
and  violence  which  is  known  as  the  Lord  George 
Gordon  Riots  (June  1780).  The  Whigs,  as  having 
favoured  the  relaxation  of  the  laws  against  popery, 
were  especially  obnoxious  to  the  mob.  The  govern- 
ment sent  a  guard  of  soldiers  to  protect  Burke 's 
house  in  Charles  Street,  St.  James's ;  but  after  he 
had  removed  the  more  important  of  his  papers,  he 
insisted  on  the  guard  being  despatched  for  the 
protection  of  more  important  places,  and  he  took 

83 


84  BURKE  CHAP. 

shelter  under  the  roof  of  General  Burgoyne.  His 
excellent  wife,  according  to  a  letter  of  his  brother, 
had  "  the  firmness  and  sweetness  of  an  angel ;  but 
why  do  I  say  of  an  angel  ? — of  a  woman."  Burke 
himself  courageously  walked  to  and  fro  amid  the 
raging  crowds  with  firm  composure,  though  the 
experiment  was  full  of  peril.  He  describes  the  mob 
as  being  made  up,  as  London  mobs  not  rarely  are, 
rather  of  the  unruly  and  dissolute  than  of  fanatical 
malignants,  and  he  vehemently  opposed  any  con- 
cessions by  Parliament  to  the  spirit  of  intolerance 
that  had  first  kindled  the  blaze.  All  the  letters  of 
the  time  show  that  the  outrages  and  alarms  of  those 
days  and  nights,  in  which  the  capital  seemed  to  be 
at  the  mercy  of  a  furious  rabble,  made  a  deeper  im- 
pression on  the  minds  of  contemporaries  than  they 
ought  to  have  done.  Burke  was  not  likely  to  be 
less  excited  than  others  by  the  sight  of  insensate 
disorder ;  and  it  is  no  idle  fancy  that  he  had  the 
mobs  of  1780  still  in  his  memory,  when  ten  years 
later  he  poured  out  the  vials  of  his  wrath  on  the 
bloodier  mob  that  carried  the  King  and  Queen  of 
France  in  wild  triumph  from  Versailles  to  Paris. 

In  the  previous  February  (1780)  Burke  had 
achieved  one  of  the  greatest  of  all  his  parliament- 
ary and  oratorical  successes.  Though  the  matter 
of  this  particular  enterprise  is  no  longer  alive,  yet  it 
illustrates  his  many  strong  qualities  in  so  remark- 
able a  way  that  it  is  right  to  make  some  mention 
of  it.  We  have  already  seen  that  Burke  steadily 
set  his  face  against  parliamentary  reform ;  he 
habitually  declared  that  the  machine  was  well 
enough  to  answer  any  good  purpose,  provided  the 
materials  were  sound.  The  statesman  who  resists 
all  projects  for  the  reform  of  the  constitution,  and 
yet  eagerly  proclaims  how  deplorably  imperfect 
are  the  practical  results  of  its  working,  binds  him- 
self to  vigorous  exertions  for  the  amendment  of 
administration.  Burke  devoted  himself  to  this  duty 


ECONOMICAL  REFORM  85 

with  a  fervid  assiduity  that  has  not  often  been 
exampled,  and  has  never  been  surpassed.  He  went 
to  work  with  the  zeal  of  a  religious  enthusiast, 
intent  on  purging  his  Church  and  his  faith  of  the 
corruptions  that  lowered  it  in  the  eyes  of  men. 
There  was  no  part  or  order  of  government  so  obscure, 
so  remote,  or  so  complex,  as  to  escape  his  acute  and 
persevering  observation. 

Burke's  object,  in  his  schemes  for  Economical 
Reform,  was  less  to  husband  the  public  resources  and 
relieve  the  tax-payer — though  this  aim  could  not 
have  been  absent  from  his  mind,  overburdened  as 
England  then  was  with  the  charges  of  the  American 
war — than  to  cut  off  the  channels  which  supplied 
the  corruption  of  the  House  of  Commons.  The  full 
title  of  the  first  project  which  he  presented  to  the 
legislature  (February  1780),  was,  A  Plan  for  the 
Better  Security  of  the  Independence  of  Parliament, 
and  the  Economical  Reformation  of  the  Civil  and 
other  Establishments.  It  was  to  the  former  that 
he  deemed  the  latter  to  be  the  most  direct  road. 
The  strength  of  the  administration  in  the  House  was 
due  to  the  gifts  that  the  minister  had  in  his  hands 
to  dispense.  Men  voted  with  the  side  which  could 
reward  their  fidelity.  It  was  the  number  of  sinecure 
places  and  unpublished  pensions,  that,  along  with  the 
controllable  influence  of  peers  and  nabobs,  furnished 
the  minister  with  an  irresistible  lever :  the  avarice 
and  the  degraded  public  spirit  of  the  recipients 
supplied  the  required  fulcrum.  Burke  knew  that 
in  sweeping  away  these  factitious  places  and  secret 
pensions,  he  would  be  robbing  the  court  of  its 
chief  implements  of  corruption,  and  protecting  the 
representative  against  his  chief  motive  in  selling 
his  country.  He  conceived  that  he  would  thus  be 
promoting  a  far  more  infallible  means  than  any 
scheme  of  electoral  reform  could  have  provided, 
for  reviving  the  integrity  and  independence  of  the 
House  of  Commons.  In  his  eyes,  the  evil  resided 


86  BURKE  CHAP. 

not  in  the  constituencies,  but  in  their  representa- 
tives ;  not  in  the  small  number  of  the  one,  but  in 
the  smaller  integrity  of  the  other. 

The  evil  did  not  stop  where  it  began.  It  was 
not  merely  that  the  sinister  motive,  thus  engen- 
dered in  the  minds  of  too  lax  and  facile  men, 
induced  them  to  betray  their  legislative  trust,  and 
barter  their  own  uprightness  and  the  interests  of 
the  State.  The  acquisition  of  one  of  these  nefarious 
bribes  meant  much  more  than  a  sinister  vote.  It 
called  into  existence  a  champion  of  every  inveterate 
abuse  that  weighed  on  the  resources  of  the  country. 
There  is  a  well-known  passage  in  the  speech  on 
Economical  Reform,  in  which  the  speaker  shows 
what  an  insurmountable  obstacle  Lord  Talbot  had 
found  in  his  attempt  to  carry  out  certain  reforms 
in  the  royal  household,  in  the  fact  that  the  turnspit 
of  the  king's  kitchen  was  a  member  of  Parliament. 
"  On  that  rock  his  whole  adventure  split, — his 
whole  scheme  of  economy  was  dashed  to  pieces ; 
his  department  became  more  expensive  than  ever ; 
the  Civil  List  debt  accumulated."  Interference 
with  the  expenses  of  the  household  meant  inter- 
ference with  the  perquisites  or  fees  of  this  legisla- 
tive turnspit,  and  the  rights  of  sinecures  were  too 
sacred  to  be  touched.  In  comparison  with  them,  it 
counted  for  nothing  that  the  king's  tradesmen  went 
unpaid,  and  became  bankrupt ;  that  the  judges 
were  unpaid  ;  that  "  the  justice  of  the  kingdom 
bent  and  gave  way  ;  the  foreign  ministers  remained 
inactive  and  unprovided ;  the  system  of  Europe  was 
dissolved ;  the  chain  of  our  alliances  was  broken ; 
all  the  wheels  of  government  at  home  and  abroad 
were  stopped.  The  king's  turnspit  was  a  member 
of  Parliament" l  This  office,  and  numbers  of  others 
exactly  like  it,  existed  solely  because  the  House 

1  The  civil  list  at  this  time  comprehended  a  great  number  of  charges, 
such  as  those  of  which  Burke  speaks,  that  had  nothing  to  do  with  the 
sovereign  personally.  They  were  slowly  removed,  the  judicial  and  diplo- 
matic charges  being  transferred  on  the  accession  of  William  IV. 


ECONOMICAL  REFORM  87 

of  Commons  was  crowded  with  venal  men.  The 
post  of  royal  scullion  meant  a  vote  that  could 
be  relied  upon  under  every  circumstance  and  in 
all  emergencies.  And  each  incumbent  of  such  an 
office  felt  his  honour  and  interests  concerned  in  the 
defence  of  all  other  offices  of  the  same  scandalous 
description.  There  was  thus  maintained  a  strong 
standing  army  of  expensive,  lax,  and  corrupting 
officials. 

The  royal  household  was  a  gigantic  nest  of 
costly  jobbery  and  purposeless  profusion.  It 
retained  all  "  the  cumbrous  charge  of  a  Gothic 
establishment,"  though  all  its  usage  and  accom- 
modation had  "  shrunk  into  the  polished  littleness 
of  modern  elegance."  The  outlay  was  enormous. 
The  expenditure  on  the  court  tables  only  was  a 
thing  unfathomable.  Waste  was  the  rule  in  every 
branch  of  it.  There  was  an  office  for  the  Great 
Wardrobe,  another  office  of  the  Robes,  a  third  of 
the  Groom  of  the  Stole.  For  these  three  useless 
offices  there  were  three  useless  treasurers.  They 
all  laid  a  heavy  burden  on  the  taxpayer,  in  order 
to  supply  a  bribe  to  the  member  of  Parliament. 
The  plain  remedy  was  to  annihilate  the  subordinate 
treasuries.  "  Take  away,"  was  Burke's  demand, 
"  the  whole  establishment  of  detail  in  the  house- 
hold :  the  Treasurer,  the  Comptroller,  the  Cofferer 
of  the  Household,  the  Treasurer  of  the  Chamber, 
the  Master  of  the  Household,  the  whole  Board  of 
Green  Cloth  ;  a  vast  number  of  subordinate  offices 
in  the  department  of  the  Steward  of  the  Household  ; 
the  whole  establishment  of  the  Great  Wardrobe  ; 
the  Removing  Wardrobe  ;  the  Jewel  Office  ;  the 
Robes  ;  the  Board  of  Works."  The  abolition  of 
this  confused  and  costly  system  would  not  only 
diminish  expense  and  promote  efficiency ;  it  would 
do  still  more  excellent  service  in  destroying  the 
roots  of  parliamentary  corruption.  "  Under  other 
governments  a  question  of  expense  is  only  a  question 


88  BURKE  CHAP. 

of  economy,  and  it  is  nothing  more  ;  with  us,  in 
every  question  of  expense,  there  is  always  a  mixture 
of  constitutional  considerations." 

Places  and  pensions,  though  the  worst,  were 
not  by  any  means  the  only  stumbling-block  in  the 
way  of  pure  and  well-ordered  government.  The 
administration  of  the  estates  of  the  Crown, — the 
Principality,  the  Duchy  of  Cornwall,  the  Duchy 
of  Lancaster,  the  County  Palatine  of  Chester,— 
was  an  elaborate  system  of  obscure  and  wasteful 
expenditure.  Wales  had  to  herself  eight  judges, 
while  no  more  than  twelve  sufficed  to  perform  the 
whole  business  of  justice  in  England,  a  country  ten 
times  as  large  and  a  hundred  times  as  opulent. 
Wales,  and  each  of  the  duchies,  had  its  own 
Exchequer.  Every  one  of  these  principalities,  said 
Burke,  has  the  apparatus  of  a  kingdom,  for  the 
jurisdiction  over  a  few  private  estates  ;  it  has  the 
formality  and  charge  of  the  Exchequer  of  Great 
Britain,  for  collecting  the  rents  of  a  country  squire. 
They  were  the  field,  in  his  expressive  phrase,  of 
mock  jurisdictions  and  mimic  revenues,  of  difficult 
trifles  and  laborious  fooleries.  "  It  was  but  the 
other  day  that  that  pert  factious  fellow,  the  Duke 
of  Lancaster,  presumed  to  fly  in  the  face  of  his 
liege  lord,  our  gracious  sovereign — presumed  to  go 
to  law  with  the  king.  The  object  is  neither  your 
business  nor  mine.  Which  of  the  parties  got  the 
better  I  really  forget.  The  material  point  is  that 
the  suit  cost  about  £15,000.  But  as  the  Duke  of 
Lancaster  is  but  agent  of  Duke  Humphrey,  and 
not  worth  a  groat,  our  sovereign  was  obliged  to 
pay  the  costs  of  both."  The  system  involving 
these  costly  absurdities  Burke  proposed  entirely  to 
abolish.  In  the  same  spirit  he  wished  to  dispose 
of  the  Crown  lands  and  the  forest  lands,  which  it 
was  for  the  good  of  the  community,  not  less  than  of 
the  Crown  itself,  to  throw  into  the  hands  of  private 
owners. 


ECONOMICAL  REFORM  89 

One  of  the  most  important  of  these  projected 
reforms,  and  one  that  its  author  did  not  flinch 
from  carrying  out  two  years  later  to  his  own  loss, 
related  to  the  office  of  Paymaster.  This  functionary 
was  accustomed  to  hold  large  balances  of  the  public 
money  in  his  own  hands  and  for  his  own  profit,  for 
long  periods,  owing  to  a  complex  system  of  accounts 
so  rigorous  as  entirely  to  defeat  its  own  object. 
The  Paymaster  could  not,  through  the  multiplicity 
of  forms  and  the  exaction  of  impossible  conditions, 
get  a  prompt  acquittance.  The  audit  sometimes 
did  not  take  place  for  years  after  the  accounts  were 
virtually  closed.  Meanwhile  the  money  accumu- 
lated in  his  hands,  and  its  profits  were  his  legitimate 
perquisite.  Lord  Holland,  or  his  representatives, 
held  the  balances  of  his  office  from  1765,  when  he 
retired,  until  1778,  when  they  were  audited.  During 
this  time  he  realised,  as  the  interest  on  the  use  of 
these  balances,  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand pounds.  Burke  diverted  these  enormous  gains 
into  the  coffers  of  the  State.  He  fixed  the  Pay- 
master's salary  at  four  thousand  pounds  a  year, 
and  was  himself  the  first  person  who  accepted  the 
curtailed  income. 

Not  the  most  fervid  or  brilliant  of  Burke's  pieces, 
yet  the  speech  on  Economical  Reform  is  certainly 
not  the  least  instructive  or  impressive  of  them. 
It  gives  a  suggestive  view  of  the  relations  existing 
at  that  time  between  the  House  of  Commons  and 
the  court.  It  reveals  the  narrow  and  unpatriotic 
spirit  of  the  king  and  the  ministers,  who  could 
resist  proposals  so  reasonable  in  themselves,  and  so 
remedial  in  their  effects,  at  a  time  when  the  nation 
was  suffering  the  heavy  and  distressing  burdens  of 
the  most  disastrous  war  that  our  country  has  ever 
carried  on.  It  is  especially  interesting  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  its  author's  political  capacity.  At  a  moment 
when  committees  and  petitions  and  great  county 
meetings  showed  how  thoroughly  the  national  anger 


90  BURKE  CHAP. 

was  roused  against  the  existing  system,  Burke  came 
to  the  front  of  affairs  with  a  scheme,  of  which  the 
most  striking  characteristic  proved  to  be  that  it 
was  profoundly  temperate.  Bent  on  the  extirpa- 
tion of  the  system,  he  had  no  ill-will  towards  the 
men  who  had  happened  to  flourish  in  it.  "I  never 
will  suffer,"  he  said,  "  any  man  or  description  of 
men  to  surfer  from  errors  that  naturally  have  grown 
out  of  the  abusive  constitution  of  those  offices  that 
I  propose  to  regulate.  If  I  cannot  reform  with 
equity,  I  will  not  reform  at  all."  Exasperated  as  he 
was  by  the  fruitlessness  of  his  opposition  to  a  policy 
he  detested  from  the  bottom  of  his  soul,  it  would 
have  been  little  wonderful  if  he  had  resorted  to  every 
weapon  of  his  unrivalled  rhetorical  armoury,  in 
order  to  discredit  and  overthrow  the  whole  scheme 
of  government.  Yet  nothing  could  have  been 
further  from  his  mind  than  any  violent  or  extreme 
idea  of  this  sort.  Many  years  afterwards,  he  took 
credit  to  himself  less  for  what  he  did  on  this  occa- 
sion than  for  what  he  prevented  from  being  done. 
People  were  ready  for  a  new  modelling  of  the  two 
Houses  of  Parliament,  as  well  as  for  grave  modifica- 
tions of  the  Prerogative.  Burke  resisted  this  temper 
unflinchingly.  "  I  had,"  he  says,  "  a  state  to  pre- 
serve, as  well  as  a  state  to  reform.  I  had  a  people 
to  gratify,  but  not  to  inflame  or  to  mislead."  He 
then  recounts  without  exaggeration  the  pains  and 
caution  with  which  he  sought  reform,  while  steering 
clear  of  innovation.  He  heaved  the  lead  every 
inch  of  way  he  made.  It  is  grievous  to  think  that 
a  man  who  could  assume  such  an  attitude  at  such 
a  time,  who  could  give  this  kind  of  proof  of  his  skill 
in  the  great,  the  difficult  art  of  governing,  only  held 
a  fifth-rate  office  for  some  time  less  than  a  twelve- 
month. 

The  year  of  the  project  of  Economic  Reform 
(1780)  is  usually  taken  as  the  date  when  Burke's 
influence  and  repute  were  at  their  height.  He 


THE  ROCKINGHAM  MINISTRY          91 

had  not  been  tried  in  the  fire  of  official  responsi- 
bility, and  his  impetuosity  was  still  under  a  degree 
of  control  that  not  long  afterwards  was  fatally 
weakened  by  an  overmastering  irritability  of  con- 
stitution. High  as  his  character  was  now  in  the 
ascendant,  it  was  in  the  same  year  that  Burke 
suffered  the  sharp  mortification  of  losing  his  seat 
at  Bristol.  His  speech 'before  the  election  is  one 
of  the  best-known  of  all  his  performances ;  and  it 
well  deserves  to  be  so,  for  it  is  surpassed  by  none 
in  gravity,  elevation,  and  moral  dignity.  We  can 
only  wonder  that  a  constituency  which  could  suffer 
itself  to  be  addressed  on  this  high  level,  should  have 
allowed  the  small  selfishness  of  local  interest  to 
weigh  against  such  wisdom  and  nobility.  But 
Burke  soon  found  in  the  course  of  his  canvass  that 
he  had  no  chance,  and  he  declined  to  go  to  the  poll. 
On  the  previous  day  one  of  his  competitors  had 
fallen  down  dead.  "  What  shadows  we  are,"  said 
Burke,  "  and  what  shadows  we  pursue  !  ' 

In  1782  Lord  North's  government  came  to  an 
end,  and  the  king  "  was  pleased,"  as  Lord  North 
quoted  with  jesting  irony  from  the  Gazette,  to  send 
for  Lord  Rockingham,  Charles  Fox,  and  Lord 
Shelburne.  Members  could  hardly  believe  their 
own  eyes,  as  they  saw  Lord  North  and  the  members 
of  a  government  that  had  been  in  place  for  twelve 
years,  now  lounging  on  the  Opposition  benches  in 
their  greatcoats,  frocks,  and  boots,  while  Fox  and 
Burke  shone  in  the  full  dress  that  was  then  worn 
by  ministers,  and  cut  unwonted  figures  with  swords, 
lace,  and  hair -powder.  Sheridan  was  made  an 
Under-Secretary  of  State,  and  to  the  younger  Pitt 
was  offered  his  choice  of  various  minor  posts,  which 
he  haughtily  refused.  Burke,  to  whom  on  their 
own  admission  the  party  owed  everything,  was 
appointed  Paymaster  of  the  Forces,  with  a  salary  of 
four  thousand  pounds  a  year.  His  brother,  Richard 
Burke,  was  made  Secretary  of  the  Treasury.  His 


92  BURKE  CHAP. 

son  Richard  was  named  to  be  his  father's  deputy 
at  the  Pay- Office,  with  a  salary  of  five  hundred 
pounds. 

This  singular  exclusion  from  Cabinet  office  of 
the  most  powerful  genius  of  the  party  has  naturally 
given  rise  to  abundant  criticism  ever  since.  It  will 
be  convenient  to  say  what  there  is  to  be  said  on 
this  subject,  in  connection  with  the  events  of  1788 
(below,  p.  132),  because  there  happens  to  exist  some 
useful  information  about  the  ministerial  crisis  of 
that  year,  which  sheds  a  clearer  light  upon  the 
arrangements  of  six  years  before.  Meanwhile  it  is 
enough  to  say  that  Burke  himself  had  most  reason- 
ably looked  to  some  higher  post.  There  is  the 
distinct  note  of  the  humility  of  mortified  pride  in  a 
letter  written  in  reply  to  some  one  who  had  applied 
to  him  for  a  place.  "  You  have  been  misinformed," 
he  says  ;  "  I  make  no  part  of  the  ministerial  arrange- 
ment. Something  in  the  official  line  may  possibly 
be  thought  fit  for  my  measure."  Burke  knew  that 
his  position  in  the  country  entitled  him  to  some- 
thing above  the  official  line.  In  a  later  year,  when 
he  felt  himself  called  upon  to  defend  his  pension, 
he  described  what  his  position  was  in  the  momentous 
crisis  from  1780  to  1782,  and  Burke's  habitual 
veraciousness  forbids  us  to  treat  the  description  as 
in  any  way  exaggerated.  "  By  what  accident  it 
matters  not,"  he  says,  "  nor  upon  what  desert,  but 
just  then,  and  in  the  midst  of  that  hunt  of  obloquy 
which  has  ever  pursued  me  with  a  full  cry  through 
life,  I  had  obtained  a  very  full  degree  of  public 
confidence.  .  .  .  Nothing  to  prevent  disorder  was 
omitted ;  when  it  appeared,  nothing  to  subdue  it 
was  left  uncounselled  nor  unexecuted,  as  far  as  I 
could  prevail.  At  the  time  I  speak  of,  and  having 
a  momentary  lead,  so  aided  and  so  encouraged,  and 
as  a  feeble  instrument  in  a  mighty  hand — I  do  not 
say  I  saved  my  country — I  am  sure  I  did  my 
country  important  service.  There  were  few  indeed 


POLITICAL  CRISIS  93 

that  did  not  at  that  time  acknowledge  it — and  that 
time  was  thirteen  years  ago.  It  was  but  one  view, 
that  no  man  in  the  kingdom  better  deserved  an 
honourable  provision  should  be  made  for  him."  l 

We  have  seen  that  Burke  had  fixed  the  Pay- 
master's salary  at  four  thousand  pounds,  and  had 
destroyed  the  extravagant  perquisites.  The  other 
economical  reforms  that  were  actually  effected 
fell  short  by  a  long  way  of  those  which  Burke  had 
so  industriously  devised  and  so  forcibly  recom- 
mended. In  1782,  while  Burke  declined  to  spare 
his  own  office,  the  chief  of  the  Cabinet  conferred 
upon  Barre  a  pension  of  over  three  thousand  a  year  ; 
above  ten  times  the  amount,  as  has  been  said,  which, 
in  Lord  Rockingham's  own  judgment,  as  expressed 
in  the  new  Bill,  ought  henceforth  to  be  granted  to 
any  one  person  whatever.  This  shortcoming,  how- 
ever, does  not  detract  from  Burke's  merit.  He  was 
not  responsible  for  it.  The  eloquence,  ingenuity, 
diligence,  above  all,  the  sagacity  and  the  justice  of 
this  great  effort  of  1780,  are  none  the  less  worthy  of 
our  admiration  and  regard  because,  in  1782,  his 
chiefs,  partly  perhaps  out  of  a  new-born  deference 
for  the  feelings  of  their  royal  master,  showed  that 
the  possession  of  office  had  sensibly  cooled  the  ardent 
aspirations  proper  to  Opposition. 

The  events  of  the  twenty  months  between  the 
resignation  of  Lord  North  (1782)  and  the  accession 
of  Pitt  to  the  office  of  Prime  Minister  (December 
1783)  mark  an  important  crisis  in  political  history, 
and  they  mark  an  important  crisis  in  Burke's  career 
and  hopes.  Lord  Rockingham  had  just  been  three 
months  in  office,  when  he  died  (July  1782).  This 
dissolved  the  bond  that  held  the  two  sections  of  the 
ministry  together,  and  let  loose  a  flood  of  rival 
ambitions  and  sharp  animosities.  Lord  Shelburne 
believed  himself  to  have  an  irresistible  claim  to 
the  chief  post  in  the  administration  ;  among  other 

1  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord. 


94  BURKE  CHAP. 

reasons,  because  he  might  have  had  it  before  Lord 
Rockingham  three  months  earlier,  if  he  had  so  chosen. 
The  king  supported  him,  not  from  any  partiality 
to  his  person,  but  because  he  dreaded  and  hated 
Charles  Fox.  The  character  of  Shelburne  is  one  of 
the  perplexities  of  the  time.  His  views  on  peace 
and  free  trade  make  him  one  of  the  precursors  of 
the  Manchester  School.  No  minister  was  so  well 
informed  as  to  the  threads  of  policy  in  foreign 
countries.  He  was  the  intimate  or  the  patron  of 
men  who  now  stand  out  as  among  the  first  lights 
of  that  time — of  Morellet,  of  Priestley,  of  Bentham. 
Yet  a  few  months  of  power  seem  to  have  disclosed 
faults  of  character,  that  left  him  without  a  single 
political  friend,  and  blighted  him  with  irreparable 
discredit.  Fox,  who  was  now  the  head  of  the 
Rockingham  section  of  the  Whigs,  had,  before  the 
death  of  the  late  Premier,  been  on  the  point  of 
refusing  to  serve  any  longer  with  Lord  Shelburne, 
and  he  now  very  promptly  refused  to  serve  under 
him.  When  Parliament  met  after  Rockingham's 
death,  gossips  noticed  that  Fox  and  Burke  continued, 
long  after  the  Speaker  had  taken  the  chair,  to  walk 
backwards  and  forwards  in  the  Court  of  Requests, 
engaged  in  earnest  conversation.  According  to  one 
story,  Burke  was  very  reluctant  to  abandon  an  office 
whose  emoluments  were  as  convenient  to  him  as  to 
his  spendthrift  colleague.  According  to  another  and 
more  probable  legend,  it  was  Burke  who  hurried  the 
rupture,  and  stimulated  Fox's  jealousy  of  Shelburne. 
The  Duke  of  Richmond  disapproved  of  the  secession, 
and  remained  in  the  government.  Sheridan  also  dis- 
approved, but  he  sacrificed  his  personal  conviction 
to  loyalty  to  Fox. 

If  Burke  was  responsible  for  the  break-up  of 
the  government,  then  he  was  the  instigator  of  a 
blunder  that  must  be  pronounced  not  only  disas- 
trous but  culpable.  It  lowered  the  legitimate  spirit 
of  party  to  the  nameless  spirit  of  faction.  The 


LORD  SHELBURNE  95 

dangers  from  which  the  old  liberties  of  the  realm 
had  just  emerged  have  been  described  by  no  one 
so  forcibly  as  by  Burke  himself.  No  one  was  so 
convinced  as  Burke  that  the  only  way  of  with- 
standing the  arbitrary  and  corrupting  policy  of  the 
court  was  to  form  a  strong  Whig  party.  No  one 
knew  better  than  he  the  sovereign  importance  and 
the  immense  difficulty  of  repairing  the  ruin  of  the 
last  twelve  years  by  a  good  peace.  The  Rocking- 
ham  or  Foxite  section  were  obviously  unable  to 
form  an  effective  party  with  serious  expectation 
of  power,  unless  they  had  allies.  They  might,  no 
doubt,  from  personal  dislike  to  Lord  Shelburne, 
refuse  to  work  under  him ;  but  personal  dislike 
could  be  no  excuse  for  formally  and  violently 
working  against  him,  when  his  policy  was  their 
own,  and  when  its  success  was  recognised  by  them 
no  less  than  by  him  as  of  urgent  moment.  Instead 
of  either  working  with  the  other  section  of  their 
party,  or  of  supporting  from  below  the  gangway 
that  which  was  the  policy  of  both  sections,  they 
sought  to  return  to  power  by  coalescing  with  the 
very  man  whose  criminal  subservience  to  the  king's 
will  had  brought  about  the  catastrophe  that  Shel- 
burne was  repairing.  Burke  must  share  the  blame 
of  this  famous  transaction.  He  was  one  of  the 
most  furious  assailants  of  the  new  ministry.  He 
poured  out  a  fresh  invective  against  Lord  Shelburne 
every  day.  Cynical  contemporaries  laughed  as 
they  saw  him  in  search  of  more  and  more  humiliat- 
ing parallels,  ransacking  all  literature  from  the 
Bible  and  the  Roman  history  down  to  Mother 
Goose's  tales.  His  passion  carried  him  so  far  as  to 
breed  a  reaction  in  those  who  listened  to  him.  "  I 
think,"  wrote  Mason  from  Yorkshire,  where  Burke 
had  been  on  a  visit  to  Lord  FitzwiUiam  in  the 
autumn  of  1782,  "that  Burke's  mad  obloquy 
against  Lord  Shelburne,  and  these  insolent  pam- 
phlets in  which  he  must  have  had  a  hand,  will  do 


96  BURKE 


CHAP. 


more  to  fix  him  (Shelburne)  in  his  office  than  any- 
thing else." 

This  result  would  have  actually  followed,  for 
the  nation  was  ill  pleased  at  the  immoral  alliance 
between  the  Foxites  and  the  man  whom,  if  they 
had  been  true  to  their  opinions  a  thousand  times 
repeated,  they  ought  at  that  moment  to  have  been 
impeaching.  The  dissenters,  who  had  hitherto 
been  his  enthusiastic  admirers,  but  who  are  rigid 
above  other  men  in  their  demand  of  political  con- 
sistency, lamented  Burke's  fall  in  joining  the 
Coalition,  as  Priestley  told  him  many  years  after, 
as  the  fall  of  a  friend  and  a  brother.  But  Shel- 
burne threw  away  the  game.  "His  falsehoods," 
says  Horace  Walpole,  "  his  flatteries,  duplicity, 
insincerity,  arrogance,  contradictions,  neglect  of 
his  friends,  with  all  the  kindred  of  all  these  faults, 
were  the  daily  topics  of  contempt  and  ridicule ; 
and  his  folly  shut  his  eyes,  nor  did  he  perceive 
that  so  very  rapid  a  fall  must  have  been  owing 
to  his  own  incapacity."  This  is  the  testimony  of 
a  hostile  witness.  It  is  borne  out,  however,  by  a 
circumstance  of  striking  significance.  When  the 
king  recovered  the  reins  at  the  end  of  1783,  not 
only  did  he  send  for  Pitt  instead  of  for  Shelburne, 
but  Pitt  himself  neither  invited  Shelburne  to  join 
him,  nor  in  any  way  ever  consulted  him  then  or 
afterwards,  though  he  had  been  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  in  Shelburne's  own  administration. 

Whatever  the  causes  may  have  been,  the 
administration  fell  in  the  spring  of  1783.  It 
was  succeeded  by  the  memorable  ministry  of  the 
Coalition,  in  which  Fox  and  Lord  North  divided 
the  real  power  under  the  nominal  lead  of  the 
Duke  of  Portland.  Members  saw  Lord  North 
squeezed  up  on  the  Treasury  bench  between  two 
men  who  had  a  year  before  been  daily  menacing 
him  with  the  axe  and  the  block ;  and  it  was  not 
North  whom  they  blamed,  but  Burke  and  Fox. 


FOX'S  INDIA  BILL  97 

Burke  had  returned  to  the  Pay-Office.  His  first 
act  there  was  unfortunate.  He  restored  to  their 
position  two  clerks  who  had  been  suspended  for 
malversation,  and  against  whom  proceedings  were 
then  pending.  When  attacked  for  this  in  the 
House,  he  showed  an  irritation  that  would  have 
carried  him  to  gross  lengths,  if  Fox  and  Sheridan 
had  not  by  main  force  pulled  him  down  into  his 
seat  by  the  tails  of  his  coat.  The  restoration  of 
the  clerks  was  an  indefensible  error  of  judgment, 
and  its  indiscretion  was  heightened  by  the  kind 
of  defence  which  Burke  tried  to  set  up.  When 
we  wonder  at  Burke's  exclusion  from  great  offices, 
this  case  of  Powell  and  Bembridge  should  not  be 
forgotten. 

The  decisive  event  in  the  history  of  the  Coali- 
tion Government  was  the  India  Bill.  The  Reports 
of  the  various  select  committees  upon  Indian 
affairs — the  most  important  of  them  all,  the  ninth 
and  eleventh,  having  been  drawn  up  by  Burke 
himself — had  shown  conclusively  that  the  existing 
system  of  government  was  thoroughly  corrupt  and 
thoroughly  inadequate.  It  is  ascertained  pretty 
conclusively  that  the  Bill  for  replacing  that  system 
was  conceived  and  drawn  by  Burke,  and  that  to 
him  belongs  whatever  merit  or  demerit  it  might 
possess.  It  was  Burke  who  infected  Fox  with  his 
own  ardour,  and  then,  as  Moore  justly  says,  the 
self-kindling  power  of  Fox's  eloquence  threw  such 
fire  into  his  defence  of  the  measure,  that  he  forgot, 
and  his  hearers  never  found  out,  that  his  views 
were  not  originally  and  spontaneously  his  own. 
The  novelty  on  which  the  great  stress  of  discussion 
was  laid  was  that  the  Bill  withdrew  power  from  the 
Board  of  Directors,  and  vested  the  government  for 
four  years  in  a  commission  of  seven  persons  named 
in  the  Bill,  and  not  removable  by  the  House. 

Burke  was  so  convinced  of  the  incurable  iniquity 
of  the  company,  so  persuaded  that  it  was  not  only 

H 


98  BURKE  CHAP. 

full  of  abuses,  but,  as  he  said,  one  of  the  most 
corrupt  and  destructive  tyrannies  that  probably 
ever  existed  in  the  world,  as  to  be  content  with 
nothing  short  of  the  absolute  deprivation  of  its 
power.  He  avowed  himself  no  lover  of  names, 
and  that  he  only  contended  for  good  government, 
from  whatever  quarter  it  might  come.  But  the 
idea  of  good  government  coming  from  the  com- 
pany he  declared  to  be  desperate  and  untenable. 
This  intense  animosity,  which,  considering  his 
long  and  close  familiarity  with  the  infamies  of 
the  rule  of  the  company's  servants,  was  not  un- 
natural, must  be  allowed,  however,  to  have  blinded 
him  to  the  grave  objections  really  existing  to  his 
scheme.  In  the  first  place,  the  Bill  was  indis- 
putably inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  his  revered 
constitution.  For  the  legislature  to  assume  the 
power  of  naming  the  members  of  an  executive 
body  was  an  extraordinary  and  mischievous  in- 
novation. Then,  to  put  patronage,  that  has  been 
estimated  by  a  sober  authority  at  about  three 
hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year,  into  the  hands 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  was  still  more  mis- 
chievous and  still  less  justifiable.  Worst  of  all, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  projectors  themselves, 
after  a  certain  time  the  nomination  of  the  Com- 
missioners would  fall  to  the  Crown,  and  this  might 
in  certain  contingencies  increase  to  a  most  dangerous 
extent  the  ascendancy  of  the  royal  authority.  If 
Burke's  measure  had  been  carried,  moreover,  the 
patronage  would  have  been  transferred  to  a  body 
much  less  competent  than  the  directors  to  judge 
of  the  qualities  required  in  the  fulfilment  of  this 
or  that  administrative  charge.  Indian  promotion 
would  have  followed  parliamentary  and  party 
interest.  In  the  hands  of  the  directors  there  was 
at  least  a  partial  security,  in  their  professional 
knowledge,  and  their  personal  interest  in  the  success 
of  their  government,  that  places  would  not  be  given 


FOX'S  INDIA  BILL  99 

away  on  irrelevant  considerations.  Their  system, 
with  all  its  faults,  ensured  the  acquisition  of  a  certain 
considerable  competency  in  administration  before 
a  servant  reached  an  elevation  at  which  he  could 
do  much  harm. 

Burke  defended  the  Bill  (December  1,  1783)  in 
one  of  the  speeches  that  rank  only  below  his 
greatest,  and  it  contains  two  or  three  passages  of 
unsurpassed  energy  and  impressiveness.  Everybody 
knows  the  fine  page  about  Fox  as  the  descendant 
of  Henry  IV.  of  France,  and  the  happy  quotation 
from  Silius  Italicus.  Every  book  of  British  elo- 
quence contains  the  magnificent  description  of  the 
young  magistrates  who  undertake  the  government 
and  the  spoliation  of  India  ;  how,  "  animated  with 
all  the  avarice  of  age,  and  all  the  impetuosity  of 
youth,  they  roll  in  one  after  another,  wave  after 
wave  ;  and  there  is  nothing  before  the  eyes  of  the 
natives  but  an  endless,  hopeless  prospect  of  new 
flights  of  birds  of  prey  and  of  passage,  with  appetites 
continually  renewing  for  a  food  that  is  continually 
wasting."  How  they  return  home  laden  with 
spoil ;  "  their  prey  is  lodged  in  England  ;  and  the 
cries  of  India  are  given  to  seas  and  winds,  to  be 
blown  about,  in  every  breaking  up  of  the  monsoon, 
over  a  remote  and  unhearing  ocean."  How  in 
India  all  the  vices  operate  by  which  sudden  fortune 
is  acquired  ;  while  in  England  are  often  displayed 
by  the  same  person  the  virtues  dispensing  hereditary 
wealth,  so  that  "  here  the  manufacturer  and  the 
husbandman  will  bless  the  just  and  punctual  hand 
that  in  India  has  torn  the  cloth  from  the  loom,  or 
wrested  the  scanty  portion  of  rice  and  salt  from 
the  peasant  of  Bengal,  or  wrung  from  him  the  very 
opium  in  which  he  forgot  his  oppression  and  his 
oppressors." 

No  degree  of  eloquence,  however,  could  avail 
to  repair  faults  alike  in  structure  and  in  tactics. 
The  whole  design  was  a  masterpiece  of  hardihood, 


100  BURKE  CHAP,  v 

miscalculation,  and  mismanagement.  The  combina- 
tion of  interests  against  the  Bill  was  instant,  and 
it  was  indeed  formidable.  The  great  army  of 
returned  nabobs,  of  directors,  of  proprietors  of 
East  India  stock,  rose  up  in  all  its  immense  force. 
Every  member  of  every  corporation  that  enjoyed 
privilege  by  charter,  felt  the  attack  on  the  com- 
pany as  if  it  had  been  a  blow  directed  against 
himself.  The  general  public  had  no  particular 
passion  for  purity  or  good  government,  and  the 
best  portion  of  the  public  was  disgusted  with  the 
Coalition.  The  king  saw  his  chance.  With  politic 
audacity  he  put  so  strong  a  personal  pressure  on 
the  peers,  that  they  threw  out  the  Bill  (December 
1783).  It  was  to  no  purpose  that  Fox  compared 
the  Lords  to  the  Janissaries  of  a  Turkish  Sultan, 
and  the  king's  letter  to  Temple  to  the  rescript  in 
which  Tiberius  ordered  the  upright  Sejanus  to  be 
destroyed.  Ministers  were  dismissed,  the  young 
Pitt  was  installed  in  their  place,  and  the  Whigs 
were  ruined.  As  a  party,  they  had  a  few  months 
of  office  after  Pitt's  death,  but  they  were  excluded 
from  power  for  half  a  century. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BURKE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS 

THOUGH  Burke  had,  at  a  critical  period  of  his  life, 
definitely  abandoned  the  career  of  letters,  he  never 
withdrew  from  close  intimacy  with  the  groups 
who  still  live  for  us  in  the  pages  of  Boswell,  as 
no  other  literary  group  in  our  history  lives.  Gold- 
smith's famous  lines  in  Retaliation  show  how  they 
all  deplored  that  he  should  to  party  give  up  what 
was  meant  for  mankind.  They  often  told  one 
another  that  Edmund  Burke  was  the  man  whose 
genius  pointed  him  out  as  the  triumphant  cham- 
pion of  faith  and  sound  philosophy  against  deism, 
atheism,  and  David  Hume.  They  loved  to  see  him, 
as  Goldsmith  said,  wind  into  his  subject  like  a 
serpent.  Everybody  felt  at  the  Literary  Club  that 
he  had  no  superior  in  knowledge,  and  in  colloquial 
dialectics  only  one  equal.  Garrick  was  there, 
and  of  all  the  names  of  the  time  he  is  the  man 
whom  one  would  perhaps  most  willingly  have  seen, 
because  the  gifts  that  threw  not  only  English- 
men, but  Frenchmen  like  Diderot,  and  Germans 
like  Lichtenberg,  into  amazement  and  ecstasy,  are 
exactly  the  gifts  that  literary  description  can  do 
least  to  reproduce.  Burke  was  one  of  his  strongest 
admirers,  and  there  was  no  more  zealous  attendant 
at  the  closing  series  of  performances  in  which  the 
great  monarch  of  the  stage  abdicated  his  throne. 
In  the  last  pages  that  he  wrote,  Burke  refers  to 
his  ever  dear  friend  Garrick,  dead  nearly  twenty 

101 


102  BURKE  CHAP. 

years  before,  as  the  first  of  actors  because  he  was 
the  acutest  observer  of  nature  that  he  had  ever 
known.  Then  among  men  who  pass  for  being  more 
serious  than  players,  Robertson  was  often  in  London 
society,  and  he  attracted  Burke  by  his  largeness 
and  breadth.  He  sent  a  copy  of  his  History  of 
America,  and  Burke  thanked  him  with  many  stately 
compliments  for  having  employed  philosophy  to 
judge  of  manners,  and  from  manners  having  drawn 
new  resources  of  philosophy.  Gibbon  was  there, 
but  the  bystanders  felt  what  was  too  crudely 
expressed  by  Mackintosh,  that  Gibbon  might  have 
been  taken  from  a  corner  of  Burke's  mind  without 
ever  being  missed.  Though  Burke  and  Gibbon 
constantly  met,  it  is  not  likely  that,  until  the 
Revolution,  there  was  much  intimacy  between 
them,  in  spite  of  the  respect  each  of  them  might 
well  have  had  for  the  vast  knowledge  of  the  other. 
When  the  Decline  and  Fall  was  published,  Burke 
read  it  as  everybody  else  did  ;  but  he  told  Reynolds 
he  disliked  the  style,  as  very  affected,  mere  frippery 
and  tinsel.  Sir  Joshua  himself  was  neither  a  man 
of  letters  nor  a  keen  politician ;  but  he  was  full 
of  literary  ideas  and  interests,  and  he  was  among 
Burke's  warmest  and  most  constant  friends,  follow- 
ing him  with  an  admiration  and  reverence  that  even 
Johnson  sometimes  thought  excessive.  The  reader 
of  Reynolds's  famous  Discourses  will  probably  share 
the  wonder  of  his  contemporaries,  that  a  man 
whose  time  was  so  absorbed  in  the  practice  of  his 
art,  should  have  proved  himself  so  excellent  a 
master  in  the  expression  of  some  of  its  principles. 
Burke  was  commonly  credited  with  a  large  share 
in  their  composition,  but  the  evidence  goes  no 
further  than  that  Reynolds  used  to  talk  them 
over  with  him.  The  friendship  between  the  pair 
was  full  and  unalloyed.  What  Burke  admired  in 
the  great  artist  was  his  sense  and  his  morals,  no  less 
than  his  genius ;  and  to  a  man  of  his  fervid  and 


vi  BURKE  AND  DR.  JOHNSON  103 

excitable  temper  there  was  the  most  attractive  of 
all  charms  in  Sir  Joshua's  placidity,  gentleness, 
evenness,  and  the  habit,  as  one  of  his  friends  de- 
scribed it,  of  being  the  same  all  the  year  round. 
When  Reynolds  died  in  1792,  he  appointed  Burke 
one  of  his  executors,  and  left  him  a  legacy  of  two 
thousand  pounds,  besides  cancelling  a  bond  of  the 
same  amount. 

Johnson,  however,  is  the  only  member  of  that 
illustrious  company  who  can  profitably  be  com- 
pared with  Burke  in  strength  and  impressiveness 
of  personality,  in  a  large  sensibility  at  once  serious 
and  genial,  in  brooding  care  for  all  the  fulness  of 
human  life.  This  striking  pair  were  the  two  com- 
plements of  a  single  noble  and  solid  type,  holding 
tenaciously,  in  a  century  of  dissolvent  speculation, 
to  the  best  ideas  of  a  society  that  was  slowly 
passing.  They  were  powerless  to  hinder  the  in- 
evitable transformation.  One  of  them  did  not 
even  dimly  foresee  it.  But  both  of  them  help 
us  to  understand  how  manliness  and  reverence, 
strength  and  tenderness,  love  of  truth  and  pity  for 
man,  all  flourished  under  old  institutions  and  old 
ways  of  thinking,  into  which  the  forces  of  the  time 
were  even  then  silently  breathing  a  new  spirit. 
The  friendship  between  Burke  and  Johnson  lasted 
as  long  as  they  lived ;  and  if  we  remember  that 
Johnson  was  a  strong  Tory,  and  declared  that  the 
first  Whig  was  the  devil,  and  habitually  talked 
about  cursed  Whigs  and  bottomless  Whigs,  it  is 
an  extraordinary  fact  that  his  relations  with  the 
greatest  Whig  writer  and  politician  of  his  day  were 
marked  by  a  cordiality,  respect,  and  admiration 
that  never  varied  nor  wavered.  "  Burke,"  he  said 
in  a  well-known  passage,  "  is  such  a  man  that  if 
you  met  him  for  the  first  time  in  the  street,  where 
you  were  stopped  by  a  drove  of  oxen,  and  you  and 
he  stepped  aside  to  take  shelter  but  for  five  minutes, 
he'd  talk  to  you  in  such  a  manner  that,  when  you 


104  BURKE  CHAP. 

parted,  you  would  say,  This  is  an  extraordinary 
man.  He  is  never  what  we  would  call  humdrum  ; 
never  unwilling  to  begin  to  talk,  nor  in  haste  to 
leave  off."  That  Burke  was  as  good  a  listener  as 
he  was  a  talker,  Johnson  never  would  allow.  "  So 
desirous  is  he  to  talk,"  he  said,  "  that  if  one  is 
talking  at  this  end  of  the  table,  he'll  talk  to  some- 
body at  the  other  end."  Johnson  was  far  too  good 
a  critic,  and  too  honest  a  man,  to  assent  to  a  remark 
of  Robertson's,  that  Burke  had  wit.  "  No,  sir," 
said  the  sage,  most  truly,  "  he  never  succeeds 
there.  'Tis  low,  'tis  conceit."  Wit  apart,  he  de- 
scribed Burke  as  the  only  man  whose  common 
conversation  corresponded  to  his  general  fame  in 
the  world ;  take  up  whatever  topic  you  might 
please,  he  was  ready  to  meet  you.  When  Burke 
found  a  seat  in  Parliament,  Johnson  said,  "  Now 
we  who  know  Burke,  know  that  he  will  be  one  of 
the  first  men  in  the  country."  He  did  not  grudge 
that  Burke  should  be  the  first  man  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  for  Burke,  he  said,  was  always  the 
first  man  everywhere.  Once  when  he  was  ill,  some- 
body mentioned  Burke 's  name.  Johnson  cried  out, 
"  That  fellow  calls  forth  all  my  powers ;  were  I  to 
see  Burke  now  it  would  kill  me." 

Burke  heartily  returned  this  high  appreciation. 
When  some  flatterer  hinted  that  Johnson  had 
taken  more  than  his  right  share  of  the  evening's 
talk,  Burke  said,  "  Nay,  it  is  enough  for  me  to 
have  rung  the  bell  for  him."  Some  one  else  spoke 
of  a  successful  imitation  of  Johnson's  style.  Burke 
with  vehemence  denied  the  success  :  the  perform- 
ance, he  said,  had  the  pomp,  but  not  the  force  of 
the  original ;  the  nodosities  of  the  oak,  but  not  its 
strength ;  the  contortions  of  the  sibyl,  but  none 
of  the  inspiration.  When  Burke  showed  the  old 
sage  of  Bolt  Court  over  his  fine  house  and  pleasant 
gardens  at  Beaconsfield,  Non  invideo  equidem, 
Johnson  said,  with  placid  good-will,  miror  magis. 


BURKE  AND  DR.  JOHNSOfr  105 

They  always  parted  in  the  deep  and  pregnant 
phrase  of  a  sage  of  our  own  day,  except  in  opinion 
not  disagreeing.  In  truth,  the  explanation  of  the 
sympathy  between  them  is  not  far  to  seek.  We 
may  well  believe  that  Johnson  was  tacitly  alive  to 
the  essentially  conservative  spirit  of  Burke  even 
in  his  most  Whiggish  days.  And  Burke  pene- 
trated the  liberality  of  mind  in  a  Tory,  who  called 
out  with  loud  indignation  that  the  Irish  were  in  a 
most  unnatural  state,  for  there  the  minority  pre- 
vailed over  the  majority,  and  the  severity  of  the 
persecution  exercised  by  the  Protestants  of  Ireland 
against  the  Catholics  exceeded  that  of  the  ten 
historic  persecutions  of  the  Christian  Church. 

The  parties  at  Beaconsfield,  and  the  evenings 
at  the  "  Turk's  Head "  in  Gerrard  Street,  were 
contemporary  with  the  famous  days  at  Holbach's 
country  house  at  Grandval.  When  we  think  of 
the  reckless  themes  that  were  so  recklessly  dis- 
cussed by  Holbach,  Diderot,  and  the  rest  of  that 
indefatigable  band,  we  feel  that,  as  against  the 
French  philosophic  party,  an  English  Tory  like 
Johnson  and  an  English  Whig  like  Burke  would 
have  found  their  own  differences  too  minute  to  be 
worth  considering.  If  the  group  from  the  "  Turk's 
Head "  could  have  been  transported  for  an  after- 
noon to  Grandval,  perhaps  Johnson  would  have  been 
the  less  impatient  and  disgusted  of  the  two.  He 
had  the  capacity  of  the  more  genial  sort  of  casuist 
for  playing  with  subjects,  even  moral  subjects, 
with  the  freedom,  versatility,  and  ease  that  are 
proper  to  literature.  Burke,  on  the  contrary,  would 
not  have  failed  to  see,  as  indeed  we  know  he  did 
not  fail  to  see,  that  a  social  pandemonium  was 
being  prepared  in  this  intellectual  paradise  of  open 
questions,  where  God  and  a  future  life,  marriage 
and  the  family,  every  dogma  of  religion,  every 
prescription  of  morality,  and  all  those  mysteries 
and  pieties  of  human  life  that  have  been  sanctified 


106  BURKE 


CHAP. 


by  the  reverence  of  ages,  were  being  busily  pulled 
to  pieces  as  if  they  had  been  toys  in  the  hands  of 
a  company  of  sportive  children.  Even  the  Beggar's 
Opera  Burke  could  not  endure  to  hear  praised  for 
its  wit  or  its  music,  because  his  mind  was  filled 
by  thought  of  its  misplaced  levity,  and  he  only 
saw  the  mischief  such  a  performance  tended  to  do 
to  society.  It  would  be  hard  to  defend  his  judg- 
ment in  this  particular  case,  but  it  serves  to  show 
how  Burke  was  never  content  with  the  literary 
point  of  view,  and  how  ready  and  vigilant  he  was 
for  effects  more  profound  than  those  of  formal 
criticism.  It  is  true  that  Johnson  was  sometimes 
not  less  austere  in  condemning  a  great  work  of  art 
for  its  bad  morality.  The  only  time  when  he  was 
really  angry  with  Hannah  More  was  on  his  finding 
that  she  had  read  Tom  Jones — that  vicious  book, 
he  called  it ;  he  hardly  knew  a  more  corrupt  work. 
Burke's  tendency  towards  severity  of  moral  judg- 
ment, however,  never  impaired  the  geniality  and 
tenderness  of  his  relations  with  those  whom  he 
loved.  Bennet  Langton  gave  Boswell  an  affecting 
account  of  Burke's  last  interview  with  Johnson. 
A  few  days  before  the  old  man's  death,  Burke  and 
four  or  five  other  friends  were  sitting  round  his 
bedside.  "  Mr.  Burke  said  to  him,  4 1  am  afraid, 
sir,  such  a  number  of  us  may  be  oppressive  to  you.' 
4  No,  sir,'  said  Johnson,  c  it  is  not  so ;  and  I  must 
be  in  a  wretched  state  indeed  when  your  company 
is  not  a  delight  to  me.'  Mr.  Burke,  in  a  tremulous 
voice,  expressive  of  being  very  tenderly  affected, 
replied,  '  My  dear  sir,  you  have  always  been  too 
good  to  me.'  Immediately  afterwards  he  went 
away.  This  was  the  last  circumstance  in  the 
acquaintance  of  these  two  eminent  men." 

One  of  Burke's  strongest  political  intimacies 
was  only  less  interesting  and  significant  than  his 
friendship  with  Johnson.  William  Dowdeswell  had 
been  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in  the  short 


vi  CRABBE  107 

Rockingham  administration  of  1765.  He  had  no 
brilliant  gifts,  but  he  had  what  was  then  thought 
a  profound  knowledge  both  of  the  principles  and 
details  of  the  administration  of  the  national  revenue. 
He  was  industrious,  steadfast,  clear-headed,  inexor- 
ably upright.  "  Immersed  in  the  greatest  affairs," 
as  Burke  said  in  his  epitaph,  "  he  never  lost  the 
ancient,  native,  genuine  English  character  of  a 
country  gentleman."  And  this  was  the  character 
in  which  Burke  now  and  always  saw  not  only 
the  true  political  barrier  against  despotism  on  the 
one  hand  and  the  rabble  on  the  other,  but  the 
best  moral  type  of  civic  virtue.  Those  who  admire 
Burke,  but  cannot  share  his  admiration  for  the 
country  gentleman,  will  perhaps  justify  him  by 
the  assumption  that  he  clothed  his  favourite  with 
ideal  qualities  that  ought  to  have  belonged  to  that 
position,  even  if  they  did  not. 

In  his  own  modest  imitation  and  on  his  own 
humble  scale  he  was  a  pattern  of  the  activity  in 
public  duty,  the  hospitality  towards  friends,  the 
assiduous  protection  of  neglected  worth,  that  ought 
to  be  among  the  chief  virtues  of  high  station.  It 
would  perhaps  be  doubly  unsafe  to  take  for  granted 
that  many  of  our  readers  have  both  turned  over 
the  pages  of  Crabbe's  Borough,  and  carried  away 
in  their  minds  from  that  moderately  affecting  poem, 
the  description  of  Eusebius — 

That  pious  moralist,  that  reasoning  saint ! 
Can  I  of  worth  like  thine,  Eusebius,  speak  ? 
The  man  is  willing,  but  the  muse  is  weak. 

Eusebius  is  intended  for  Burke,  and  the  portrait 
is  a  literary  tribute  for  more  substantial  services. 
When  Crabbe  came  up  from  his  native  Aldborough, 
with  three  pounds  and  a  case  of  surgical  instru- 
ments in  his  trunk,  he  fondly  believed  that  a  great 
patron  would  be  found  to  watch  over  his  trans- 
formation from  an  unsuccessful  apothecary  into  a 


108  BURKE 


CHAP. 


popular  poet.  He  wrote  to  Lord  North  and  Lord 
Shelburne,  but  they  did  not  answer  his  letters  ; 
booksellers  returned  his  copious  manuscripts  ;  the 
three  pounds  gradually  disappeared ;  the  surgical 
instruments  went  to  the  pawnbroker's  ;  and  the 
poet  found  himself  an  outcast  on  the  world,  with- 
out a  friend,  without  employment,  and  without 
bread.  He  owed  money  for  his  lodging,  and  was 
on  the  very  eve  of  being  sent  to  prison,  when  it 
occurred  to  him  to  write  to  Burke.  It  was  the 
moment  (1781)  when  the  final  struggle  with  Lord 
North  was  at  its  fiercest,  and  Burke  might  have 
been  absolved  if,  in  the  stress  of  conflict,  he  had 
neglected  a  begging  letter.  As  it  was,  the  manli- 
ness and  simplicity  of  Crabbe's  application  touched 
him.  He  immediately  made  an  appointment  with 
the  young  poet,  and  convinced  himself  of  his  worth. 
He  not  only  relieved  Crabbe's  immediate  distress 
with  a  sum  of  money  that,  as  we  know,  came  from 
no  affluence  of  his  own,  but  carried  him  off  to 
Beaconsfield,  installed  him  there  as  a  member  of 
the  family,  and  took  as  much  pains  to  find  a  printer 
for  The  Library  and  The  Village^  as  if  they  had 
been  poems  of  his  own.  In  time  he  persuaded  the 
Bishop  of  Norwich  to  admit  Crabbe,  in  spite  of  his 
want  of  a  regular  qualification,  to  holy  orders.  He 
then  commended  him  to  the  notice  of  Lord  Chan- 
cellor Thurlow.  Crabbe  found  the  Tiger  less  formid- 
able than  his  terrifying  reputation,  for  Thurlow  at 
their  first  interview  presented  him  with  a  hundred- 
pound  note,  and  afterwards  gave  him  a  living.  The 
living  was  of  no  great  value,  it  is  true  ;  and  it  was 
Burke  who,  with  untiring  friendship,  succeeded  in 
procuring  something  like  a  substantial  position  for 
him,  by  inducing  the  Duke  of  Rutland  to  make  the 
young  parson  his  chaplain.  Henceforth  Crabbe's 
career  was  assured,  and  he  never  forgot  to  revere 
and  bless  the  man  to  whose  generous  hand  he  owed 
his  deliverance. 


vi       BARRY,  EMIN,  AND  BROCKLESBY    109 

Another  of  Burke's  clients,  of  whom  we  hardly 
know  whether  to  say  that  he  is  more  or  less  known 
to  our  age  than  Crabbe,  is  Barry,  a  painter  of  dis- 
putable eminence.  The  son  of  a  seafarer  at  Cork, 
he  had  been  introduced  to  Burke  in  Dublin  in  1762, 
was  brought  over  to  England  by  him,  introduced 
to  some  kind  of  employment,  and  finally  sent,  with 
funds  provided  by  the  Burkes,  to  study  art  on  the 
continent.  It  was  characteristic  of  Burke's  willing- 
ness not  only  to  supply  money,  but  what  is  a  far 
rarer  form  of  kindness,  to  take  active  trouble,  that 
he  should  have  followed  the  raw  student  with  long 
and  careful  letters  of  advice  upon  the  proper 
direction  of  his  studies.  For  five  years  Barry  was 
maintained  abroad  by  the  Burkes.  Most  unhappily 
for  himself  he  was  cursed  with  an  irritable  and 
perverse  temper,  and  he  lacked  even  the  elementary 
arts  of  conduct.  Burke  was  generous  to  the  end, 
with  the  difficult  and  uncommon  kind  of  generosity 
that  moves  independently  of  gratitude  or  ingratitude 
in  the  receiver. 

From  his  earliest  days  Burke  had  been  the 
eager  friend  of  people  in  distress.  While  he  was 
still  a  student  at  the  Temple,  or  a  writer  for  the 
booksellers,  he  picked  up  a  curious  creature  in 
the  park,  in  such  unpromising  circumstances  that 
he  could  not  forbear  to  take  him  under  his  instant 
protection.  This  was  Joseph  Emm,  the  Armenian, 
who  had  come  to  Europe  from  India  with  strange 
heroic  ideas  in  his  head  as  to  the  deliverance  of 
his  countrymen.  Burke  instantly  urged  him  to 
accept  the  few  shillings  that  he  happened  to  have 
in  his  purse,  and  seems  to  have  found  employment 
for  him  as  a  copyist,  until  fortune  brought  other 
openings  to  the  singular  adventurer.  For  foreign 
visitors  Burke  had  always  a  singular  considerate- 
ness.  Two  Brahmins  came  to  England  as  agents 
of  Ragonaut  Rao,  and  at  first  underwent  intoler- 
able things  rather  from  the  ignorance  than  the 


110  BURKE  CHAP. 

unkindness  of  our  countrymen.  Burke  no  sooner 
found  out  what  was  passing  than  he  carried  them 
down  to  Beaconsfield,  and  as  it  was  summer-time,  he 
gave  them  for  their  separate  use  a  spacious  garden- 
house,  where  they  were  free  to  prepare  their  food 
and  perform  such  rites  as  their  religion  prescribed. 
Nothing  was  so  certain  to  command  his  fervid 
sympathy  as  strict  adherence  to  the  rules  and 
ceremonies  of  an  ancient  and  sacred  ordering. 

If  he  never  failed  to  perform  the  offices  to 
which  we  are  bound  by  the  common  sympathy 
of  men,  it  is  satisfactory  to  think  that  Burke  in 
return  received  a  measure  of  these  friendly  services. 
Among  those  who  loved  him  best  was  Dr.  Brocklesby, 
the  tender  physician  who  watched  and  soothed  the 
last  hours  of  Johnson.  When  we  remember  how 
Burke's  soul  was  harassed  by  private  cares,  cha- 
grined by  the  untoward  course  of  public  events, 
and  mortified  by  neglect  from  friends  no  less  than 
by  virulent  reproach  from  foes,  it  makes  us  feel 
very  kindly  towards  Brocklesby,  to  read  what  he 
wrote  to  Burke  in  1788  : 

MY  VERY  DEAR  FRIEND — My  veneration  of  your  public 
conduct  for  many  years  past,  and  my  real  affection  for 
your  private  virtues  and  transcendent  worth,  made  me 
yesterday  take  a  liberty  with  you  in  a  moment's  conversa- 
tion at  my  house,  to  make  you  an  instant  present  of  £1000, 
which  for  years  past  I  had  by  will  destined  as  a  testimony 
of  my  regard  on  my  decease.  This  you  modestly  desired 
me  not  to  think  of ;  but  I  told  you  what  I  now  repeat, 
that  unfavoured  as  I  have  lived  for  a  long  life,  unnoticed 
professionally  by  any  party  of  men,  and  though  unknown 
at  court,  I  am  rich  enough  to  spare  to  virtue  (what  others 
waste  in  vice)  the  above  sum,  and  still  reserve  an  annual 
income  greater  than  I  spend.  I  shall  receive  at  the  India 
House  a  bill  I  have  discounted  for  £1000  on  the  4th  of  next 
month,  and  then  shall  be  happy  that  you  will  accept  this 
proof  of  my  sincere  love  and  esteem,  and  let  me  add,  Si 
res  ampla  domi  similisque  affectibus  esset,  I  should  be  happy 
to  repeat  the  like  every  year. 


vi  HANNAH  MORE  &  FANNY  BURNEY  111 

The  mere  transcription  of  the  friendly  man's 
good  letter  has  something  of  the  effect  of  an  exer- 
cise of  religion.  And  it  was  only  one  of  a  series 
of  kind  acts  on  the  part  of  the  same  generous  giver. 

It  is  always  interesting  in  the  case  of  a  great 
man  to  know  how  he  affected  the  women  of  his 
acquaintance.  Women  do  not  usually  judge  char- 
acter either  so  kindly  or  so  soundly  as  men  do, 
for  they  lack  that  knowledge  of  the  ordeals  of 
practical  life,  which  gives  both  justice  and  charity 
to  such  verdicts.  But  they  are  more  susceptible 
than  most  men  are  to  devotion  and  nobility  in 
character.  The  little  group  of  the  blue-stockings 
of  the  day  regarded  the  great  master  of  knowledge 
and  eloquence  with  mixed  feelings.  They  felt 
for  Burke  the  adoring  reverence  that  women  offer, 
with  too  indiscriminate  a  trust,  to  men  of  com- 
manding power.  In  his  case  it  was  the  moral 
loftiness  of  his  character  that  inspired  them,  as 
much  as  the  splendour  of  his  ability.  Of  Sheridan 
or  of  Fox  they  could  not  bear  to  hear ;  of  Burke 
they  could  not  hear  enough.  Hannah  More,  and 
Mrs.  Elizabeth  Carter,  the  learned  translator  of 
Epictetus,  and  Fanny  Burney,  the  author  of  Eve- 
lina and  Cecilia,  were  all  proud  of  his  notice,  even 
while  they  glowed  with  anger  at  his  sympathy  with 
American  rebels,  his  unkind  words  about  the  king, 
and  his  cruel  persecution  of  poor  Mr.  Hastings. 
It  was  at  Mrs.  Vesey's  evening  parties,  given  on 
the  Tuesdays  on  which  the  Club  dined  at  the 
"  Turk's  Head,"  that  he  often  had  long  chats  with 
Hannah  More.  She  had  to  forget  what  she  called 
his  political  malefactions,  before  she  could  allow 
herself  to  admire  his  high  spirits  and  good-humour. 
This  was  after  the  events  of  the  Coalition,  and  her 
Memoirs,  like  the  change  in  the  mind  of  the  dis- 
senters towards  Burke,  show  what  a  fall  that  act 
of  faction  was  believed  to  mark  in  his  character. 
When  he  was  rejected  for  Bristol,  she  moralised 


112  BURKE  CHAP. 

on  the  catastrophe  by  the  quaint  reflection  that 
Providence  has  wisely  contrived  to  render  all  its 
dispensations  equal,  by  making  those  talents  that 
set  one  man  so  much  above  another,  of  no  esteem 
in  the  opinion  of  those  who  are  without  them. 

Miss  Burney  has  described  her  flutter  of  spirits 
when  she  first  found  herself  in  company  with 
Burke  (1782).  It  was  at  Sir  Joshua's  house  on 
the  top  of  Richmond  Hill,  and  she  tells,  with  her 
usual  effusion,  how  she  was  impressed  by  Burke's 
noble  figure  and  commanding  air,  his  penetrat- 
ing and  sonorous  voice,  his  eloquent  and  copious 
language,  the  infinite  variety  and  rapidity  of  his 
discourse.  Burke  had  something  to  say  on  every 
subject,  from  bits  of  personal  gossip,  up  to  the 
sweet  and  melting  landscape  that  lay  in  all  its 
beauty  before  their  windows  on  the  terrace.  He 
was  playful,  serious,  fantastic,  wise.  When  they 
next  met,  the  great  man  completed  his  conquest 
by  expressing  his  admiration  of  Evelina.  Gibbon 
assured  her  that  he  had  read  the  whole  five  volumes 
in  a  day ;  but  Burke  declared  the  feat  was  im- 
possible, for  he  had  himself  read  it  through  without 
interruption,  and  it  had  cost  him  three  days.  He 
showed  his  regard  for  the  authoress  in  a  more  sub- 
stantial way  than  by  compliments  and  criticism. 
His  last  act  before  going  out  of  office,  in  1783, 
was  to  procure  for  Dr.  Burney  the  appointment  of 
organist  at  the  chapel  of  Chelsea. 

We  have  spoken  of  the  dislike  of  these  excellent 
women  for  Sheridan  and  Fox.  In  Sheridan's  case 
Burke  did  not  much  disagree  with  them.  Their 
characters  were  as  unlike  and  as  antipathetic  as 
those  of  two  men  could  be  ;  and  to  antipathy  of 
temperament  was  probably  added  a  kind  of  rivalry 
that  may  justly  have  affected  one  of  them  with  an 
irritated  humiliation.  Sheridan  was  twenty  years 
younger  than  Burke,  and  did  not  come  into  Parlia- 
ment until  Burke  had  fought  the  prolonged  battle 


SHERIDAN  AND  FOX  113 

of  the  American  war,  and  had  achieved  the  victory 
of  Economic  Reform.  Yet  Sheridan  was  immedi- 
ately taken  up  by  the  party,  and  became  the 
intimate  and  counsellor  of  Charles  Fox,  its  leader, 
and  of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  its  patron.  That  Burke 
never  failed  to  do  full  justice  to  Sheridan's  brilliant 
genius,  or  to  bestow  generous  and  unaffected  praise 
on  his  oratorical  successes,  there  is  ample  evidence. 
He  was  of  far  too  high  and  veracious  a  nature  to 
be  capable  of  the  disparaging  tricks  of  a  poor 
jealousy.  The  humiliation  lay  in  the  fact  that 
circumstances  had  placed  Sheridan  in  a  position 
that  made  it  natural  for  the  world  to  measure 
them  with  one  another.  Burke  could  no  more 
like  Sheridan  than  he  could  like  the  Beggar's  Opera. 
Sheridan  had  a  levity,  a  want  of  depth,  a  laxity 
and  dispersion  of  feeling,  to  which  no  degree  of 
intellectual  brilliancy  could  reconcile  a  man  of  such 
profound  moral  energy  and  social  conviction  as 
Burke. 

The  thought  will  perhaps  occur  to  the  reader 
that  Fox  was  not  less  lax  than  Sheridan,  and  yet 
for  Fox  Burke  long  had  the  sincerest  friendship. 
He  was  dissolute,  indolent,  irregular,  and  the  most 
insensate  gambler  that  ever  squandered  fortune 
after  fortune  over  the  faro-table.  It  was  his  vices 
as  much  as  his  politics  that  made  George  III.  hate 
Fox  as  an  English  Catiline.  How  came  Burke  to 
accept  a  man  of  this  character,  first  for  his  disciple, 
then  for  his  friend,  and  next  for  his  leader  ?  The 
answer  is  a  simple  one.  In  spite  of  the  disorders  of 
his  life,  Fox,  from  the  time  when  his  acquaintance 
with  Burke  began,  down  to  the  time  when  it  came 
to  such  disastrous  end,  and  for  long  years  after- 
wards, was  to  the  bottom  of  his  heart  as  passionate 
for  freedom,  justice,  and  beneficence  as  Burke  ever 
was.  These  great  ends  were  as  real,  as  constant, 
as  overmastering  in  Fox  as  they  were  in  Burke. 
No  man  was  ever  more  deeply  imbued  with  the 

I 


114  BURKE  CHAP. 

generous  impulses  of  great  statesmanship,  with 
chivalrous  courage,  with  the  magnificent  spirit  of 
devotion  to  high  imposing  causes.  These  qualities, 
we  may  be  sure,  and  not  his  power  as  a  debater 
and  as  a  declaimer,  won  for  him  in  Burke's  heart 
the  admiration  which  found  such  splendid  expres- 
sion in  a  passage  that  will  remain  as  a  stock  piece 
of  declamation  for  long  generations  after  it  was 
first  poured  out  as  a  sincere  tribute  of  reverence  and 
affection.  Precisians,  like  Lafayette,  might  choose 
to  see  their  patriotic  hopes  ruined  rather  than 
have  them  saved  by  Mirabeau,  because  Mirabeau 
was  a  debauchee.  Burke's  public  morality  was  of 
stouter  stuff,  and  he  loved  Fox  because  he  knew 
that  under  the  stains  and  blemishes  left  by  a  de- 
;  plorable  education,  was  the  sterling,  inexhaustible 
|  ore  in  which  noble  sympathies  are  subtly  compounded 
'  with  resplendent  powers. 

If  he  was  warmly  attached  to  his  political 
friends,  Burke,  at  least  before  the  Revolution,  was 
usually  on  fair  terms  in  private  life  with  his  political 
opponents.  There  were  few  men  whose  policy  he 
disliked  more  than  he  disliked  the  policy  of  George 
Grenville.  And  we  have  seen  that  he  criticised 
Grenville  in  a  pamphlet  which  did  not  spare  him. 
Yet  Grenville  and  he  did  not  refuse  one  another's 
hospitality,  and  were  on  the  best  terms  to  the  very 
end.  Wilberforce,  again,  was  one  of  the  staunchest 
friends  of  Pitt,  and  fought  one  of  the  greatest 
electioneering  battles  on  Pitt's  side  in  the  struggle 
of  1784 ;  but  it  made  no  difference  in  Burke's 
relations  with  him.  In  1787  a  coldness  arose 
between  them.  Burke  had  delivered  a  strong 
invective  against  the  French  Treaty.  Wilberforce 
said,  "  We  can  make  allowance  for  the  honourable 
gentleman,  because  we  remember  him  in  better 
days."  The  retort  greatly  nettled  Burke,  but  the 
feeling  soon  passed  away,  and  they  both  found  a 
special  satisfaction  in  the  dinner  to  which  Wilber- 


AT  BEACONSFIELD  115 

force  invited  Burke  every  session.  "  He  was  a 
great  man,"  says  Wilberforce.  "  I  could  never 
understand  how  at  one  time  he  grew  to  be  so 
entirely  neglected." 

Outside  of  both  political  and  literary  circles, 
among  Burke's  correspondents  was  that  wise  and 
honest  traveller  whose  name  is  as  inseparably  bound 
up  with  the  preparation  of  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, as  Burke's  is  bound  up  with  its  sanguin- 
ary climax  and  fulfilment.  Arthur  Young,  by 
his  Farmers  Letters,  and  Farmer's  Calendar,  and 
his  account  of  his  travels  in  the  southern  counties 
of  England  and  elsewhere — the  story  of  the  more 
famous  travels  in  France  was  not  published  until 
1792 — had  won  a  reputation  as  the  best-informed 
agriculturist  of  his  day.  Within  a  year  of  his 
settlement  at  Beaconsfield,  we  find  Burke  writing 
to  consult  Young  on  the  mysteries  of  his  new 
occupation.  The  reader  may  smile  as  he  recognises 
the  ardour,  the  earnestness,  the  fervid  gravity  of 
the  political  speeches,  in  letters  which  discuss  the 
merits  of  carrots  in  fattening  porkers,  and  the 
precise  degree  to  which  they  should  be  boiled. 
Burke  throws  himself  just  as  eagerly  into  white 
peas  and  Indian  corn,  into  cabbages  that  grow 
into  head  and  cabbages  that  shoot  into  leaves, 
into  experiments  with  pumpkin  seed  and  wild 
parsnip,  as  if  they  had  been  details  of  the  Stamp 
Act,  or  justice  to  Ireland.  When  he  complains 
that  it  is  scarcely  possible  for  him,  with  his  numer- 
ous avocations,  to  get  his  servants  to  enter  fully 
into  his  views  as  to  the  right  treatment  of  his 
crops,  we  can  easily  understand  that  his  farming 
did  not  help  him  to  make  money.  It  is  impossible 
that  he  should  have  had  time  or  attention  to  spare 
for  the  effectual  direction  of  even  a  small  farm. 

Yet  if  the  farm  brought  scantier  profit  than  it 
ought  to  have  brought,  it  was  probably  no  weak 
solace  in  the  background  of  a  life  of  harassing 


116  BURKE  CHAP. 

interests  and  perpetual  disappointments.  Burke 
was  happier  at  Beaconsfield  than  anywhere  else, 
and  he  was  happiest  there  when  his  house  was 
full  of  guests.  Nothing  pleased  him  better  than 
to  drive  a  visitor  over  to  Windsor,  where  he  would 
expatiate  with  enthusiasm  "  on  the  proud  Keep, 
rising  in  the  majesty  of  proportion,  and  girt  with 
the  double  belt  of  its  kindred  and  coeval  towers, 
overseeing  and  guarding  the  subjected  land."  He 
delighted  to  point  out  the  house  at  Uxbridge 
where  Charles  I.  had  carried  on  the  negotiations 
with  the  Parliamentary  Commissioners  ;  the  beauti- 
ful grounds  of  Bulstrode,  where  Judge  Jeffreys 
had  once  lived  ;  and  the  churchyard  of  Beacons- 
field,  where  lay  the  remains  of  Edmund  Waller, 
the  poet.  He  was  fond  of  talking  of  great  states- 
men— of  Walpole,  of  Pulteney,  and  of  Chatham. 
Some  one  had  said  that  Chatham  knew  nothing 
whatever  except  Spenser's  Faery  Queen.  "  No 
matter  how  that  was  said,"  Burke  replied  to  one 
of  his  visitors,  "  whoever  relishes  and  reads  Spenser 
as  he  ought  to  be  read,  will  have  a  strong  hold 
of  the  English  language."  The  delight  of  the  host 
must  have  been  at  least  equalled  by  the  delight  of 
the  guest  in  conversation  that  was  thus  ever  taking 
new  turns,  branching  into  topical  surprises,  and  at 
all  turns  and  on  every  topic  was  luminous,  high, 
edifying,  full. 

No  guest  was  more  welcome  than  the  friend  of 
his  boyhood,  and  Richard  Shackleton  has  told  how 
the  friendship,  cordiality,  and  openness  with  which 
Burke  embraced  him  was  even  more  than  might 
be  expected  from  long  love.  The  simple  Quaker 
was  confused  by  the  sight  of  what  seemed  to  him 
so  sumptuous  and  worldly  a  life,  and  he  went  to 
rest  uneasily,  doubting  whether  God's  blessing 
could  go  with  it.  But  when  he  awoke  on  the 
morrow  of  his  first  visit,  he  told  his  wife,  in  the 
language  of  his  sect,  how  glad  he  was  "  to  find  no 


AT  BEACONSFIELD  117 

condemnation  ;  but  on  the  contrary,  ability  to  put 
up  fervent  petitions  with  much  tenderness  on 
behalf  of  this  great  luminary."  It  is  at  his  country 
home  that  we  like  best  to  think  of  Burke.  It  is 
still  a  touching  picture  to  the  historic  imagination 
to  follow  him  from  the  heat  and  violence  of  the 
House,  where  impatient  squires  derided  the  greatest 
genius  of  his  time,  down  to  the  calm  shades  of 
Beaconsfield,  where  he  would  with  his  own  hands 
give  food  to  a  starving  beggar,  or  medicine  to  a 
peasant  sick  of  the  ague ;  where  he  would  talk  of 
the  weather,  the  turnips,  and  the  hay  with  the 
team-men  and  the  farm-bailiff ;  and  where,  in  the 
evening  stillness,  he  would  pace  the  walk  under 
the  trees,  and  reflect  on  the  state  of  Europe  and 
the  distractions  of  his  country. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  NEW  MINISTRY — WARREN  HASTINGS— 
BURKE'S  PUBLIC  POSITION 

THE  six  years  that  followed  the  destruction  of 
the  Coalition  were,  in  some  respects,  the  most 
mortifying  portion  of  Burke's  troubled  career. 
Pitt  was  more  firmly  seated  in  power  than  Lord 
North  had  ever  been,  and  he  used  his  power  to 
carry  out  a  policy  against  which  it  was  impossible 
for  the  Whigs,  on  their  own  principles,  to  offer  an 
effective  resistance.  For  this  is  the  peculiarity  of 
the  king's  first  victory  over  the  enemies  who  had 
done  obstinate  battle  with  him  for  nearly  a  quarter 
of  a  century.  He  had  driven  them  out  of  the  field, 
but  with  the  aid  of  an  ally  who  was  as  strongly 
hostile  to  the  royal  system  as  they  had  ever  been. 
The  king  had  vindicated  his  right  against  the 
Whigs  to  choose  his  own  ministers ;  but  the  new 
minister  was  himself  a  Whig  by  descent,  and  a 
reformer  by  his  education  and  personal  disposition. 
Ireland  was  the  subject  of  the  first  great  battle 
between  the  ministry  and  their  opponents.  Here, 
if  anywhere,  we  might  have  expected*  from  Burke 
at  least  his  usual  wisdom  and  patience.  We  saw 
in  a  previous  chapter  (p.  23)  what  the  political 
condition  of  Ireland  was  when  Burke  went  there 
with  Hamilton  in  1763.  The  American  war  had 
brought  about  a  great  change.  The  king  had 
shrewdly  predicted  that  if  America  became  free 
Ireland  would  soon  follow  the  same  plan  and  be  a 

118 


CHAP,  vn     PITT'S  IRISH  PROPOSITIONS         119 

separate  state.  In  fact,  along  with  the  American 
war  we  had  to  encounter  an  Irish  war  also ;  but 
the  latter  was,  as  an  Irish  politician  called  it  at 
the  time,  a  smothered  war.  Like  the  Americans, 
the  Anglo-Irish  entered  into  non-importation  com- 
pacts, and  they  interdicted  commerce.  The  Irish 
volunteers,  first  forty,  then  sixty,  and  at  last  a 
hundred  thousand  strong,  were  virtually  an  army 
enrolled  to  overawe  the  English  ministry  and 
Parliament.  Following  the  spirit,  if  not  the  actual 
path,  of  the  Americans,  they  raised  a  cry  for  com- 
mercial and  legislative  independence.  They  were 
too  strong  to  be  resisted,  and  in  1782  the  Irish 
Parliament  acquired  the  privilege  of  initiating  and 
conducting  its  own  business,  without  the  sanction 
or  control  either  of  the  Privy  Council  or  of  the 
English  Parliament.  Dazzled  by  the  chance  of 
acquiring  legislative  independence,  they  had  been 
content  with  the  comparatively  small  commercial 
boons  obtained  by  Lord  Nugent  and  Burke  in  1778, 
and  with  the  removal  of  further  restrictions  by  the 
alarmed  minister  in  the  following  year.  After  the 
concession  of  their  independence  in  1782,  they 
found  that  to  procure  the  abolition  of  the  remaining 
restrictions  on  their  commerce — the  right  of  trade, 
for  instance,  with  America  and  Africa — the  consent 
of  the  English  legislature  was  as  necessary  as  it 
had  ever  been.  Pitt,  fresh  from  the  teaching  of 
Adam  Smith  and  of  Shelburne,  brought  forward 
in  1785  his  famous  commercial  propositions.  The 
theory  of  his  scheme  was  that  Irish  trade  should  be 
free,  and  that  Ireland  should  be  admitted  to  a  per- 
manent participation  in  commercial  advantages.  In 
return  for  this  gain,  after  her  hereditary  revenue 
passed  a  certain  point,  she  was  to  devote  the 
surplus  to  purposes,  such  as  the  maintenance  of 
the  navy,  in  which  the  two  nations  had  a  common 
interest.  Pitt  was  to  be  believed  when  he  declared 
that  of  all  the  objects  of  his  political  life  this  was,  in 


120  BURKE  CHAP. 

his  opinion,  the  most  important  that  he  had  ever 
engaged  in,  and  he  never  expected  to  meet  another 
that  should  rouse  every  emotion  in  so  strong  a 
degree  as  this. 

A  furious  battle  took  place  in  the  Irish  Parlia- 
ment. There,  while  nobody  could  deny  that  the 
eleven  propositions  would  benefit  the  mercantile 
interests  of  the  country,  it  was  passionately  urged 
that  the  last  of  the  propositions,  that  which  con- 
cerned the  apportionment  of  Irish  revenue  to 
imperial  purposes,  meant  the  enslavement  of  their 
unhappy  island.  Their  fetters,  they  went  on,  were 
clenched,  if  the  English  government  was  to  be 
allowed  thus  to  take  the  initiative  in  Irish  legisla- 
tion. The  factious  course  pursued  by  the  English 
Opposition  was  much  less  excusable  than  the  line 
of  the  Anglo-Irish  leaders.  Fox,  who  was  osten- 
tatiously ignorant  of  political  economy,  led  the 
charge.  He  insisted  that  Pitt's  measures  would 
annihilate  English  trade,  would  destroy  the  Naviga- 
tion Laws,  and  with  them  would  bring  our  maritime 
strength  to  the  ground.  Having  thus  won  the 
favour  of  the  English  manufacturers,  he  turned 
round  to  the  Irish  Opposition,  and  conciliated  them 
by  declaring  with  equal  vehemence  that  the  pro- 
positions were  an  insult  to  Ireland,  and  a  nefarious 
attempt  to  tamper  with  her  new-born  liberties. 
Burke  followed  his  leader.  We  may  almost  say 
that  for  once  he  allowed  his  political  integrity  to 
be  bewildered.  In  1778  and  1779  he  had  firmly 
resisted  the  pressure  his  mercantile  constituents  in 
Bristol  had  endeavoured  to  put  upon  him ;  he  had 
warmly  supported  the  Irish  claims,  and  had  lost 
his  seat  in  consequence.  The  precise  ground  that 
he  took  up  in  1785  was  this.  He  appears  to  have 
discerned  in  Pitt's  proposals  the  germ  of  an  attempt 
to  extract  revenue  from  Ireland,  identical  in  pur- 
pose, principle,  and  probable  effect  with  the  ever- 
memorable  attempt  to  extract  revenue  from  the 


PITT'S  IRISH  PROPOSITIONS          121 

American  colonies.  Whatever  stress  may  be  laid 
upon  this,  we  find  it  hard  to  vindicate  Burke  from 
the  charge  of  factiousness.  Nothing  can  have  been 
more  unworthy  of  him  than  the  sneer  at  Pitt  in 
the  great  speech  on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts 
(1785),  for  stopping  to  pick  up  chaff  and  straws 
from  the  Irish  revenue  instead  of  checking  profli- 
gate expenditure  in  India. 

Pitt's  alternative  was  irresistible.  Situated  as 
Ireland  was,  she  must  either  be  the  subservient 
instrument  of  English  prosperity,  or  else  she  must 
be  allowed  to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  English  trade, 
taking  at  the  same  time  a  proportionate  share  of 
the  common  burdens.  Adam  Smith  had  shown 
that  there  was  nothing  incompatible  with  justice 
in  a  contribution  by  Ireland  to  the  public  debt  of 
Great  Britain.  That  debt,  he  argued,  had  been 
contracted  in  support  of  the  government  estab- 
lished by  the  Revolution ;  a  government  to  which 
the  Protestants  of  Ireland  owed  not  only  the 
whole  authority  they  enjoyed  in  their  own  country, 
but  every  security  they  possessed  for  their  liberty, 
property,  and  religion.  The  neighbourhood  of  Ire- 
land to  the  shores  of  the  mother  country  introduced 
an  element  into  the  problem,  that  must  have  taught 
every  unimpassioned  observer  that  the  American 
solution  would  be  inadequate  for  a  dependency 
lying  at  our  very  door.  Burke  could  not,  in  his 
calmer  moments,  have  failed  to  recognise  all  this. 
Yet  he  lent  himself  to  the  party  cry  that  Pitt  was 
taking  his  first  measures  for  the  re-enslavement  of 
Ireland.  Had  it  not  been  for  what  he  himself 
called  the  delirium  of  the  preceding  session,  which 
had  still  not  subsided,  he  would  have  seen  that 
Pitt  was  in  truth  taking  his  first  measures  for 
the  effective  deliverance  of  Ireland  from  an  unjust 
and  oppressive  subordination.  The  same  delirium 
committed  him  to  another  equally  deplorable  per- 
versity, when  he  opposed,  with  as  many  excesses 


122  BURKE 


cn.vr. 


in  temper  as  fallacies  in  statesmanship,  the  wise 
treaty  with  France,  in  which  Pitt  partially  antici- 
pated the  commercial  policy  of  an  ampler  treaty 
three-quarters  of  a  century  afterwards. 

A  great  episode  in  Burke's  career  now  opened. 
It  was  in  1785  that  Warren  Hastings  returned 
from  India  after  a  series  of  exploits  as  momentous 
and  far-reaching,  for  good  or  evil,  as  have  ever 
been  achieved  by  any  English  ruler.  For  years 
Burke  had  been  watching  India.  With  rising 
wonder,  amazement,  and  indignation  he  had  steadily 
followed  the  long  train  of  intrigue  and  crime  that 
had  ended  in  the  consolidation  of  a  new  empire. 
With  the  return  of  Hastings  he  felt  that  the  time 
had  come  for  striking  a  severe  blow,  and  making  a 
signal  example.  He  gave  notice  (June  1785)  that 
he  would,  at  a  future  day,  make  a  motion  respect- 
ing the  conduct  of  a  gentleman  just  returned  from 
India. 

Among  minor  considerations,  we  have  to  re- 
member that  Indian  affairs  entered  materially  into 
the  great  battle  of  parties.  It  was  upon  an  Indian 
bill  that  the  late  ministry  had  made  shipwreck. 
It  was  notoriously  by  the  aid  of  potent  Indian 
interests  that  the  new  ministry  had  acquired  a 
portion  of  its  majority.  To  expose  the  misdeeds 
of  our  agents  in  India  was  at  once  to  strike  the 
minister  who  had  dexterously  secured  their  support, 
and  to  attack  one  of  the  great  strongholds  of  par- 
liamentary corruption.  The  proceedings  against 
Hastings  were,  in  the  first  instance,  regarded  as  a 
sequel  to  the  struggle  over  Fox's  East  India  Bill. 
That  these  considerations  were  present  in  Burke's 
thought  there  is  no  doubt,  but  they  were  purely 
secondary.  It  was  India  itself  that  stood  above 
all  else  in  his  imagination.  It  had  filled  his  mind 
and  absorbed  his  time  while  Pitt  was  still  an  under- 
graduate at  Cambridge,  and  Burke  was  looking  for- 
ward to  match  his  plan  of  economic  reform  with 


vn  INDIAN  AFFAIRS  123 

a  greater  plan  of  Indian  reform.  In  the  Ninth 
Report,  the  Eleventh  Report,  and  in  his  speech 
on  the  India  Bill  of  1783,  he  had  shown  both  how 
thoroughly  he  had  mastered  the  facts,  and  how  pro- 
foundly they  had  stirred  his  sense  of  wrong.  The 
masterpiece  known  as  the  speech  on  the  Nabob  of 
Arcot's  debts,  delivered  in  Parliament  on  a  motion 
for  papers  (1785),  handles  matters  of  account,  of 
interest  turned  into  principal,  and  principal  super- 
added  to  principal ;  it  deals  with  a  hundred  minute 
technicalities  of  teeps  and  tuncaws,  of  gomastahs 
and  soucaring  ;  all  with  such  a  suffusion  of  interest 
and  colour,  with  such  nobility  of  idea  and  expres- 
sion, as  could  only  have  come  from  the  addition 
to  genius  of  a  deep  morality  of  nature,  and  an  over- 
whelming force  of  conviction.  A  space  less  than  one 
of  these  pages  contains  such  a  picture  of  the  devasta- 
tion of  the  Carnatic  by  Hyder  Ali  as  may  fill  the 
young  orator  or  the  young  writer  with  the  same 
emotions  of  enthusiasm,  emulation,  and  despair 
that  torment  the  artist  who  first  gazes  on  the 
Madonna  at  Dresden,  or  the  figures  of  Night  and 
Dawn  and  the  Penseroso  at  Florence.  The  despair 
is  only  too  well  founded.  No  conscious  study 
could  pierce  the  secret  of  that  just  and  pathetic 
transition  from  the  havoc  of  Hyder  Ali  to  the 
healing  duties  of  a  virtuous  government,  to  the 
consolatory  celebration  of  the  mysteries  of  justice 
and  humanity,  to  the  warning  to  the  unlawful 
creditors  to  silence  their  inauspicious  tongues  in 
presence  of  the  holy  work  of  restoration,  to  the 
generous  proclamation  against  them  that  in  every 
country  the  first  creditor  is  the  plough.  The 
emotions  making  the  hidden  force  of  such  pictures 
come  not  by  observation.  They  grow  from  the 
sedulous  meditation  of  long  years,  directed  by  a 
powerful  intellect  and  inspired  by  an  interest  in 
human  well-being,  which  of  its  own  virtue  bore 
the  orator  into  the  sustaining  air  of  the  upper 


124  BURKE  CHAP. 

gods.  Concentrated  passion  and  exhaustive  know- 
ledge have  never  entered  into  a  more  formidable 
combination.  Yet  when  Burke  made  his  speech 
on  the  Nabob  of  Arcot's  debts,  Pitt  and  Grenville 
consulted  together  whether  it  was  worth  answering, 
and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  they  need  not  take 
the  trouble. 

Neither  the  scornful  neglect  of  his  opponents 
nor  the  dissensions  of  some  who  sat  on  his  own 
side,  could  check  the  ardour  with  which  Burke 
pressed  on,  as  he  said,  to  the  relief  of  afflicted 
nations.  The  fact  is,  that  Burke  was  not  at  all  a 
philanthropist  as  Clarkson  and  Wilberforce  were 
philanthropists.  His  sympathy  was  too  strongly 
under  the  control  of  true  political  reason.  In  1780, 
for  instance,  the  slave  -  trade  had  attracted  his 
attention,  and  he  had  even  proceeded  to  sketch  out 
a  code  of  regulations  providing  for  its  immediate 
mitigation  and  ultimate  suppression.  After  mature 
consideration  he  abandoned  the  attempt,  from  the 
conviction  that  the  strength  of  the  West  India 
interest  would  defeat  the  utmost  efforts  of  his 
party.  And  he  was  quite  right  in  refusing  to 
hope  from  any  political  action  what  could  only 
be  effected  after  the  moral  preparation  of  the  bulk 
of  the  nation.  And  direct  moral  or  philanthropic 
apostleship  was  not  his  function. 

Macaulay,  in  a  famous  passage  of  dazzling 
lustre  and  fine  historic  colour,  describes  Burke 's 
holy  rage  against  the  misdeeds  of  Hastings  as  due 
to  his  sensibility.  But  sensibility  to  what  ?  Not 
merely  to  those  common  impressions  of  human 
suffering  which  kindle  the  flame  of  ordinary  phil- 
anthropy, always  attractive,  often  so  beneficent, 
but  often  so  capricious  and  so  laden  with  secret 
detriment.  This  was  no  part  of  Burke's  type. 
Nor  is  it  enough  to  say  that  Burke  had  what  is 
the  distinctive  mark  of  the  true  statesman,  a 
passion  for  good,  wise,  and  orderly  government. 


vn    NATURE  OF  BURKE'S  SENSIBILITY  125 

He  had  that  in  the  strongest  degree.  All  that 
wore  the  look  of  confusion  he  held  in  abhorrence, 
and  he  detected  the  seeds  of  confusion  with  a 
penetration  that  made  other  men  marvel.  He  was 
far  too  wise  a  man  to  have  any  sympathy  with  the 
energetic  exercise  of  power  for  power's  sake.  He 
knew  well  that  triumphs  of  violence  are  for  the 
most  part  little  better  than  temporary  makeshifts, 
leaving  all  the  work  of  government  to  be  encountered 
afterwards  by  men  of  essentially  greater  capacity 
than  the  hero  of  force  without  scruple.  But  he 
regarded  those  whom  he  called  the  great  bad  men 
of  the  old  stamp,  Cromwell,  Richelieu,  the  Guises, 
the  Condes,  with  a  certain  tolerance,  because 
"  though  the  virtues  of  such  men  were  not  to 
be  taken  as  a  balance  to  their  crimes,  yet  they 
had  long  views,  and  sanctified  their  ambition  by 
aiming  at  the  orderly  rule,  and  not  the  destruc- 
tion of  their  country."  What  he  valued  was 
the  deep-seated  order  of  systems  that  worked  by 
the  accepted  uses,  opinions,  beliefs,  prejudices  of 
a  community. 

This  love  of  right  and  stable  order  was  not  all. 
That  was  itself  the  growth  from  a  deeper  root, 
partly  of  conviction  and  partly  of  sympathy  ;  the 
conviction  of  the  rare  and  difficult  conjunctures  of 
circumstance  which  are  needed  for  the  formation 
of  even  the  rudest  forms  of  social  union  among 
mankind  ;  and  then  the  sympathy  that  the  best 
men  must  always  find  it  hard  to  withhold  from 
any  hoary  fabric  of  belief  and  any  venerated 
system  of  government  that  has  cherished  a  certain 
order  and  shed  even  a  ray  of  the  faintest  dawn 
among  the  violences  and  the  darkness  of  the  race. 
It  was  reverence  rather  than  sensibility,  a  noble 
and  philosophic  conservatism  rather  than  phil- 
anthropy, which  raised  the  storm  in  Burke's  breast 
against  the  rapacity  of  English  adventurers  in 
India  and  the  imperial  crimes  of  Hastings.  Exactly 


126  BURKE 


CHAP. 


the  same  tide  of  emotion  which  afterwards  filled 
to  the  brim  the  cup  of  prophetic  anger  against  the 
desecrators  of  the  Church  and  the  monarchy  of 
France,  now  poured  itself  out  against  those  who  in 
India  had  "  tossed  about,  subverted,  and  torn  to 
pieces,  as  if  it  were  in  the  gambols  of  boyish 
unluckiness  and  malice,  the  most  established  rights 
and  the  most  ancient  and  most  revered  institutions 
of  ages  and  nations."  From  beginning  to  end  of 
the  fourteen  years  in  which  Burke  pursued  his 
campaign  against  Hastings,  we  see  in  every  page 
that  the  India  which  ever  glowed  before  his  vision 
was  not  the  home  of  picturesque  usages  and  melo- 
dramatic costume,  but  rather,  in  his  own  words,  the 
land  of  princes  once  of  great  dignity,  authority, 
and  opulence  ;  of  an  ancient  and  venerable  priest- 
hood, the  guides  of  the  people  while  living,  and  their 
consolation  in  death  ;  of  a  nobility  of  antiquity 
and  renown  ;  of  millions  of  ingenious  mechanics, 
and  millions  of  diligent  tillers  of  the  earth  ;  and 
finally,  the  land  where  might  be  found  almost  all 
the  religions  professed  by  men — the  Brahminical, 
the  Mussulman,  the  Eastern  and  the  Western 
Christian.  When  he  published  his  speech  on  the 
Nabob  of  Arcot,  Burke  prefixed  to  it  an  admirable 
quotation  from  one  of  the  letters  of  the  Emperor 
Julian.  And  Julian  too,  as  we  all  know,  had  a 
strong  feeling  for  the  past.  But  what  in  that 
remarkable  figure  was  only  the  sentimentalism  of 
reaction,  in  Burke  was  a  reasoned  and  philosophic 
veneration  for  all  old  and  settled  order,  whether  in 
the  free  Parliament  of  Great  Britain,  in  the  ancient 
absolutism  of  Versailles,  or  in  the  secular  pomp  of 
Oude  and  the  inviolable  sanctity  of  Benares,  the 
holy  city  and  the  garden  of  God. 

It  would  be  out  of  place  here  to  attempt  to 
follow  the  details  of  the  impeachment.  Every 
reader  has  heard  that  great  tale  in  our  history, 
and  everybody  knows  that  it  was  Burke 's  tenacity 


vn       OPENING  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT    127 

and  power  that  caused  the  tale  to  be  told.  The 
House  of  Commons  would  not,  it  is  true,  have 
directed  that  Hastings  should  be  impeached,  unless 
Pitt  had  given  his  sanction  and  approval,  and 
how  it  was  that  Pitt  did  give  his  sanction  and 
approval  so  suddenly,  and  on  grounds  ostensibly 
so  slender,  remains  one  of  the  secrets  of  history. 
In  no  case  would  the  impeachment  have  been 
pressed  upon  Parliament  by  the  Opposition,  and 
assented  to  by  ministers,  if  Burke  had  not  been  > 
there  with  his  prodigious  industry,  his  command- 
ing comprehensive  vision,  his  burning  zeal,  and 
his  power  of  kindling  in  men  so  different  from  him 
and  from  one  another  as  Fox,  Sheridan,  Windham,  -. 
Grey,  a  zeal  only  less  intense  than  his  own. 

It  was  in  the  spring  of  1786  that  the  articles  of 
charge  of  Hastings's  high  crimes  and  misdemean- 
ours, as  Burke  had  drawn  them,  were  presented  to 
the  House  of  Commons.  It  was  in  February  1788 
that  Burke  opened  the  vast  cause  in  the  old  his- 
toric hall  at  Westminster,  in  an  oration  in  which  at 
points  he  was  wound  up  to  such  a  pitch  of  eloquence 
and  passion  that  every  listener,  including  the  great 
criminal,  held  his  breath  in  an  agony  of  horror ;  that 
women  were  carried  out  fainting ;  that  the  speaker 
himself  became  incapable  of  saying  another  word, 
and  the  spectators  of  the  scene  began  to  wonder 
whether  he  would  not,  like  the  mighty  Chatham, 
actually  die  in  the  exertion  of  his  overwhelming 
powers.  Among  the  illustrious  crowd  who  thronged 
Westminster  Hall  in  the  opening  days  of  the  im- 
peachment was  Fanny  Burney.  She  was  then  in 
her  odious  bondage  at  court,  and  was  animated  by 
the  admiration  and  pity  for  Hastings  that  at  court 
was  the  fashion.  Windham  used  to  come  up  from 
the  box  of  the  managers  of  the  impeachment  to 
talk  over  with  her  the  incidents  of  the  day,  and  she 
gave  him  her  impressions  of  Burke 's  speech,  which 
were  probably  those  of  the  majority  of  his  hearers, 


128  BURKE  CHAP. 

for  the  majority  were  favourable  to  Hastings.  "  I 
told  him,"  says  Miss  Burney,  "  that  Mr.  Burke's 
opening  had  struck  me  with  the  highest  admiration 
of  his  powers,  from  the  eloquence,  the  imagination, 
the  fire,  the  diversity  of  expression,  and  the  ready 
flow  of  language  with  which  he  seemed  gifted,  in  a 
most  superior  manner,  for  any  and  every  purpose 
to  which  rhetoric  could  lead."  "  And  when  he 
came  to  his  two  narratives,"  I  continued,  "  when 
he  related  the  particulars  of  those  dreadful  murders, 
he  interested,  he  engaged,  he  at  last  overpowered 
me  ;  I  felt  my  cause  lost.  I  could  hardly  keep  on 
my  seat.  My  eyes  dreaded  a  single  glance  towards 
a  man  so  accused  as  Mr.  Hastings ;  I  wanted  to 
sink  on  the  floor,  that  they  might  be  saved  so  painful 
a  sight.  I  had  no  hope  he  could  clear  himself; 
not  another  wish  in  his  favour  remained.  But  when 
from  this  narration  Mr.  Burke  proceeded  to  his  own 
comments  and  declamation — when  the  charges  of 
rapacity,  cruelty,  tyranny,  were  general,  and  made 
with  all  the  violence  of  personal  detestation,  and 
continued  and  aggravated  without  any  further 
fact  or  illustration  ;  then  there  appeared  more  of 
study  than  of  truth,  more  of  invective  than  of 
justice  ;  and,  in  short,  so  little  of  proof  to  so  much 
of  passion,  that  in  a  very  short  time  I  began  to 
lift  up  my  head,  my  seat  was  no  longer  uneasy, 
my  eyes  were  indifferent  which  way  they  looked, 
or  what  object  caught  them,  and  before  I  was  my- 
self aware  of  the  declension  of  Mr.  Burke's  powers 
over  my  feelings,  I  found  myself  a  mere  spectator 
in  a  public  place,  and  looking  all  around  it,  with 
my  opera-glass  in  my  hand  !  " 

In  1795,  seven  years  after  Burke's  opening,  the 
Lords  were  ready  with  their  verdict.  It  had  long 
been  anticipated.  Hastings  was  acquitted.  This 
was  the  close  of  the  fourteen  years  of  labour,  from 
the  date  of  the  Select  Committee  of  1781.  "  If  I 
were  to  call  for  a  reward,"  Burke  said,  "  it  would 


vn        EFFECT  OF  THE  IMPEACHMENT      129 

be  for  the  services  in  which  for  fourteen  years, 
without  intermission,  I  showed  the  most  industry 
and  had  the  least  success.  I  mean  the  affairs  of 
India ;  they  are  those  on  which  I  value  myself 
the  most ;  most  for  the  importance  ;  most  for  the 
labour ;  most  for  the  judgment ;  most  for  con- 
stancy and  perseverance  in  the  pursuit." 

The  side  that  is  defeated  on  a  particular  issue 
is  often  victorious  on  the  wide  and  general  outcome. 
Looking  back  across  the  years  that  divide  us  from_ 
that  memorable  scene  in  Westminster  Hall,  we  may 
see  that  Burke  had  more  success  than  at  first  ap- 
peared. If  he  did  not  convict  the  man,  he  over- 
threw a  system,  and  stamped  its  principles  with 
lasting  censure  and  shame.  Burke  had  perhaps  a 
silent  conviction  that  it  would  have  been  better  for  us 
and  for  India  if  Clive  had  succeeded  in  his  attempt 
to  blow  out  his  own  brains  in  the  Madras  counting- 
house,  or  if  the  battle  of  Plassey  had  been  a  decisive 
defeat  instead  of  a  decisive  victory.  "  All  these 
circumstances,"  he  once  said,  in  reference  to  the 
results  of  the  investigation  of  the  Select  Committee, 
"  are  not,  I  confess,  very  favourable  to  the  idea  of 
our  attempting  to  govern  India  at  all.  But  there 
we  are  :  there  we  are  placed  by  the  Sovereign 
Disposer,  and  we  must  do  the  best  we  can  in  our 
situation.  The  situation  of  man  is  the  preceptor 
of  his  duty."  If  that  situation  is  better  under- 
stood now  than  it  was  so  long  ago,  and  that  duty 
more  loftily  conceived,  the  result  is  due,  so  far  as 
such  results  can  ever  be  due  to  one  man's  action 
apart  from  the  confluence  of  the  deep  impersonal  1 
elements  of  time,  to  the  seeds  of  justice  and1 
humanity  that  were  sown  by  Burke  and  his  asso- 
ciates. Nobody  now  believes  that  Clive  was  justi- 
fied in  tricking  Omichund  by  forging  another  man's 
name ;  that  Impey  was  justified  in  hanging  Nun- 
comar  for  committing  the  very  offence  for  which 
Clive  was  excused  or  applauded,  although  forgery 


130  BURKE  CHAP. 

is  no  grave  crime  according  to  Hindoo  usage,  and 
it  is  the  gravest  according  to  English  usage  ;  that 
Hastings  did  well  in  selling  English  troops  to  assist 
in  the  extermination  of  a  brave  people  with  whom 
he  was  at  peace  ;  that  Benfield  did  well  in  conniving 
with  an  Eastern  prince  in  a  project  of  extortion 
against  his  subjects.  The  whole  drift  of  opinion 
has  changed,  and  it  is  since  the  trial  of  Hastings 
.that  the  change  has  taken  place.  The  question  in 
/Burke's  time  was  whether  oppression  and  corrup- 
tion were  to  continue  to  be  the  guiding  maxims  of 
English  policy.  The  personal  disinterestedness  of 
the  ruler  who  had  been  the  chief  founder  of  this 
policy,  and  had  most  openly  set  aside  all  pretence 
of  righteous  principle,  was  dust  in  the  balance. 
It  was  impossible  to  suppress  the  policy  without 
striking  a  deadly  blow  at  its  most  eminent  and 
powerful  instrument.  That  Hastings  was  acquitted, 
(/  was  immaterial.  The  lesson  of  his  impeachment 
had  been  taught  with  sufficiently  impressive  force 
,  — the  great  lesson  that  Asiatics  have  rights,  and 
)  that  Europeans  have  obligations  ;  that  a  superior 
race  is  bound  to  observe  the  highest  current  morality 
of  the  time  in  all  its  dealings  with  the  subject  race. 
Burke  is  entitled  to  our  lasting  reverence  as  the  first 
apostle  and  great  upholder  of  integrity,  mercy,  and 
honour  in  the  relation  between  his  countrymen  and 
their  humble  dependents. 

He  shared  the  common  fate  of  those  who  dare 
to  strike  a  blow  for  human  justice  against  the 
prejudices  of  national  egotism.  But  he  was  no 
longer  able  to  bear  obloquy  and  neglect,  as  he  had 
borne  it  through  the  war  with  the  colonies.  When 
he  opened  the  impeachment  of  Hastings  at  West- 
minster, Burke  was  very  near  to  his  sixtieth  year. 
Hannah  More  noted  in  1786  that  his  vivacity  had 
diminished,  and  that  business  and  politics  had 
impaired  his  agreeableness.  The  simpletons  in  the 
House,  now  that  they  had  at  last  found  in  Pitt 


THE  KING'S  ILLNESS  131 

a  political  chief  who  could  beat  the  Whig  leaders 
on  their  own  ground  of  eloquence,  knowledge,  and 
dexterity  in  debate,  took  heart  as  they  had  never 
done  under  Lord  North.  They  now  made  deliberate 
attempts  to  silence  the  veteran  by  unmannerly  and 
brutal  interruptions,  of  which  a  mob  of  lower 
class  might  have  been  ashamed.  Then  suddenly 
came  a  moment  of  such  excitement  as  has  not  often 
been  seen  in  the  annals  of  party.  It  became  known 
one  day  in  the  autumn  of  1788  that  the  king  had 
gone  out  of  his  mind. 

The  news  naturally  caused  the  liveliest  agitation 
among  the  Whigs.  When  the  severity  of  the  attack 
forced  the  ministry  to  make  preparations  for  a 
Regency,  the  friends  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  assumed 
that  they  would  speedily  return  to  power,  and 
hastened  to  form  their  plans  accordingly.  Fox 
was  travelling  in  Italy  with  Mrs.  Armstead,  and 
he  had  been  two  months  away  without  hearing  a 
word  from  England.  The  Duke  of  Portland  sent  a 
messenger  in  search  of  him,  and  after  a  journey 
of  ten  days  the  messenger  found  him  at  Bologna. 
Fox  instantly  set  off  in  all  haste  for  London,  which 
he  reached  in  nine  days.  The  three  months  that 
followed  were  a  time  of  unsurpassed  activity  and 
bitterness,  and  Burke  was  at  least  as  active  and  as 
bitter  as  the  rest  of  them.  He  was  the  writer  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales's  letter  to  Pitt,  sometimes  set  down 
to  Sheridan,  and  sometimes  to  Gilbert  Elliot.  It 
makes  us  feel  how  naturally  the  style  of  ideal  king- 
ship, its  dignity,  calm,  and  high  self-consciousness, 
all  came  to  Burke.  Although  we  read  of  his  thus 
drawing  up  manifestoes  and  protests,  and  deciding 
minor  questions  for  Fox,  which  Fox  was  too 
irresolute  to  decide  for  himself,  yet  we  have  it  on 
Burke's  own  authority  that  some  time  elapsed 
after  the  return  to  England  before  he  even  saw 
Fox ;  that  he  was  not  consulted  as  to  the  course 
to  be  pursued  in  the  grave  and  difficult  questions 


132  BURKE  CHAP. 

connected  with  the  Regency ;  and  that  he  knew 
as  little  of  the  inside  of  Carlton  House,  where  the 
Prince  of  Wales  lived,  as  of  Buckingham  House, 
where  the  king  lived.  "  I  mean  to  continue  here," 
he  says  to  Charles  Fox,  "  until  you  call  upon  me  ; 
and  I  find  myself  perfectly  easy,  from  the  implicit 
confidence  that  I  have  in  you  and  the  Duke,  and  the 
certainty  that  I  am  in  that  you  two  will  do  the  best 
for  the  general  advantage  of  the  cause.  In  that 
state  of  mind  I  feel  no  desire  whatsoever  of  inter- 
fering." Yet  the  letter  itself,  and  others  which 
follow,  testify  to  the  vehemence  of  Burke's  interest 
in  the  matter,  and  to  the  persistency  with  which 
he  would  have  had  them  follow  his  judgment,  if 
they  would  have  listened.  It  is  as  clear  that  they 
did  not  listen. 

Apart  from  the  fierce  struggle  against  Pitt's 
Regency  Bill,  Burke's  friends  were  intently  occupied 
with  the  reconstruction  of  the  Portland  cabinet, 
which  the  king  had  so  unexpectedly  dismissed  five 
years  before.  This  was  a  sphere  in  which  Burke's 
gifts  were  neither  required  nor  sought.  We  are 
rather  in  distress,  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot  writes,  for  a 
proper  man  for  the  office  of  Chancellor  of  the  Ex- 
chequer. "  Lord  J.  Cavendish  is  very  unwilling 
to  engage  again  in  public  affairs.  Fox  is  to  be 
Secretary  of  State.  Burke,  it  is  thought,  would 
not  be  approved  of,  Sheridan  has  not  the  public  con- 
fidence, and  so  it  comes  down  therefore  to  Grey, 
Pelham,  myself,  and  perhaps  Windham."  Elliot 
was  one  of  Burke's  most  faithful  and  attached 
friends,  and  he  was  intimately  concerned  in  all  that 
was  going  on  in  the  inner  circle  of  the  party.  It  is 
worth  while,  therefore,  to  reproduce  his  account 
from  a  confidential  letter  to  Lady  Elliot,  of  the  way 
in  which  Burke's  claim  to  recognition  was  at  this 
time  regarded  and  dealt  with. 

Although  I  can  tell  you  nothing  positive  about  my 
own  situation.  I  was  made  very  happy  indeed  yesterday 


vn  PARTY  ARRANGEMENTS  133 

by  co-operating  in  the  settlement  of  Burke's,  in  a  manner 
which  gives  us  great  joy  as  well  as  comfort.  The  Duke  of 
Portland  has  felt  distressed  how  to  arrange  Burke  and  his 
family  in  a  manner  equal  to  Burke's  merits,  and  to  the 
Duke's  own  wishes,  and  at  the  same  time  so  as  to  be 
exempt  from  the  many  difficulties  which  seem  to  be  in  the 
way.  He  sent  for  Pelham  and  me,  as  Burke's  friends  and 
his  own,  to  advise  with  us  about  it ;  and  we  dined  yester- 
day with  him  and  the  Duchess,  that  we  might  have  time 
to  talk  the  thing  over  at  leisure  and  without  interruption 
after  dinner.  We  stayed  accordingly,  engaged  in  that 
subject  till  almost  twelve  at  night,  and  our  conference 
ended  most  happily  and  excessively  to  the  satisfaction  of 
us  all.  The  Duke  of  Portland  has  the  veneration  for 
Burke  that  Windham,  Pelham,  myself  and  a  few  more 
have,  and  he  thinks  it  impossible  to  do  too  much  for  him. 
He  considers  the  reward  to  be  given  to  Burke  as  a  credit 
and  honour  to  the  nation,  and  he  considers  the  neglect 
of  him  and  his  embarrassed  situation  as  having  been  long 
a  reproach  to  the  country.  The  unjust  prejudice  and 
clamour  which  has  prevailed  against  him  and  his  family 
only  determine  the  Duke  the  more  to  do  him  justice.  The 
question  was  how  ?  First,  his  brother  Richard,  who  was 
Secretary  to  the  Treasury  before,  will  have  the  same 
office  now ;  but  the  Duke  intends  to  give  him  one  of  the 
first  offices  which  falls  vacant,  of  about  £1000  a  year  for 
life  in  the  customs,  and  he  will  then  resign  the  Secretary 
to  the  Treasury,  which,  however,  in  the  meanwhile  is 
worth  £3000  a  year.  Edmund  Burke  is  to  have  the  Pay- 
Office,  £4000  a  year ;  but  as  that  is  precarious  and  he  can 
leave  no  provision  for  his  son,  it  would,  in  fact,  be  doing 
little  or  nothing  of  any  real  or  substantial  value  unless 
some  permanent  provision  is  added  to  it.  In  this  view  the 
Duke  is  to  grant  him  on  the  Irish  establishment  a  pension 
of  £2000  a  year  clear  for  his  own  life,  and  the  same  sum 
to  Mrs.  Burke  for  her  life.  This  will  make  Burke  com- 
pletely happy,  by  leaving  his  wife  and  son  safe  from  want 
after  his  death,  if  they  should  survive  him.  The  Duke's 
affectionate  anxiety  to  accomplish  this  object,  and  his 
determination  to  set  all  clamour  at  defiance  on  this  point 
of  justice,  was  truly  affecting,  and  increases  my  attach- 
ment for  the  Duke.  .  .  .  The  Duke  said  the  only  objection 
to  this  plan  was  that  he  thought  it  was  due  from  this 
country,  and  that  he  grudged  the  honour  of  it  to  Ireland  ; 
but  as  nothing  in  England  was  ready,  this  plan  was  settled. 


134  BURKE  CHAP. 

You  may  think  it  strange  that  to  this  moment  Burke 
does  not  know  a  word  of  aU  this,  and  his  family  are  indeed, 
I  believe,  suffering  a  little  under  the  apprehension  that  he 
may  be  neglected  in  the  general  scramble.  I  believe  there 
never  were  three  cabinet  counsellors  more  in  harmony  on 
any  subject  than  we  were,  nor  three  people  happier  in  their 
day's  work.1 

This  leaves  the  apparent  puzzle  where  it  was. 
Why  should  Burke  not  be  approved  of  for  Chan- 
cellor of  the  Exchequer  ?  What  were  the  many 
difficulties  described  as  seeming  to  be  in  the  way 
of  arranging  for  Burke  in  a  manner  equal  to  Burke's 
merits  and  the  Duke  of  Portland's  wishes  ?  His 
personal  relations  with  the  chiefs  of  his  party  were 
at  this  time  extremely  cordial  and  intimate.  He 
was  constantly  a  guest  at  the  Duke  of  Portland's 
most  private  dinner-parties.  Fox  had  gone  down 
to  Beaconsfield  to  recruit  himself  from  the  fatigues 
of  his  rapid  journey  from  Bologna,  and  to  spend 
some  days  in  quiet  with  Windham  and  the  master 
of  the  house.  Elliot  and  Windham,  who  were 
talked  about  for  a  post  for  which  one  of  them  says 
that  Burke  would  not  have  been  approved,  vied 
with  one  another  in  adoring  Burke.  Finally,  Elliot 
and  the  Duke  think  themselves  happy  in  a  day's 
work  that  ended  in  consigning  the  man  who  not 
only  was,  but  was  admitted  to  be,  the  most  powerful 
genius  of  their  party,  to  a  third-rate  post,  and  that 
most  equivocal  distinction,  a  pension  on  the  Irish 
establishment.  The  common  explanation  that  it 
illustrates  Whig  exclusiveness,  cannot  be  seriously 
received  as  adequate.  It  is  probable,  for  one  thing, 
that  the  feelings  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  had  more  to 
do  with  it  than  the  feelings  of  men  like  the  Duke 
of  Portland  or  Fox.  We  can  easily  imagine  how 
little  that  most  worthless  of  human  creatures  would 
appreciate  the  great  qualities  of  such  a  man  as 
Burke.  The  painful  fact  which  we  are  unable  to 

1  Life  and  Letters  of  Sir  G.  Elliot,  i.  261-263. 


vn  BURKE'S  PUBLIC  POSITION  135 

conceal  from  ourselves  is,  that  the  common  opinion 
of  better  men  than  the  Prince  of  Wales  leaned  in  the 
same  direction.  His  violence  in  the  course  of  the 
Regency  debates  had  produced  strong  disapproval 
in  the  public,  and  downright  consternation  in  his 
own  party.  On  one  occasion  he  is  described  by  a 
respectable  observer  as  having  "  been  wilder  than 
ever,  and  laid  himself  and  his  party  more  open 
than  ever  speaker  did.  He  is  folly  personified,  but 
shaking  his  cap  and  bells  under  the  laurel  of  genius. 
He  finished  his  wild  speech  in  a  manner  next  to 
madness."  Moore  believes  that  Burke's  indiscre- 
tions in  these  trying  and  prolonged  transactions 
sowed  the  seeds  of  the  alienation  between  him  and 
Fox  two  years  afterwards.  Burke's  excited  state 
of  mind  showed  itself  in  small  things  as  well  as  great. 
Going  with  Windham  to  Carlton  House,  Burke 
attacked  him  in  the  coach  for  a  difference  of  opinion 
about  the  affairs  of  a  friend,  and  behaved  with  such 
unreasonable  passion  and  such  furious  rudeness  of 
manner,  that  his  magnanimous  admirer  had  some 
difficulty  in  obliterating  the  impression.  The  public 
were  less  tolerant.  Windham  has  told  us  that  at 
this  time  Burke  was  a  man  decried,  persecuted,  and 
proscribed,  not  being  much  valued  even  by  his  own 
party,  and  by  half  the  nation  considered  as  little 
better  than  an  ingenious  madman.1  This  is  evi- 
dence beyond  impeachment,  for  Windham  loved  and 
honoured  Burke  with  the  affection  and  reverence  of 
a  son  ;  and  he  puts  the  popular  sentiment  on  record 
with  grief  and  amazement.  There  is  other  testi- 
mony to  the  same  effect.  The  fourth  Lord  Lans- 
downe,  who  must  have  heard  the  subject  abundantly 
discussed  by  those  who  were  most  concerned  in  it, 
was  once  asked  by  a  very  eminent  man  of  our 
own  time,  why  the  Whigs  kept  Burke  out  of  their 
Cabinets.  "  Burke  !  "  he  cried ;  "he  was  so  violent, 
so  overbearing,  so  arrogant,  so  intractable,  that  to 

1  Windham's  Diary,  p.  213. 


136  BURKE  CHAP. 

have  got  on  with  him  in  a  Cabinet  would  have  been 
utterly  and  absolutely  impossible." 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  to  be  tolerably  clear  that 
the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  Burke's  promotion  to 
high  office  were  his  notoriously  straitened  circum- 
stances ;  his  ungoverned  excesses  of  party  zeal  and 
political  passion ;  finally,  what  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot 
calls  the  unjust  prejudice  and  clamour  against  him 
and  his  family,  and  what  Burke  himself  once  called 
the  hunt  of  obloquy  that  pursued  him  all  his  life. 
The  first  two  of  these  causes  can  scarcely  have 
operated  in  the  arrangements  that  were  made  in 
the  Rockingham  and  Coalition  ministries.  But  the 
third,  we  may  be  sure,  was  incessantly  at  work.  It 
would  have  needed  social  courage  alike  in  1782, 1783, 
and  1788  to  give  Cabinet  rank  to  a  man  round 
whose  name  there  floated  so  many  disparaging 
associations.  Social  courage  is  exactly  the  virtue 
in  which  the  constructors  of  a  government  will 
always  think  themselves  least  able  to  indulge. 
Burke,  we  have  to  remember,  did  not  stand  alone 
before  the  world.  Elliot  describes  a  dinner-party 
at  Lord  Fitzwilliam's,  at  which  four  of  these  half- 
discredited  Irishmen  were  present.  "  Burke  has 
now  got  such  a  train  after  him  as  would  sink  any- 
body but  himself : — his  son,  who  is  quite  nauseated 
by  all  mankind ;  his  brother,  who  is  liked  better 
than  his  son,  but  is  rather  offensive  with  animal 
spirits  and  with  brogue  ;  and  his  cousin,  Will  Burke, 
who  is  just  returned  unexpectedly  from  India,  as 
much  ruined  as  when  he  went  many  years  ago,  and 
who  is  a  fresh  charge  on  any  prospects  of  power 
that  Burke  may  ever  have."  It  was  this  train,  and 
the  ideas  of  adventurership  that  clung  to  them,  the 
inextinguishable  stories  about  papistry  and  Saint 
Omer's,  the  tenacious  calumny  about  the  letters  of 
Junius,  the  notorious  circumstances  of  embarrass- 
ment and  neediness — it  was  all  these  things  that 
combined  with  Burke's  own  defects  of  temper  and 


vn  BURKE'S  CHAGRIN  137 

discretion,  to  give  the  Whig  grandees  as  decent  a 
reason  as  they  could  have  desired  for  keeping  all 
the  great  posts  of  state  in  their  own  hands.  \ 

It  seems  difficult  to  deny  that  the  questions  of 
the  Regency  had  caused  the  germs  of  a  sort  of  dis- 
satisfaction and  strain  in  the  relations  between 
Fox  and  Burke.  Their  feelings  to  one  another 
have  been  well  compared  to  the  mutual  discontent 
between  partners  in  unsuccessful  play,  where  each 
suspects  that  it  is  the  mistakes  of  the  other  that 
lost  the  game.  Whether  Burke  felt  conscious  of 
the  failures  in  discretion  and  temper,  that  were 
the  real  or  pretended  excuse  for  neglect,  we  cannot 
tell.  There  is  one  passage  that  reveals  a  chagrin 
of  this  kind.  A  few  days  after  the  meeting  between 
the  Duke  of  Portland  and  Elliot,  for  the  purpose  of 
settling  his  place  in  the  new  ministry,  Burke  went 
down  to  Beaconsfield.  In  writing  (January  24, 1789) 
to  invite  Windham  and  Pelham  to  come  to  stay  a 
night,  with  promise  of  a  leg  of  mutton  cooked  by  a 
dairymaid  who  was  not  a  bad  hand  at  a  pinch,  he 
goes  on  to  say  that  his  health  has  received  some 
small  benefit  from  his  journey  to  the  country. 
"  But  this  view  to  health,  though  far  from  un- 
necessary to  me,  was  not  the  chief  cause  of  my 
present  retreat.  I  began  to  find  that  I  was  grown 
rather  too  anxious  ;  and  had  begun  to  discover 
to  myself  and  to  others  a  solicitude  relative  to  the 
present  state  of  affairs,  which,  though  their  strange 
condition  might  well  warrant  it  in  others,  is  cer- 
tainly less  suitable  to  my  time  of  life,  in  which  all 
emotions  are  less  allowed ;  and  to  which,  most  cer- 
tainly, all  human  concerns  ought  in  reason  to  become 
more  indifferent  than  to  those  who  have  work  to 
do,  and  a  good  deal  of  day  and  of  inexhausted 
strength  to  do  it  in."  1 

The  king's  unexpected  restoration  to  health  two 
or  three  weeks  later,  brought  to  naught  all  the  hope 

1  Correspondence,  iii.  89. 


138  BURKE  CHAP,  vn 

and  ambition  of  the  Whigs,  and  confirmed  Pitt 
in  power  for  the  rest  of  Burke 's  lifetime.  But  an 
event  came  to  pass  in  the  world's  history,  that 
transformed  Burke  as  if  in  an  instant  from  a  man 
decried,  persecuted,  proscribed,  into  an  object  of 
exultant  applause  all  over  Europe. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   FRENCH   REVOLUTION 

WE  have  now  come  to  the  second  of  the  two 
momentous  changes  in  the  world's  affairs,  in 
which  Burke  played  an  imposing  and  historic  part. 
His  attitude  in  the  first  of  them,  the  struggle  for 
American  independence,  commands  almost  without 
alloy  the  admiration  and  reverence  of  posterity. 
His  attitude  in  the  second  of  them,  the  great 
Revolution  in  France,  has  raised  controversies  that 
can  only  be  compared  in  heat  and  duration  to  the 
master  controversies  of  theology.  If  the  history 
of  society  were  written  as  learned  men  write  the 
history  of  the  Christian  faith  and  its  churches, 
Burke  would  figure  in  the  same  strong  promi- 
nence, whether  deplorable  or  glorious,  as  Arius  and 
Athanasius,  Augustine  and  Sabellius,  Luther  and 
Ignatius.  If  we  ask  how  it  is  that  now,  so  many 
years  after  the  event,  men  are  still  discussing  Burke's 
pamphlet  on  the  Revolution  as  they  are  still  dis- 
cussing Bishop  Butler's  Analogy,  the  answer  is 
that  in  one  case  as  in  the  other  the  questions  at 
issue  are  still  unsettled,  and  that  Burke  offers  in 
their  highest  and  most  comprehensive  form  all  the 
considerations  belonging  to  one  side  of  the  dispute. 
He  was  not  of  those,  of  whom  Coleridge  said  that 
they  proceeded  with  much  solemnity  to  solve  the 
riddle  of  the  French  Revolution  by  anecdotes. 
He  suspended  it  in  the  same  light  of  great  social 
ideas  and  wide  principles,  in  which  its  authors  and 

139 


140  BURKE  CHAP. 

champions  professed  to  represent  it.  Unhappily  he 
advanced  from  criticism  to  practical  exhortation, 
the  most  mischievous  and  indefensible  that  has 
ever  been  pressed  by  any  statesman  on  any  nation. 
But  the  force  of  the  criticism  remains,  its  foresight 
remains,  its  commemoration  of  valuable  elements 
of  life  that  men  were  forgetting,  its  discernment  of 
the  limitations  of  things,  its  sense  of  the  awful 
emergencies  of  the  problem.  When  our  grand- 
children have  made  up  their  minds  as  to  the  merits 
of  the  social  transformation  that  dawned  on  Europe 
in  1789,  then  Burke's  Reflections  will  become  a  mere 
literary  antiquity,  and  not  before. 

From  the  very  beginning  Burke  looked  upon 
the  proceedings  in  France  with  distrust.  He  had 
not  a  moment  of  enthusiasm  or  sympathy  of  which 
to  repent.  When  the  news  reached  England  that 
the  insurgents  of  Paris  had  stormed  the  Bastille, 
Fox  exclaimed  with  exultation,  how  much  it  was 
the  greatest  event  that  had  ever  happened  in  the 
world,  how  much  the  best.  Is  it  an  infirmity  to 
wish  for  an  instant  that  some  such  phrase  of 
generous  hope  had  escaped  from  Burke ;  that  he 
had  for  a  day  or  an  hour  undergone  the  fine  illusion 
that  was  lighted  up  in  the  spirits  of  men  like  Words- 
worth and  Coleridge  ?  Those  fine  poets,  who  were 
destined  one  day  to  preach  even  a  wiser  and  a 
loftier  conservatism  than  his  own,  have  told  us 
what  they  felt — 

When  France  in  wrath  her  giant  limbs  upreared, 
And  with  that  oath,  which  smote  air,  earth,  and  sea, 
Stamped  her  strong  foot,  and  said  she  would  be  free. 

Burke  from  the  first  espied  the  looming  shadow 
of  a  catastrophe.  In  August  he  wrote  to  Lord 
Charlemont  that  the  events  in  France  had  some- 
thing paradoxical  and  mysterious  about  them ; 
that  the  outbreak  of  the  old  Parisian  ferocity  might 
be  no  more  than  a  sudden  explosion,  but  if  it  should 


vm  HIS  IDEA  OF  LIBERTY  141 

happen  to  be  character  rather  than  accident,  then 
the  people  would  need  a  strong  hand  like  that  of 
their  former  masters  to  coerce  them ;  that  all 
depended  upon  the  French  having  wise  heads 
among  them,  and  upon  these  wise  heads,  if  such 
there  were,  acquiring  an  authority  to  match  their 
wisdom.  There  is  nothing  here  but  a  calm  and 
sagacious  suspense  of  judgment.  It  soon  appeared 
that  the  old  Parisian  ferocity  was  still  alive.  In 
the  events  of  October  1789,  when  the  mob  of  Paris 
marched  out  to  Versailles  and  marched  back  again 
with  the  king  and  queen  in  triumphal  procession, 
Burke  felt  in  his  heart  that  the  beginning  of  the 
end  had  come,  and  that  the  catastrophe  was  already 
at  hand.  In  October  he  wrote  a  long  letter  to  the 
French  gentleman  to  whom  he  afterwards  addressed 
the  Reflections.  "  You  hope,  sir,"  he  said,  "  that 
I  think  the  French  deserving  of  liberty.  I  certainly 
do.  I  certainly  think  that  all  men  who  desire  it 
deserve  it.  We  cannot  forfeit  our  right  to  it,  but 
by  what  forfeits  our  title  to  the  privileges  of  our 
kind.  The  liberty  I  mean  is  social  freedom.  It 
is  that  state  of  things  in  which  liberty  is  secured 
by  equality  of  restraint.  This  kind  of  liberty  is, 
indeed,  but  another  name  for  justice.  Whenever 
a  separation  is  made  between  liberty  and  justice, 
neither  is  in  my  opinion  safe."  The  weightiest 
and  most  important  of  all  political  truths,  and 
worth  half  the  fine  things  that  poets  have  sung 
about  freedom — if  it  could  only  have  been  re- 
spected, how  different  the  course  of  the  Revolu- 
tion !  But  the  engineer  who  attempts  to  deal 
with  the  abysmal  rush  of  the  falls  of  Niagara, 
must  put  aside  the  tools  that  constructed  the 
Bridgewater  Canal  and  the  Chelsea  Waterworks. 
Nobody  recognised  so  early  as  Burke  that  France 
had  really  embarked  among  cataracts  and  boiling 
gulfs,  and  the  pith  of  all  his  first  criticisms,  includ- 
ing the  Reflections,  was  the  proposition  that  to 


142  BURKE  CHAP. 

separate  freedom  from  justice  was  nothing  else 
than  to  steer  the  ship  of  state  direct  into  the  mael- 
strom. It  is  impossible  to  deny  that  this  was  true. 
Unfortunately  it  was  a  truth  that  the  wild  spirits 
then  abroad  in  the  storm  made  of  no  avail. 

Destiny  aimed  an  evil  stroke  when  Burke,  whose 
whole  soul  was  bound  up  in  order,  peace,  and  gently 
enlarged  precedent,  found  himself  face  to  face  with 
the  portentous  man  -  devouring  Sphinx.  He  who 
could  not  endure  that  a  few  clergymen  should  be 
allowed  to  subscribe  to  the  Bible  instead  of  to  the 
Articles,  saw  the  ancient  Church  of  Christendom 
prostrated,  its  possessions  confiscated,  its  priests 
proscribed,  and  Christianity  itself  officially  super- 
seded. The  economical  reformer  who,  when  his 
zeal  was  hottest,  declined  to  discharge  a  tide- 
waiter  or  a  scullion  in  the  royal  kitchen  who  should 
have  acquired  the  shadow  of  a  vested  interest  in 
his  post,  beheld  two  great  orders  stripped  of  their 
privileges  and  deprived  of  much  of  their  lands, 
though  their  possession  had  been  sanctified  by  the 
express  voice  of  the  laws  and  the  prescription  of 
many  centuries.  He  who  was  full  of  apprehension 
and  anger  at  the  proposal  to  take  away  a  member 
of  Parliament  from  St.  Michael's  or  Old  Sarum, 
had  to  look  on  while  the  most  august  monarchy  in 
Europe  was  overturned.  The  man  who  dreaded 
fanatics,  hated  atheists,  despised  political  theorisers, 
and  was  driven  wild  at  the  notion  of  applying 
metaphysical  rights  and  abstract  doctrines  to  public 
affairs,  suddenly  beheld  a  whole  kingdom  given 
finally  up  to  fanatics,  atheists,  and  theorisers,  who 
talked  of  nothing  but  the  rights  of  man,  and  de- 
liberately set  as  wide  a  gulf  as  ruin  and  bloodshed 
could  make,  between  themselves  and  every  incident 
or  institution  in  the  history  of  their  land.  The 
statesman  who  had  once  declared,  and  habitually 
proved,  his  preference  for  peace  even  over  truth, 
who  had  all  his  life  surrounded  himself  with  a 


ORIGIN  OF  THE  REFLECTIONS       143 

mental  paradise  of  order  and  equilibrium,  in  a 
moment  found  himself  confronted  by  the  stupen- 
dous and  awful  spectre  that  a  century  of  disorder 
had  raised  in  its  supreme  hour.  It  could  not  have 
been  difficult  for  any  one  who  had  studied  Burke 's 
character  and  career,  to  foretell  all  that  now  came 
to  pass  with  him. 

It  was  from  an  English,  and  not  from  a  French 
point  of  view,  that  Burke  was  first  drawn  to  write 
upon  the  Revolution.  The  4th  of  November  was 
the  anniversary  of  the  landing  of  the  Prince  of 
Orange,  and  the  first  act  in  the  Revolution  of 
1688.  The  members  of  an  association  calling  itself 
the  Revolution  Society,  chiefly  composed  of  dis- 
senters, but  not  without  a  mixture  of  churchmen, 
including  a  few  peers  and  a  good  many  members 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  met  as  usual  to  hear 
a  sermon  in  commemoration  of  the  glorious  day. 
Dr.  Price  was  the  preacher,  and  both  in  the  morn- 
ing sermon,  and  in  the  speeches  which  followed  in 
the  festivities  of  the  afternoon,  the  French  were 
held  up  to  the  loudest  admiration,  as  having  carried 
the  principles  of  our  own  Revolution  to  a  loftier 
height,  and  having  opened  boundless  hopes  to 
mankind.  By  these  harmless  proceedings  Burke's 
anger  and  scorn  were  aroused  to  a  pitch  that  must 
seem  to  us,  as  it  seemed  to  not  a  few  of  his  con- 
temporaries, singularly  out  of  all  proportion  to  its 
cause.  Deeper  things  were  doubtless  in  silent 
motion  within  him.  He  set  to  work  upon  a  de- 
nunciation of  Price's  doctrines,  with  a  velocity  that 
reminds  us  of  Aristotle's  comparison  of  anger  to 
the  over-hasty  servant,  who  runs  off  with  all  speed 
before  he  has  listened  to  half  the  message.  This 
was  the  origin  of  the  Reflections.  The  design  grew 
as  the  writer  went  on.  His  imagination  took  fire ; 
his  memory  quickened  a  throng  of  impressive 
associations ;  his  excited  vision  revealed  to  him 
a  band  of  vain,  petulant  upstarts  persecuting  the 


144  BURKE  CHAP. 

ministers  of  a  sacred  religion,  insulting  a  virtuous 
and  innocent  sovereign,  and  covering  with  humilia- 
tion the  august  daughter  of  the  Caesars  ;  his  mind 
teemed  with  the  sage  maxims  of  the  philosophy  of 
things  established,  and  the  precepts  of  the  gospel 
of  order.  Every  courier  that  crossed  the  Channel 
supplied  new  material  to  his  contempt  and  his 
alarm.  He  condemned  the  whole  method  and 
course  of  the  French  reforms.  His  judgment  was 
in  suspense  no  more.  He  no  longer  distrusted  ; 
he  hated,  despised,  and  began  to  dread. 

Men  "soon  began  to  whisper  abroad  that  Burke 
thought  ill  of  what  was  going  on  over  the  water. 
When  it  transpired  that  he  was  writing  a  pamphlet, 
the  world  of  letters  was  stirred  with  the  liveliest 
expectation.  The  name  of  the  author,  the  import- 
ance of  the  subject,  and  the  singularity  of  his 
opinions,  so  Mackintosh  informs  us,  all  inflamed 
the  public  curiosity.  Soon  after  Parliament  met 
for  the  session  (1790),  the  army  estimates  were 
brought  up.  Fox  criticised  the  increase  of  our 
forces,  and  incidentally  hinted  something  in  praise 
of  the  French  army,  which  had  shown  that  a  man 
could  be  a  soldier  without  ceasing  to  be  a  citizen. 
Some  days  afterwards  the  subject  was  revived,  and 
Pitt,  as  well  as  Fox,  avowed  himself  hopeful  of  the 
good  effect  of  the  Revolution  upon  the  order  and 
government  of  France.  Burke  followed  in  a  very 
different  vein,  openly  proclaiming  the  dislike  and 
fear  of  the  Revolution  that  was  to  be  the  one 
ceaseless  refrain  of  all  he  spoke  or  wrote  for  the 
rest  of  his  life.  He  deplored  Fox's  praise  of  the 
army  for  breaking  their  lawful  allegiance,  and  then 
he  proceeded  with  ominous  words  to  the  effect 
that,  if  any  friend  of  his  should  concur  in  any 
measures  which  should  tend  to  introduce  such  a 
democracy  as  that  of  France,  he  would  abandon 
his  best  friends  and  join  with  his  worst  enemies 
to  oppose  either  the  means  or  the  end.  This  has 


vm  TREATMENT  OF  DISSENTERS         145 

unanimously  been  pronounced  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  and  effective  speeches  that  Burke  ever 
made.  Fox  rose  with  distress  on  every  feature, 
and  made  the  often-quoted  declaration  of  his  debt 
to  Burke  :  "  If  all  the  political  information  I  have 
learned  from  books,  all  which  I  have  gained  from 
science,  and  all  which  my  knowledge  of  the  world 
and  its  affairs  has  taught  me,  were  put  into  one 
scale,  and  the  improvement  which  I  have  derived 
from  my  right  honourable  friend's  instruction  and 
conversation  were  placed  in  the  other,  I  should  be 
at  a  loss  to  decide  to  which  to  give  the  preference. 
I  have  learnt  more  from  my  right  honourable  friend 
than  from  all  the  men  with  whom  I  ever  con- 
versed." All  seemed  likely  to  end  in  a  spirit  of 
conciliation  until  Sheridan  rose,  and  in  the  plainest 
terms  he  could  find  expressed  his  dissent  from 
everything  Burke  had  said.  Burke  immediately 
renounced  his  friendship.  For  the  first  time  in  his 
life  he  found  the  sympathy  of  the  House  vehemently 
on  his  side. 

In  the  following  month  (March  1790)  this  un- 
promising incident  was  succeeded  by  an  aberration 
no  rational  man  will  now  undertake  to  defend. 
Fox  brought  forward  a  motion  for  the  repeal  of 
the  Test  and  Corporation  Acts.  He  did  this  in 
accordance  with  a  recent  suggestion  of  Burke's 
own,  that  he  should  strengthen  his  political  position 
by  winning  the  support  of  the  dissenters.  Burke 
himself  had  always  denounced  the  Test  Act  as 
bad,  and  as  an  abuse  of  sacred  things.  To  the 
amazement  of  everybody,  and  to  the  infinite 
scandal  of  his  party,  he  now  pronounced  the  dis- 
senters to  be  disaffected  citizens,  and  refused  to 
relieve  them.  Well  might  Fox  say  that  Burke's 
words  had  filled  him  with  grief  and  shame. 

Meanwhile  the  great  rhetorical  fabric  gradu- 
ally arose.  Burke  revised,  erased,  moderated, 
strengthened,  emphasised,  wrote  and  rewrote  with 

L 


146  BURKE  CHAP. 

indefatigable  industry.  With  the  manuscript  con- 
stantly under  his  eyes,  he  lingered  busily,  pen  in 
hand,  over  paragraphs  and  phrases,  antitheses  and 
apophthegms.  The  Reflections  was  no  superb  im- 
provisation. Its  composition  recalls  Palma  Giovine's 
account  of  the  mighty  Titian's  way  of  working ; 
how  the  master  made  his  preparations  with  resolute 
strokes  of  a  heavily-laden  brush,  and  then  turned 
his  picture  to  the  wall,  and  by  and  by  resumed 
again,  and  then  again  and  again,  redressing,  adjust- 
ing, modelling  the  light  with  a  rub  of  his  finger, 
or  dabbling  a  spot  of  dark  colour  into  some  corner 
with  a  touch  of  his  thumb,  and  finally  working 
all  his  smirches,  contrasts,  abruptnesses,  into  the 
glorious  harmony  that  we  know.  Burke  was  so 
unwearied  in  this  insatiable  correction  and  altera- 
tion that  the  printer  found  it  necessary,  instead  of 
making  the  changes  marked  upon  the  proof-sheets, 
to  set  up  the  whole  in  type  afresh.  The  work  was 
upon  the  easel  for  exactly  a  year.  It  was  November 
(1790)  before  the  result  came  into  the  hands  of 
the  public.  It  was  a  small  octavo  of  three  hundred 
and  fifty-six  pages,  in  contents  rather  less  than 
twice  the  present  volume,  bound  in  an  unlettered 
wrapper  of  grey  paper,  and  sold  for  five  shillings. 
In  less  than  twelve  months  it  reached  its  eleventh 
edition,  and  it  has  been  computed  that  not  many 
short  of  thirty  thousand  copies  were  sold  within 
the  next  six  years. 

The  first  curiosity  had  languished  in  the  course 
of  the  long  delay,  but  it  was  revived  in  its  strongest 
force  when  the  book  itself  appeared.  A  remark- 
able effect  instantly  followed.  Before  the  Reflec- 
tions was  published  the  predominant  sentiment  in 
England  had  been  one  of  mixed  astonishment  and 
sympathy.  Pitt  had  expressed  this  common  mood 
both  in  the  House  of  Commons  and  in  private. 
It  was  impossible  for  England  not  to  be  amazed 
at  the  uprising  of  a  nation  whom  they  had  been 


vm       EFFECTS  OF  THE  REFLECTIONS     147 

accustomed  to  think  of  as  willing  slaves,  and  it 
was  impossible  for  her,  when  the  scene  did  not 
happen  to  be  the  American  colonies  or  Ireland, 
not  to  profess  good  wishes  for  the  cause  of  emanci- 
pation all  over  the  world.  Apart  from  the  natural 
admiration  of  a  free  people  for  a  neighbour  strug- 
gling to  be  free,  England  saw  no  reason  to  lament 
a  blow  to  a  sovereign  and  a  government  who  had 
interfered  on  the  side  of  her  insurgent  colonies. 
To  this  easy  state  of  mind  Burke's  book  put  an 
immediate  end.  At  once,  as  contemporaries  assure 
us,  it  divided  the  nation  into  two  parties.  On 
both  sides  it  precipitated  opinion.  With  a  long- 
resounding  blast  on  his  golden  trumpet  Burke 
had  unfurled  a  new  flag,  and  half  the  nation 
hurried  to  rally  to  it  —  the  half  that  had  scouted 
his  views  on  America ;  had  bitterly  disliked  his 
plan  of  economic  reform;  had  mocked  his  ideas 
on  religious  toleration,  and  a  moment  before  had 
hated  and  reviled  him  beyond  all  men  living  for 
his  fierce  tenacity  in  the  impeachment  of  Warren 
Hastings.  The  king  said  to  everybody  who  came 
near  him  that  the  book  was  a  good  book,  a  very 
good  book,  and  every  gentleman  ought  to  read  it. 
The  universities  began  to  think  of  offering  the 
scarlet  gown  of  their  most  honourable  degree  to 
the  assailant  of  Price  and  the  dissenters.  The 
great  army  of  the  indolent  good,  the  people  who 
lead  excellent  Jives  and  never  use  their  reason,  took 
violent  alarm.  The  timorous,  the  weak-minded, 
the  bigoted,  were  suddenly  awakened  to  a  sense 
of  what  they  owed  to  themselves.  Burke  gave 
them  the  key  that  enabled  them  to  interpret  the 
Revolution  in  harmony  with  their  usual  ideas  and 
their  temperament. 

Reaction  quickly  rose  to  a  high  pitch.  One 
preacher  in  a  parish  church  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  London  celebrated  the  anniversary  of  the  re- 
storation of  King  Charles  II.  by  a  sermon,  in  which 


148  BURKE  CHAP. 

the  pains  of  eternal  damnation  were  confidently  pro- 
mised to  political  disaffection.  Romilly,  mention- 
ing to  a  friend  that  the  Reflections  had  got  into 
a  fourteenth  edition,  wondered  whether  Burke  was 
not  rather  ashamed  of  his  success.  It  is  when 
we  come  to  the  rank  and  file  of  reaction,  that  we 
find  it  hard  to  forgive  the  man  of  genius  who 
made  himself  the  organ  of  their  selfishness,  their 
timidity,  and  their  blindness.  We  know  that  the 
parts  of  his  writings  on  French  affairs  to  which 
they  would  fly,  were  not  likely  to  be  the  parts 
that  calm  men  now  read  with  sympathy,  but  the 
scoldings,  the  screamings,  the  unworthy  vitupera- 
tion with  which,  especially  in  the  latest  of  them,  he 
attacked  everybody  who  took  part  in  the  Revolu- 
tion, from  Condorcet  and  Lafayette  down  to  Marat 
and  Couthon.  It  was  the  feet  of  clay  that  they 
adored  in  their  image,  and  not  the  head  of  fine 
gold  and  the  breasts  and  the  arms  of  silver..  < 

On  the  continent  of  Europe  the  excitement  was 
as  great  among  the  ruling  classes  as  it  was  at  home. 
Mirabeau,  who  had  made  Burke's  acquaintance 
some  years  before  in  England,  and  even  been  his 
guest  at  Beaconsfield,  now  made  the  Reflections  the 
text  of  more  than  one  tremendous  philippic.  Louis 
XVI.  is  said  to  have  translated  the  book  into 
French  with  his  own  hand.  Catherine  of  Russia, 
Voltaire's  adored  Semiramis  of  the  North,  the 
benefactress  of  Diderot,  the  ready  helper  of  the 
philosophic  party,  pressed  her  congratulations  on 
the  great  pontiff  of  the  old  order,  who  now 
thundered  anathema  against  the  philosophers  and 
all  their  works. 

It  is  important  to  remember  the  stage  that  the 
Revolution  had  reached,  when  Burke  was  com- 
posing his  attack  upon  it.  The  year  1790  was 
precisely  the  time  when  the  hopes  of  the  best  men 
in  France  shone  most  brightly,  and  seemed  most 
reasonable.  There  had  been  disorders,  and  Paris 


vm  DATE  OF  THE  REFLECTIONS        149 

still  had  ferocity  in  her  mien.  But  Robespierre 
was  an  obscure  figure  on  the  back  benches  of  the 
Assembly.  Nobody  had  ever  heard  of  Danton. 
The  name  of  Republic  had  never  been  so  much  as 
whispered.  The  king  still  believed  that  constitu- 
tional monarchy  would  leave  him  as  much  power 
as  he  desired.  He  had  voluntarily  gone  to  the 
National  Assembly,  and  in  simple  language  had 
exhorted  them  all  to  imitate  his  example  by  pro- 
fessing the  single  opinion,  the  single  interest,  the 
single  wish — attachment  to  the  new  constitution, 
and  ardent  desire  for  the  peace  and  happiness  of 
France.  The  clergy,  it  is  true,  were  violently 
irritated  by  the  spoliation  of  their  goods,  and  the 
nobles  had  crossed  the  Rhine,  to  brood  impotently 
in  the  safety  of  Coblenz  over  projects  of  a  bloody 
revenge  upon  their  own  country.  But  France, 
meanwhile,  paid  little  heed  either  to  the  anger  of 
the  clergy  or  to  the  menaces  of  the  emigrant  nobles, 
and  at  the  very  moment  when  Burke  was  writing 
his  most  sombre  pages,  Paris  and  the  provinces 
were  celebrating  with  transports  of  joy  and  enthu- 
siasm the  civic  oath,  the  federation,  the  restoration 
of  concord  to  the  land,  the  final  establishment  of 
freedom  and  justice  in  a  regenerated  France.  This 
was  the  happy  scene  over  which  Burke  suddenly 
stretched  out  the  right  arm  of  an  inspired  prophet, 
pointing  to  the  cloud  of  thunder  and  darkness 
gathering  on  the  hills,  and  proclaiming  to  them 
the  doom  that  had  been  written  upon  the  wall  by 
the  fingers  of  an  inexorable  hand.  It  is  no  wonder 
that,  when  the  cloud  burst  and  the  doom  was  ful- 
filled, men  turned  to  Burke,  as  they  went  of  old 
to  Ahithophel,  whose  counsel  was  as  if  a  man  had 
inquired  of  the  oracle  of  God. 

It  is  not  to  our  purpose  to  discuss  all  the  pro- 
positions advanced  in  the  Reflections,  much  less  to 
reply  to  them.  The  book  is  like  some  temple,  by 
whose  structure  and  design  we  allow  ourselves  to 


150  BURKE  CHAP. 

be  impressed,  without  being  careful  to  measure  the 
precise  truth  or  fitness  of  the  worship  to  which  it 
was  consecrated  by  its  first  founders.  Just  as  the 
student  of  the  Politics  of  Aristotle  may  well  accept 
all  the  wisdom  of  it,  without  caring  to  protest  at 
every  turn  against  slavery  as  the  basis  of  a  society, 
so  we  may  well  cherish  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Reflec- 
tions, at  this  distance  of  time,  without  marking  as 
a  rubric  on  every  page  that  half  of  these  impressive 
formulae  and  inspiring  declamations  were  irrelevant 
to  the  occasion  that  called  them  forth,  and  exercised 
for  the  hour  an  influence  that  was  purely  mischiev- 
ous. Time  permits  to  us  this  profitable  lenity.  In 
reading  this,  the  first  of  his  invectives,  it  is  im- 
portant, for  the  sake  of  clear  judgment,  to  put  from 
our  minds  the  practical  policy  that  Burke  after- 
wards so  untiringly  urged  upon  his  countrymen. 
As  yet  there  is  no  exhortation  to  England  to  inter- 
fere. We  still  listen  to  the  voice  of  the  statesman, 
and  are  not  deafened  by  the  passionate  cries  of 
the  preacher  of  a  crusade.  When  Burke  wrote 
the  Reflections  he  was  justified  in  criticising  the 
Revolution  as  an  extraordinary  movement,  but 
still  a  movement  professing  to  be  conducted  on  the 
principles  of  rational  and  practicable  politics.  They 
were  the  principles  to  which  competent  onlookers 
like  Jefferson  and  Morris  had  expected  the  Assembly 
to  conform,  but  to  which  the  Assembly  never  con- 
formed for  an  instant.  It  was  on  the  principles  of 
rational  politics  that  Fox  and  Sheridan  admired 
it.  On  these  principles  Burke  condemned  it.  He 
declared  that  the  methods  of  the  Constituent 
Assembly,  up  to  the  summer  of  1790,  were  unjust, 
precipitate,  destructive,  and  without  stability.  Men 
had  chosen  to  build  their  house  on  the  sands,  and 
the  winds  and  the  seas  would  speedily  beat  against 
it  and  overthrow  it. 

His  prophecy  was  fulfilled  to  the  letter.     What 
is  still  more  important  for  the  credit  of  his  foresight 


vm  INSTANCES  OF  FORESIGHT  151 

is,  that  not  only  did  his  prophecy  come  true,  but 
it  came  true  for  the  reasons  he  had  fixed  upon.  It 
was  the  constitution  of  the  Church,  in  which  Burke 
saw  the  worst  of  the  many  bad  mistakes  of  the 
Assembly.  History,  now  slowly  shaking  herself 
free  from  the  passions  of  a  century,  agrees  that  the 
civil  constitution  of  the  clergy  was  the  measure 
which,  more  than  any  other,  decisively  put  an  end 
to  whatever  hopes  there  might  have  been  of  a  peace- 
ful transition  from  the  old  order  to  the  new.  A 
still  more  striking  piece  of  foresight  is  the  prediction 
of  the  despotism  of  the  Napoleonic  Empire.  Burke 
had  compared  the  levelling  policy  of  the  Assembly 
in  their  geometrical  division  of  the  departments,  and 
their  isolation  from  one  another  of  the  bodies  of  the 
state,  to  the  treatment  a  conquered  country  receives 
at  the  hands  of  its  conquerors.  Like  Romans  in 
Greece  or  Macedon,  the  French  innovators  had 
destroyed  the  bonds  of  union,  under  colour  of  pro- 
viding for  the  independence  of  each  of  their  cities. 
"  If  the  present  project  of  a  Republic  should  fail," 
Burke  said,  with  a  prescience  really  profound,  "  all 
securities  to  a  moderate  freedom  fail  with  it.  All 
the  indirect  restraints  which  mitigate  despotism  are 
removed  ;  insomuch  that,  if  monarchy  should  ever 
again  obtain  an  entire  ascendancy  in  France  under 
this  or  any  other  dynasty,  it  will  probably  be,  if 
not  voluntarily  tempered  at  setting  out  by  the 
wise  and  virtuous  counsels  of  the  prince,  the  most 
completely  arbitrary  power  that  ever  appeared  on 
earth."  Almost  at  the  same  moment  Mirabeau 
was  secretly  writing  to  the  king  that  their  plan  of 
reducing  all  citizens  to  a  single  class  would  have 
delighted  Richelieu.  This  equal  surface,  he  said, 
facilitates  the  exercise  of  power,  and  many  reigns  in 
an  absolute  government  would  not  have  done  as 
much  as  this  single  year  of  revolution,  for  the  royal 
authority.  Time  showed  that  Burke  and  Mirabeau 
were  right. 


152  BURKE 


CHAT. 


History  ratifies  nearly  all  Burke's  strictures  on 
the  levity  and  precipitancy  of  the  first  set  of  actors 
in  the  revolutionary  drama.  No  part  of  the  Reflec- 
tions is  more  energetic  than  the  denunciation  of 
geometric  and  literary  methods ;  and  these  are 
just  what  the  modern  explorer  hits  upon,  as  one  of 
the  fatal  secrets  of  the  catastrophe.  De  Tocque- 
ville's  chapter  on  the  causes  that  made  literary  men 
the  principal  persons  in  France,  and  the  effect  this 
had  upon  the  Revolution  (Bk.  iii.  ch.  i.),  is  only 
a  little  too  cold  to  pass  for  Burke's  own.  Quinet's 
work  on  the  Revolution  is  one  long  sermon,  full  of 
eloquence  and  cogency,  upon  the  incapacity  and 
blindness  of  the  men  who  undertook  the  conduct 
of  a  tremendous  crisis  upon  mere  literary  methods, 
without  the  moral  courage  to  obey  the  logic  of  their 
beliefs,  with  the  student's  ignorance  of  the  eager 
passion  and  rapid  imagination  of  multitudes  of 
men,  with  the  pedant's  misappreciation  of  a  people, 
of  whom  it  has  been  said  by  one  of  themselves,  that 
there  never  was  a  nation  more  led  by  its  sensations 
and  less  by  its  principles.  Comte,  again,  points 
impressively  to  the  Revolution  as  the  period  that 
illustrates  more  decisively  than  another  the  peril 
of  confounding  the  two  great  functions  of  specula- 
tion and  political  action  :  and  he  speaks  with  just 
reprobation  of  the  preposterous  idea  in  the  philo- 
sophic politicians  of  the  epoch,  that  society  was  at 
their  disposal,  independent  of  its  past  development, 
devoid  of  inherent  impulses,  and  easily  capable  of 
being  morally  regenerated  by  the  mere  modification 
of  legislative  rules. 

What  then  was  it  that,  in  the  midst  of  so  much 
perspicacity  as  to  detail,  blinded  Burke  at  the  time 
when  he  wrote  the  Reflections,  to  the  true  nature 
of  the  movement  ?  Is  it  not  this,  that  he  judges 
the  Revolution  as  the  solution  of  a  merely  political 
question  ?  If  the  Revolution  had  been  merely 
political,  his  judgment  would  have  been  adequate. 


THE  SOCIAL  QUESTION  153 

The  question  was  much  deeper.  It  was  a  social 
question  that  burned  under  the  surface  of  what 
seemed  no  more  than  a  modification  of  external 
arrangements.  That  Burke  was  alive  to  the  exist- 
ence of  social  problems,  and  that  he  was  even 
tormented  by  them,  we  know  from  an  incidental 
passage  in  the  Reflections.  There  he  tells  us  how 
often  he  had  reflected,  and  never  reflected  without 
feeling,  upon  the  innumerable  servile  and  degrading 
occupations  to  which  by  the  social  economy  so  many 
wretches  are  inevitably  doomed.  He  had  pondered 
whether  there  could  be  any  means  of  rescuing  these 
unhappy  people  from  their  miserable  industry  with- 
out disturbing  the  natural  course  of  things,  and 
impeding  the  great  wheel  of  circulation  that  is 
turned  by  their  labour.  This  is  the  vein  of  the 
striking  passage  in  his  first  composition  that  I  have 
already  quoted  (p.  15).  Burke  did  not  yet  see,  and 
probably  never  saw,  that  one  key  to  the  events 
which  astonished  and  exasperated  him  was  simply 
that  the  persons  most  urgently  concerned  had  taken 
the  riddle  which  perplexed  him,  into  their  own 
hands,  and  had  in  fiery  earnest  set  about  their  own 
deliverance.  The  pith  of  the  Revolution  up  to  1790 
was  less  the  political  constitution,  of  which  Burke 
says  so  much,  and  so  much  that  is  true,  than  the 
social  and  economic  transformation,  of  which  he 
says  so  little.  It  was  not  a  question  of  the  power 
of  the  king,  or  the  measure  of  an  electoral  circum- 
scription, that  made  the  Revolution  ;  it  was  the 
iniquitous  distribution  of  the  taxes,  the  scourge  of 
the  militia  service,  the  scourge  of  the  road  service, 
the  destructive  tyranny  exercised  in  the  vast  pre- 
serves of  wild  game,  the  vexatious  rights  and 
imposts  of  the  lords  of  manors,  and  all  the  other 
odious  burdens  and  heavy  impediments  on  the 
prosperity  of  the  thrifty  and  industrious  part  of 
the  nation.  If  he  had  seen  ever  so  clearly  that 
one  of  the  most  important  sides  of  the  Revolution  in 


154  BURKE  CHAP. 

progress  was  the  rescue  of  the  tiller  of  the  soil,  Burke 
would  still  doubtless  have  viewed  events  with  bitter 
suspicion.  For  the  process  could  not  be  executed 
without  disturbing  the  normal  course  of  things,  and 
without  violating  his  principle  that  all  changes 
should  find  us  with  our  minds  tenacious  of  justice 
and  tender  of  property.  A  closer  examination  than 
he  chose  to  give  of  the  current  administration  alike 
of  justice  and  of  property  under  the  old  system, 
would  have  explained  to  him  that  an  hour  had  come 
in  which  the  spirit  of  property  and  of  justice  com- 
pelled a  supersession  of  the  letter. 

If  Burke  had  insisted  on  rigidly  keeping  sensi- 
bility to  the  wrongs  of  the  French  people  out  of 
the  discussion,  on  the  ground  that  the  whole  subject 
was  one  for  positive  knowledge  and  logical  inference, 
his  position  would  have  been  intelligible  and  defens- 
ible. He  followed  no  such  course.  His  pleading 
turns  constantly  to  arguments  from  feeling ;  but  it 
is  always  to  feeling  on  one  side,  and  to  a  sensibility 
that  is  only  alive  to  the  consecrated  force  of  historic 
associations.  How  much  pure  and  uncontrolled 
emotion  had  to  do  with  what  ought  to  have  been 
the  reasoned  judgments  of  his  understanding,  we 
know  on  his  own  evidence.  He  had  sent  the  proof- 
sheets  of  a  part  of  his  book  to  Sir  Philip  Francis. 
They  contained  the  famous  passage  describing  the 
French  queen  as  he  had  seen  her  seventeen  years 
before  at  Versailles.  Francis  bluntly  wrote  to  him 
that,  in  his  opinion,  all  Burke's  eloquence  about 
Marie  Antoinette  was  no  better  than  pure  foppery, 
and  he  referred  to  the  queen  herself  as  no  better  than 
Messalina.  Burke  was  so  excited  by  this  that  his 
son,  in  a  rather  officious  letter,  begged  Francis  not 
to  repeat  such  stimulating  remonstrance.  What  is 
interesting  in  the  incident  is  Burke's  own  reply. 
He  knew  nothing,  he  said,  of  the  story  of  Messalina, 
and  declined  the  obligation  of  proving  judicially 
the  virtues  of  all  those  whom  he  saw  suffering 


vm  HIS  SENSIBILITY  155 

wrong  and  contumely,  before  he  endeavoured  to 
interest  others  in  their  sufferings,  and  before  endeav- 
ouring to  kindle  horror  against  midnight  assassins 
at  backstairs  and  their  more  wicked  abettors  in 
pulpits.  And  then  he  went  on,  "  I  tell  you  again 
that  the  recollection  of  the  manner  in  which  I  saw 
the  Queen  of  France  in  the  year  1774  [1773], 
and  the  contrast  between  that  brilliancy,  splendour, 
and  beauty,  with  the  prostrate  homage  of  a  nation 
to  her,  and  the  abominable  scene  of  1789  which 
I  was  describing,  did  draw  tears  from  me  and 
wetted  my  paper.  These  tears  came  again  into  my 
eyes  almost  as  often  as  I  looked  at  the  description 
— they  may  again." 

The  answer  was  obvious.  It  was  well  to  pity 
the  unmerited  agonies  of  Marie  Antoinette,  though 
as  yet,  we  must  remember,  she  had  suffered  nothing 
beyond  the  indignities  of  the  days  of  October  at 
Versailles.  But  did  not  the  protracted  agonies  of 
a  nation  deserve  the  tribute  of  a  tear  ?  As  Paine 
asked,  were  men  to  weep  over  the  plumage,  and 
forget  the  dying  bird  ?  The  bulk  of  the  people 
must  labour,  Burke  told  them,  "  to  obtain  what  by 
labour  can  be  obtained  ;  and  when  they  find,  as 
they  commonly  do,  the  success  disproportioned  to 
the  endeavour,  they  must  be  taught  their  consolation 
in  the  final  proportions  of  eternal  justice."  When 
we  learn  that  a  Lyons  silk  weaver,  working  as  hard 
as  he  could  for  over  seventeen  hours  a  day,  could  not 
earn  money  enough  to  procure  the  most  bare  and 
urgent  necessaries  of  subsistence,  we  may  know 
with  what  benignity  of  brow  eternal  justice  must 
have  presented  herself  in  the  garret  of  that  hapless 
wretch.  It  was  no  idle  abstraction,  no  meta- 
physical right  of  man  for  which  the  French  cried, 
but  only  the  practical  right  of  being  permitted,  by 
their  own  toil,  to  save  themselves  and  the  little  ones 
about  their  knees  from  hunger  and  cruel  death. 
The  mainmortable  serfs  of  ecclesiastics  are  variously 


156  BURKE  CHAP. 

said  to  have  been  a  million  and  a  million  and  a  half 
at  the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Burke's  horror,  as 
he  thought  of  the  priests  and  prelates  who  left 
palaces  and  dignities  to  earn  a  scanty  living  by 
the  drudgery  of  teaching  their  language  in  strange 
lands,  should  have  been  alleviated  by  the  thought 
that  a  million  or  more  of  men  were  rescued  from 
ghastly  material  misery.  Are  we  to  be  so  over- 
whelmed with  sorrow  for  the  pitiful  destiny  of  the 
men  of  exalted  rank  and  sacred  function,  as  to  have 
no  tears  for  the  forty  thousand  serfs  in  the  gorges 
of  the  Jura,  who  were  held  in  dead-hand  by  the 
Bishop  of  Saint-Claude  ? 

The  simple  truth  is  that  Burke  did  not  know 
enough  of  the  subject  about  which  he  was  writing. 
When  he  said,  for  instance,  that  the  French  before 
1789  possessed  all  the  elements  of  a  constitution 
that  might  be  made  nearly  as  good  as  could  be 
wished,  he  said  what  many  of  his  contemporaries 
knew,  and  what  all  subsequent  investigation  and 
meditation  have  proved,  to  be  recklessly  ill-con- 
sidered and  untrue.  As  to  the  social  state  of 
France,  his  information  was  still  worse.  He  saw 
the  dangers  and  disorders  of  the  new  system,  but 
he  saw  a  very  little  way  into  the  more  cruel  dangers 
and  disorders  of  the  old.  Mackintosh  replied  to 
the  Reflections  with  manliness  and  temperance  in  the 
Vindiciae  Gallicae.  Thomas  Paine  replied  to  them 
with  an  energy,  courage,  and  eloquence  worthy  of 
his  cause,  in  the  Rights  of  Man.  But  the  substantial 
and  decisive  reply  to  Burke  came  from  his  former 
correspondent,  the  farmer  at  Bradfield  in  Suffolk. 
Arthur  Young  published  his  Travels  in  France  some 
eighteen  months  after  the  Reflections  (1792),  and  the 
pages  of  the  twenty-first  chapter  in  which  he  closes 
his  performance,  as  a  luminous  criticism  of  the 
most  important  side  of  the  Revolution,  are  worth  a 
hundred  times  more  than  Burke,  Mackintosh,  and 
Paine  all  put  together.  Young  afterwards  became 


vm       HIS  INSUFFICIENT  KNOWLEDGE     157 

panic-stricken,  but  his  book  remained.  There  the 
writer  plainly  enumerates  without  trope  or  invective 
the  intolerable  burdens  under  which  the  great  mass 
of  the  French  people  had  for  long  years  been  groan- 
ing. It  was  the  removal  of  these  burdens  that 
made  the  very  heart's  core  of  the  Revolution,  and 
gave  to  France  the  new  life  that  so  soon  astonished 
and  terrified  Europe.  Yet  Burke  seems  profoundly 
unconscious  of  the  whole  of  them.  He  even  boldly 
asserts  that,  when  the  several  orders  met  in  their 
bailliages  in  1789,  to  choose  their  representatives  and 
draw  up  their  grievances  and  instructions,  in  no  one 
of  these  instructions  did  they  charge,  or  even  hint 
at,  any  of  those  things  that  had  drawn  upon  the 
usurping  Assembly  the  detestation  of  the  rational 
part  of  mankind.  He  could  not  have  made  a  more 
enormous  blunder.  There  was  not  a  single  great 
change  made  by  the  Assembly  that  had  not  been 
demanded  in  the  lists  of  grievances  sent  up  by  the 
nation  to  Versailles.  The  division  of  the  kingdom 
into  districts,  and  the  proportioning  of  the  repre- 
sentation to  taxes  and  population  ;  the  suppression 
of  the  Intendants ;  the  suppression  of  all  monks  and 
the  sale  of  their  goods  and  estates  ;  the  abolition  of 
feudal  rights,  duties,  and  services  ;  the  alienation  of 
the  king's  domains  ;  the  demolition  of  the  Bastille  ; 
these  and  all  else  were  in  the  prayers  of  half  the 
petitions  the  country  had  laid  at  the  feet  of  the 
king. 

If  this  were  merely  an  incidental  blunder  in  a 
fact,  it  might  be  of  no  importance.  But  it  was  a 
blunder  that  went  to  the  very  root  of  the  discus- 
sion. The  fact  that  France  was  now  at  the  back 
of  the  Assembly,  inspiring  its  counsels  and  ratifying 
its  decrees,  was  the  cardinal  element,  and  this  is 
the  fact  which  at  this  stage  Burke  systematically 
ignored.  That  he  should  have  so  ignored  it,  left 
him  in  a  curious  position,  for  it  left  him  without  any 
rational  explanation  of  the  sources  of  the  policy  that 


158  BURKE 


CHAP. 


kindled  his  indignation  and  contempt.  A  publicist 
can  never  be  sure  of  his  position  until  he  can  explain 
to  himself  even  what  he  does  not  wish  to  justify  to 
others.  Burke  thought  it  enough  to  dwell  upon  the 
immense  number  of  lawyers  in  the  Assembly,  and 
to  show  that  lawyers  are  naturally  bad  statesmen. 
He  did  not  look  the  state  of  things  steadily  in  the 
face.  He  set  all  down  to  the  ignorance,  folly,  and 
wickedness  of  the  French  leaders.  This  was  as 
shallow  as  the  way  in  which  his  enemies,  the  philo- 
sophers, used  to  set  down  the  superstition  of  eighteen 
centuries  to  the  craft  of  priests,  and  all  defects  in  the 
government  of  Europe  to  the  cruelty  of  tyrants. 
How  it  came  about  that  priests  and  tyrants  acquired 
their  irresistible  power  over  men's  minds,  they  never 
inquired.  And  Burke  never  inquired  into  the  en- 
thusiastic acquiescence  of  the  nation,  and,  what  was 
most  remarkable  of  all,  the  acquiescence  of  the 
army,  in  the  strong  measures  of  the  Assembly. 
Burke  was  in  truth  so  appalled  by  the  magnitude  of 
the  enterprise  on  which  France  had  embarked,  that 
he  forgot  for  once  the  necessity  in  political  affairs 
of  seriously  understanding  the  originating  condi- 
tions of  things.  He  was  strangely  content  with 
the  explanations  that  came  from  the  malignants 
at  Coblenz,  and  he  actually  told  Francis  that  he 
charged  the  disorders  not  on  the  mob,  but  on  the 
Duke  of  Orleans  and  Mirabeau,  on  Barnave  and 
Bailly,  on  Lameth  and  Lafayette,  who  had  spent 
immense  sums  of  money,  and  used  innumerable 
arts,  to  stir  up  the  populace  throughout  France  to 
the  commission  of  the  enormities  that  were  shocking 
the  conscience  of  Europe.  His  imagination  broke 
loose.  His  practical  reason  was  mastered  by  some- 
thing deeper  in  him  than  reason. 

This  brings  us  to  remark  a  really  singular  trait. 
In  spite  of  the  predominance  of  practical  sagacity, 
of  the  habits  and  spirit  of  public  business,  of  vigor- 
ous actuality  in  Burke's  character,  yet  at  the  bottom 


BURKE'S  POLITICAL  MYSTICISM      159 

of  all  his  thoughts  about  communities  and  govern- 
ments there  lay  a  certain  mysticism.  It  was  no 
irony,  no  literary  trope,  when  he  talked  of  our 
having  taught  the  American  husbandman  "  piously 
to  believe  in  the  mysterious  virtue  of  wax  and 
parchment."  He  was  using  no  idle  epithet  when 
he  described  the  disposition  of  a  stupendous  wisdom, 
"  moulding  together  the  great  mysterious  incorpora- 
tion of  the  human  race."  To  him  there  actually 
was  an  element  of  mystery  in  the  cohesion  of  men  in 
societies,  in  political  obedience,  in  the  sanctity  of 
contract ;  in  all  the  fabric  of  law  and  charter  and 
obligation,  whether  written  or  unwritten,  that  is 
the  sheltering  bulwark  between  civilisation  and 
barbarism.  When  reason  and  history  had  con- 
tributed all  they  could  to  the  explanation,  it  seemed 
to  him  as  if  the  vital  force,  the  secret  of  organisation, 
the  binding  framework,  must  still  come  from  the 
impenetrable  regions  beyond  reasoning  and  beyond 
history. 

There  was  another  powerful  conservative  writer 
of  that  age,  whose  genius  was  aroused  into  a  pro- 
test against  the  revolutionary  spirit  as  vehement  as 
Burke's.  This  was  Joseph  de  Maistre,  one  of  the 
most  learned,  witty,  and  acute  of  all  reactionary 
philosophers.  De  Maistre  wrote  a  book  on  the 
Generative  Principle  of  Political  Constitutions.  He 
could  only  find  this  principle  in  the  operation  of 
occult  and  supernatural  forces,  producing  the  half- 
divine  legislators  who  figure  mysteriously  in  the 
early  history  of  nations.  Hence  he  held,  and  with 
astonishing  ingenuity  enforced,  the  doctrine  that 
nothing  else  could  deliver  Europe  from  the  Satanic 
forces  of  revolution — he  used  the  word  Satanic  in 
all  literal  seriousness — save  the  divinely  inspired 
supremacy  of  the  Pope.  No  natural  operations 
seemed  at  all  adequate  either  to  produce  or  to 
maintain  the  marvel  of  a  coherent  society.  We  are 
reminded  of  a  professor  who,  in  the  fantastic  days 


160  BURKE 


CHAP. 


of  geology,  explained  the  Pyramids  of  Egypt  to  be 
the  remains  of  a  volcanic  eruption  that  had  forced 
its  way  upwards  by  a  slow  and  stately  motion  ; 
the  hieroglyphs  were  crystalline  formations  ;  and 
the  shaft  of  the  Great  Pyramid  was  the  air-hole  of 
a  volcano.  De  Maistre  preferred  a  similar  explana- 
tion of  the  monstrous  structures  of  modern  society. 
The  hand  of  man  could  never  have  reared,  and  could 
never  uphold  them.  If  we  cannot  say  that  Burke 
laboured  in  constant  travail  with  the  same  per- 
plexity, it  is  at  least  true  that  he  was  keenly  alive 
to  it,  and  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  he  dreaded 
to  see  a  finger  laid  upon  a  single  stone  of  a  single 
political  edifice,  was  his  consciousness  that  he  saw 
no  answer  to  the  perpetual  enigma  how  any  of  these 
edifices  had  ever  been  built,  and  how  the  passion, 
violence,  and  waywardness  of  the  natural  man  had 
ever  been  persuaded  to  bow  their  necks  to  the  strong 
yoke  of  a  common  social  discipline.  Never  was 
mysticism  more  unseasonable ;  never  was  an  hour 
when  men  needed  more  carefully  to  remember 
Burke's  own  wise  practical  precept,  when  he  was 
talking  about  the  British  rule  in  India,  that  we  must 
throw  a  sacred  veil  over  the  beginnings  of  govern- 
ment. Many  woes  might  perhaps  have  been  saved 
to  Europe,  if  Burke  had  applied  this  maxim  to  the 
government  of  the  new  France. 

Much  has  always  been  said  about  the  incon- 
sistency between  Burke's  enmity  to  the  Revolution 
and  his  enmity  to  Lord  North  in  one  set  of  circum- 
stances, and  to  Warren  Hastings  in  another.  The 
pamphleteers  of  the  day  made  selections  from  the 
speeches  and  tracts  of  his  happier  time,  and  the 
seeming  contrast  had  its  effect.  More  candid 
opponents  admitted  then,  as  all  competent  persons 
admit  now,  that  the  inconsistency  was  verbal  and 
superficial.  Watson,  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff,  was 
only  one  of  many  who  observed  very  early  that 
this  was  the  unmistakable  temper  of  Burke's  mind. 


vm  ALLEGED  INCONSISTENCY  161 

"  I  admired,  as  everybody  did,"  he  said,  "  the 
talents,  but  not  the  principles  of  Mr.  Burke  ;  his 
opposition  to  the  Clerical  Petition  [for  relaxation 
of  subscription,  1772],  first  excited  my  suspicion 
of  his  being  a  High  Churchman  in  religion,  and  a 
Tory,  perhaps  an  aristocratic  Tory,  in  the  state." 
Burke  had  indeed  never  been  anything  else  than 
a  conservative.  He  was  like  Falkland,  who  had 
bitterly  assailed  Strafford  and  Finch  on  the  same 
principles  on  which,  after  the  outbreak  of  the  civil 
war,  he  consented  to  be  Secretary  of  State  to  King 
Charles.  Coleridge  is  borne  out  by  a  hundred  pass- 
ages, when  he  says  that  in  Burke 's  writings  at 
the  beginning  of  the  American  Revolution  and  in 
those  at  the  beginning  of  the  French  Revolution, 
the  principles  are  the  same  and  the  deductions 
are  the  same  ;  the  practical  inferences  are  almost 
opposite  in  the  one  case  from  those  drawn  in  the 
other,  yet  in  both  equally  legitimate.  It  would 
be  better  to  say  that  they  would  have  been  equally 
legitimate,  if  Burke  had  been  as  right  in  his  facts 
and  as  ample  in  his  knowledge  in  the  case  of  France, 
as  he  was  in  the  case  of  America.  We  feel,  indeed, 
that  partly  from  want  of  this  knowledge,  he  has 
gone  too  far  from  some  of  the  wise  maxims  of  an 
earlier  time.  What  has  become  of  the  doctrine  that 
all  great  public  collections  of  men — he  was  then 
speaking  of  the  House  of  Commons — "  possess  a 
marked  love  of  virtue  and  an  abhorrence  of  vice."  l 
Why  was  the  French  Assembly  not  to  have  the 
benefit  of  this  admirable  generalisation  ?  What 
has  become  of  all  those  sayings  about  the  presump- 
tion, in  all  disputes  between  nations  and  rulers, 
"  being  at  least  upon  a  par  in  favour  of  the  people  "  ; 
and  a  populace  never  rebelling  from  passion  for 
attack,  but  from  impatience  of  suffering  ?  And 
where  is  now  the  strong  dictum,  in  the  letter  to 
the  Sheriffs  of  Bristol,  that  "  general  rebellions 

1  American  Taxation. 

M 


162  BURKE  CHAP. 

and  revolts  of  a  whole  people  never  were  en- 
couraged, now  or  at  any  time  ;  they  are  always 
provoked  "  ? 

When  all  these  things  have  been  noted,  to  hold 
a  man  to  his  formulae  without  reference  to  their 
special  application,  is  pure  pedantry,  and  the  most 
foolish  pedantry.  Burke  was  the  last  man  to  lay 
down  any  political  proposition  not  subject  to  the 
ever  varying  interpretation  of  circumstances,  and 
independently  of  the  particular  use  that  was  to  be 
made  of  it.  Nothing  universal,  he  had  always  said, 
can  be  rationally  affirmed  on  any  moral  or  political 
subject.  The  lines  of  morality,  again,  are  never 
ideal  lines  of  mathematics,  but  are  broad  and  deep 
as  well  as  long,  admitting  of  exceptions,  and  de- 
manding modifications.  "  These  exceptions  and 
modifications  are  made,  not  by  the  process  of  logic, 
but  by  the  rules  of  prudence.  Prudence  is  not  only 
first  in  rank  of  the  virtues,  political  and  moral,  but 
she  is  the  director,  the  regulator,  the  standard  of 
them  all.  As  no  moral  questions  are  ever  abstract 
questions,  this,  before  I  judge  upon  any  abstract 
proposition,  must  be  embodied  in  circumstances ; 
for,  since  things  are  right  and  wrong,  morally 
speaking,  only  by  their  relation  and  connection 
with  other  things,  this  very  question  of  what  it  is 
politically  right  to  grant,  depends  upon  its  relation 
to  its  effects."  "  Circumstances,"  he  says,  never 
weary  of  laying  down  his  great  notion  of  political 
method,  "  give,  in  reality,  to  every  political  principle 
its  distinguishing  colour  and  discriminating  effect. 
The  circumstances  are  what  render  every  civil  and 
political  scheme  beneficial  or  obnoxious  to  mankind." 

This  is  at  once  the  weapon  with  which  he  would 
have  defended  his  own  consistency,  and  attacked 
the  absolute  proceedings  in  France.  He  changed 
his  front,  but  he  never  changed  his  ground.  He 
was  not  more  passionate  against  the  proscription 
in  France,  than  he  had  been  against  the  suspension 


vm  PHILOSOPHIC  REACTION  163 

of  Habeas  Corpus  in  the  American  war.  "  I  flatter 
myself,"  he  said  in  the  Reflections,  "  that  I  love  a 
manly,  moral,  regulated  liberty."  Ten  years  before 
he  had  said,  "  The  liberty,  the  only  liberty  I  mean, 
is  a  liberty  connected  with  order."  The  court 
tried  to  regulate  liberty  too  severely.  It  found  in 
him  an  inflexible  opponent.  Demagogues  tried  to 
remove  the  regulations  of  liberty.  They  encoun- 
tered in  him  the  bitterest  and  most  unceasing  of  all 
remonstrants.  The  arbitrary  majority  in  the  House 
of  Commons  forgot  for  whose  benefit  they  held 
power,  from  whom  they  derived  their  authority, 
and  in  what  description  of  government  it  was  that 
they  had  a  place.  Burke  was  the  most  valiant  and 
strenuous  champion  in  the  ranks  of  the  independent 
minority.  He  withstood  to  the  face  the  king  and 
the  king's  friends.  He  withstood  to  the  face  Charles 
Fox  and  the  Friends  of  the  People.  He  may  have 
been  wrong  in  both,  or  hi  either,  but  it  is  un- 
reasonable to  tell  us  that  he  turned  back  in  his 
course  ;  that  he  was  a  revolutionist  in  1770,  and 
a  reactionist  in  1790 ;  that  he  was  in  his  sane 
mind  when  he  opposed  the  supremacy  of  the  court, 
but  that  his  reason  was  tottering  when  he  opposed 
the  supremacy  of  the  Faubourg  Saint- Antoine. 

There  is  no  part  of  Burke's  career  at  which  we 
may  not  find  evidence  of  his  instinctive  and  un- 
dying repugnance  to  the  critical  or  revolutionary 
spirit  and  all  its  works.  From  the  early  days 
when  he  had  parodied  Bolingbroke,  down  to  the 
later  time  when  he  denounced  Condorcet  as  a 
fanatical  atheist,  with  "  every  disposition  to  the 
lowest  as  well  as  the  highest  and  most  determined 
villainies,"  he  invariably  suspected  or  denounced 
everybody,  virtuous  or  vicious,  high-minded  or 
ignoble,  who  inquired  with  too  keen  a  scrutiny 
into  the  foundations  of  morals,  of  religion,  of  social 
order.  To  examine  with  a  curious  or  unfavourable 
eye  the  bases  of  established  opinions,  was  to  show 


164  BURKE  CHAP. 

a  leaning  to  anarchy,  to  atheism,  or  to  unbridled 
libertinism.  Already  we  have  seen  how,  three 
years  after  the  publication  of  his  Thoughts  on  the 
Present  Discontents,  and  seventeen  years  before  the 
composition  of  the  Reflections,  he  denounced  the 
philosophers  with  a  fervour  and  a  vehemence  which 
he  never  afterwards  surpassed.  When  a  few  of  the 
clergy  petitioned  to  be  relieved  from  some  of  the 
severities  of  subscription,  he  had  resisted  them  on 
the  bold  ground  that  the  truth  of  a  proposition 
deserves  less  attention  than  the  effect  of  adherence 
to  it  upon  the  established  order  of  things.  "  I  will 
not  enter  into  the  question,"  he  told  the  House 
of  Commons,  "  how  much  truth  is  preferable  to 
peace.  Perhaps  truth  may  be  far  better.  But  as 
we  have  scarcely  ever  the  same  certainty  in  the 
one  that  we  have  in  the  other,  I  would,  unless  the 
truth  were  evident  indeed,  hold  fast  to  peace." 
In  that  intellectual  restlessness,  to  which  the  world 
is  so  deeply  indebted,  Burke  could  recognise  but 
scanty  merit.  Himself  the  most  industrious  and 
active-minded  of  men,  he  was  ever  sober  in  cutting 
the  channels  of  his  activity,  and  he  would  have 
had  others  equally  moderate.  Perceiving  that  plain 
and  righteous  conduct  is  the  end  of  life  in  this 
world,  he  prayed  men  not  to  be  over-curious  in 
searching  for,  and  handling,  and  again  handling, 
the  theoretic  base  on  which  the  prerogatives  of 
virtue  repose.  Provided  that  there  was  peace,  that 
is  to  say,  so  much  of  fair  happiness  and  content  as 
is  compatible  with  the  conditions  of  the  human  lot, 
Burke  felt  that  a  too  great  inquisitiveness  as  to  its 
foundations  was  not  only  idle  but  cruel. 

If  the  world  continues  to  read  the  Reflections, 
and  reads  it  with  a  new  admiration  not  diminished 
by  the  fact  that  on  the  special  issue  its  tendency 
is  every  day  more  clearly  discerned  to  have  been 
misleading,  we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  not  for  the 
sake  of  such  things  as  the  precise  character  of  the 


vm  PHILOSOPHIC  REACTION  165 

Revolution  of  1688,  where,  for  that  matter,  con- 
stitutional writers  have  shown  abundantly  that 
Burke  was  nearly  as  much  in  the  wrong  as  Dr. 
Sacheverell.  Nor  has  the  book  Mved  merely  by 
its  gorgeous  rhetoric  and  high  emotions,  though 
these  have  been  contributing  elements.  It  lives 
because  it  contains  a  sentiment,  a  method,  a  set 
of  informal  principles,  which,  awakened  into  new 
life  after  the  Revolution,  rapidly  transformed  the 
current  ways  of  thinking  and  feeling  about  all  the 
most  serious  objects  of  our  attention,  and  have 
powerfully  helped  to  give  a  richer  substance  to  all 
modern  literature.  In  the  Reflections  we  have  the 
first  great  sign  that  the  ideas  on  government  and 
philosophy  that  Locke  had  been  the  chief  agent 
in  setting  into  European  circulation,  and  that  had 
carried  all  triumphantly  before  them  throughout 
the  century,  did  not  comprehend  the  whole  truth 
nor  the  deepest  truth  about  human  character — 
the  relations  of  men  and  the  union  of  men  in? 
society.  It  has  often  been  said  that  the  armoury 
from  which  the  French  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  borrowed  their  weapons  was  furnished  from 
England,  and  it  may  be  added  as  truly  that  the 
reaction  against  that  whole  scheme  of  thought  came 
from  England.  In  one  sense  we  may  call  the  Reflec- 
tions a  political  pamphlet,  but  it  is  much  more 
than  this,  just  as  the  movement  against  which  itj 
was  levelled  was  much  more  than  a  political  move- 
ment. The  Revolution  rested  on  a  philosophy,  and 
Burke  confronted  it  with  an  antagonistic  philosophy. 
Those  are  but  superficial  readers  who  fail  to  see  at 
how  many  points  Burke,  while  seeming  only  to 
deal  with  the  French  monarchy  and  the  British 
constitution,  with  Dr.  Price  and  Marie  Antoinette, 
was  in  fact,  and  exactly  because  he  dealt  with 
them  in  the  comprehensive  spirit  of  true  philosophy, 
turning  men's  minds  to  an  attitude  from  which  not 
only  the  political  incidents  of  the  hour,  but  the 


166  BURKE  CHAP. 

current  ideas  about  religion,  psychology,  the  very 
nature  of  human  knowledge,  would  all  be  seen  in 
a  changed  light  and  clothed  in  new  colour.  All 
really  profound  speculation  about  society  comes 
in  time  to  touch  the  heart  of  every  other  object 
of  speculation,  not  by  directly  contributing  new 
truths  or  directly  corroborating  old  ones,  but  by 
setting  men  to  consider  the  consequences  to  life 
of  different  opinions  on  these  abstract  subjects, 
and  their  relations  to  the  great  paramount  interests 
of  society,  -however  those  interests  may  happen  at 
the  time  to  be  conceived.  Burke's  book  marks  a 
turning-point  in  literary  history,  because  it  was 
the  signal  for  the  reaction  over  the  whole  field  of 
thought  into  which  the  Revolution  drove  many  of 
the  finest  minds  of  the  next  generation,  by  showing 
the  supposed  consequences  of  pure  individualistic 
rationalism. 

We  need  not  attempt  to  work  out  the  details 
of  this  extension  of  a  political  reaction  into  a 
universal  reaction  in  philosophy  and  poetry.  Any 
one  may  easily  think  out  for  himself  what  conse- 
quences in  act  and  thought,  as  well  as  in  govern- 
ment, would  be  likely  to  flow,  for  example,  from  one 
of  the  most  permanently  admirable  sides  of  Burke 's 
teaching — his  respect  for  the  collective  reason  of 
men,  and  his  sense  of  the  impossibility  in  politics 
and  morals  of  considering  the  individual  apart 
from  the  experience  of  the  race.  "  We  are  afraid," 
he  says,  "  to  put  men  to  live  and  trade  each  on 
his  own  private  stock  of  reason,  because  we  suspect 
that  this  stock  in  each  man  is  small,  and  that  the 
individuals  would  do  better  to  avail  themselves  of 
the  general  bank  and  capital  of  nations  and  of 
ages.  Many  of  our  men  of  speculation,  instead  of 
exploding  general  prejudices,  employ  their  sagacity 
to  discover  the  latent  wisdom  which  prevails  in  them. 
If  they  find  what  they  seek,  and  they  seldom  fail, 
they  think  it  more  wise  to  continue  the  prejudice 


PHILOSOPHIC  REACTION  167 

with  the  reason  involved,  than  to  cast  away  the 
coat  of  prejudice,  and  to  leave  nothing  but  the 
naked  reason  :  because  prejudice  with  its  reason 
has  a  motive  to  give  action  to  that  reason,  and 
an  affection  which  will  give  it  permanence.  Pre- 
judice is  of  ready  application  in  the  emergency ;  it 
previously  engages  the  mind  in  a  steady  course  of 
wisdom  and  virtue,  and  does  not  leave  the  man 
hesitating  in  the  moment  of  decision,  sceptical, 
puzzled,  and  unresolved.  Prejudice  renders  a  man's 
virtue  his  habit,  and  not  a  series  of  unconnected 
acts.  Through  just  prejudice,  his  duty  becomes  a 
part  of  his  nature."  Is  not  this  to  say,  in  other 
words,  that  in  every  man  the  substantial  founda- 
tions of  action  consist  of  the  accumulated  layers 
various  generations  of  ancestors  have  placed  for 
him ;  that  the  greater  part  of  our  sentiments  act 
most  effectively  when  they  act  most  mechanically, 
and  by  the  methods  of  an  unquestioned  system ; 
that  although  no  rule  of  conduct  or  spring  of 
action  ought  to  endure  that  does  not  repose  in 
sound  reason,  yet  this  naked  reason  is  in  itself 
a  less  effective  means  of  influencing  action  than 
when  it  exists  as  one  part  of  a  fabric  of  ancient 
and  endeared  association  ?  Interpreted  by  a  mobile 
genius,  and  expanded  by  a  poetic  imagination,  all 
this  became  the  foundation  from  which  the  philo- 
sophy of  Coleridge  started,  and,  as  Mill  has  shown 
in  a  famous  essay,  Coleridge  was  the  great  apostle 
of  the  conservative  spirit  in  England  in  its  best 
form. 

Though  Burke  here,  no  doubt,  found  a  true  base 
for  the  philosophy  of  order,  yet  perhaps  Condorcet 
or  Barnave  might  have  justly  asked  him  whether, 
when  we  thus  realise  the  strong  and  immovable 
foundations  that  are  laid  in  our  character  before 
we  are  born,  there  could  be  any  occasion,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  for  the  vehement  alarm  that  moved 
Burke  lest  a  few  lawyers,  by  a  score  of  parchment 


168  BURKE 


CHAP. 


decrees,  should  overthrow  the  venerated  sentiments  of 
Europe  about  justice  and  about  property  ?  Should 
he  not  have  known  better  than  most  men  the  force 
of  the  self-protecting  elements  of  society  ? 

This  is  not  a  convenient  place  for  discussing  the 
issues  between  the  school  of  order  and  the  school 
of  progress.  It  is  enough  to  have  marked  Burke's 
position  in  one  of  them.  The  Reflections  places  him 
among  the  great  Conservatives  of  history.  Perhaps 
the  only  Englishman  with  whom  in  this  respect 
he  may  be  compared,  is  Sir  Thomas  More, — that 
virtuous  and  eloquent  reactionist  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  More  abounded  in  light,  in  intellectual 
interests,  in  single  -  minded  care  for  the  common 
weal.  He  was  as  anxious  as  any  man  of  his  time 
for  the  improved  ordering  of  the  Church,  but  he 
could  not  endure  that  reformation  should  be  bought 
at  the  price  of  breaking  up  the  ancient  spiritual 
unity  of  Europe.  He  was  willing  to  slay  and  be 
slain  rather  than  he  would  tolerate  the  destruction 
of  the  old  faith,  or  assent  to  the  violence  of  the 
new  statecraft.  He  viewed  Thomas  Cromwell's 
policy  of  reformation,  just  as  Burke  viewed  Mira- 
beau's  policy  of  revolution.  Burke  too,  we  may 
be  very  sure,  would  as  willingly  have  sent  Mirabeau 
and  Bailly  to  prison  or  the  block,  as  More  sent 
Phillips  to  the  Tower  and  Bainham  to  the  stake. 
For  neither  More  nor  Burke  was  of  the  gentle  con- 
templative spirit,  which  the  first  disorder  of  a  new 
society  just  bursting  into  life  merely  overshadows 
with  saddening  regrets  and  poetic  gloom.  The 
old  harmony  was  to  them  so  bound  up  with  the 
purpose  and  meaning  of  life,  that  to  wage  active 
battle  for  the  gods  of  their  reverence  was  the 
irresistible  instinct  of  self-preservation.  More  had 
an  excuse  which  Burke  had  not,  for  the  principle  of 
persecution  was  accepted  by  the  best  minds  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  but  by  the  best  minds  of  the 
eighteenth  it  was  emphatically  repudiated. 


vm  TURGOT  169 

Another  illustrious  name  of  Burke's  own  era 
rises  to  our  lips,  as  we  ponder  mentally  the  too 
scanty  list  of  those  who  have  essayed  the  great 
and  hardy  task  of  reconciling  order  with  progress. 
Turgot  is  even  a  more  imposing  figure  than  Burke 
himself.  The  impression  made  upon  us  by  the 
pair  is  indeed  very  different,  for  Turgot  was  austere, 
reserved,  distant,  a  man  of  many  silences  and  much 
suspense  ;  while  Burke,  as  we  know,  was  imagina- 
tive, exuberant,  unrestrained,  and,  like  some  of 
the  greatest  actors  on  the  stage  of  human  affairs, 
he  had  associated  his  own  personality  with  the 
prevalence  of  right  ideas  and  good  influences.  In 
Turgot,  on  the  other  hand,  we  discern  something  of 
the  isolation,  the  sternness,  the  disdainful  melan- 
choly of  Tacitus.  He  even  rises  out  of  the  eager 
crowd  of  the  Voltairean  age  with  some  of  that 
austere  moral  indignation  and  haughty  astonish- 
ment with  which  Dante  had  watched  the  stubborn 
ways  of  men  centuries  before.  On  one  side  Turgot 
shared  the  conservatism  of  Burke,  though,  perhaps, 
he  would  hardly  have  given  it  that  name.  He 
habitually  corrected  the  headlong  insistence  of 
the  revolutionary  philosophers,  his  friends,  by  re- 
minding them  that  neither  pity,  nor  benevolence, 
nor  hope  can  ever  dispense  with  justice  ;  and  he 
could  never  endure  to  hear  of  great  changes  being 
wrought  at  the  cost  of  this  sovereign  quality.  Like 
Burke,  he  held  fast  to  the  doctrine  that  everything 
must  be  done  for  the  multitude,  but  nothing  by 
them.  Like  Burke,  he  realised  how  close  are  the 
links  that  bind  the  successive  generations  of  men,/ 
and  make  up  the  long  chain  of  human  history. 
Like  Burke,  he  never  believed  that  the  human  mind 
has  any  spontaneous  inclination  to  welcome  pure 
truth.  Here,  however,  is  visible  between  them  a 
hard  line  of  division.  It  is  not  error,  said  Turgot,  < 
that  opposes  the  progress  of  truth ;  it  is  indolence, 
obstinacy,  and  the  spirit  of  routine.  But  then 


170  BURKE  CHAP. 

Turgot  enjoined  upon  us  to  make  it  the  aim  of 
life  to  do  battle  in  ourselves  and  others  with  all 
this  indolence,  obstinacy,  and  spirit  of  routine  in 
the  world ;  Burke,  on  the  contrary,  gave  to  these 
bad  things  gentler  names,  surrounded  them  with 
the  picturesque  associations  of  the  past,  and  in  the 
vast  convulsion  of  his  time  threw  all  his  passion 
and  all  his  genius  on  their  side.  Will  any  reader 
doubt  which  of  these  two  types  of  the  school  of 
order  and  justice,  both  of  them  noble,  is  the  more 
valuable  for  the  race,  and  the  worthier  and  more 
stimulating  ideal  for  the  individual  ? 

It  is  not  certain  that  Burke  was  not  sometimes 
for  a  moment  startled  by  the  suspicion  that  he 
might  unawares  be  fighting  against  the  truth.  In 
the  midst  of  flaming  and  bitter  pages,  we  now  and 
again  feel  a  cool  breath  from  the  distant  region  of 
a  half -pensive  tolerance.  "I  do  not  think,"  he 
says  at  the  close  of  the  Reflections,  to  the  person  to 
whom  they  were  addressed,  "  that  my  sentiments 
are  likely  to  alter  yours.  I  do  not  know  that  they 
ought.  You  are  young ;  you  cannot  guide,  but 
must  follow,  the  fortune  of  your  country.  But 
hereafter  they  may  be  of  some  use  to  you,  in  some 
future  form  which  your  commonwealth  may  take. 
In  the  present  it  can  hardly  remain ;  but  before 
its  final  settlement,  it  may  be  obliged  to  pass,  as 
one  of  our  poets  says,  4  through  great  varieties  of 
untried  being,'  and  in  all  its  transmigrations  to  be 
purified  by  fire  and  blood." 

He  felt  in  the  midst  of  his  angry  hate  that  what 
he  took  for  seething  chaos,  might  after  all  be  the 
struggle  upwards  of  the  germs  of  order.  Among 
the  later  words  that  he  wrote  on  the  Revolution 
were  these  :  "  If  a  great  change  is  to  be  made 
in  human  affairs,  the  minds  of  men  will  be  fitted 
to  it ;  the  general  opinions  and  feelings  will  draw 
that  way.  Every  fear,  every  hope  will  forward  it ; 
and  then  they  who  persist  in  opposing  this  mighty 


LATER  THOUGHTS  171 

current  in  human  affairs,  will  appear  rather  to  re- 
sist the  decrees  of  Providence  itself,  than  the  mere 
designs  of  men."  We  can  only  regret  that  these 
rays  of  the  mens  divinior  did  not  shine  with  a  more 
steadfast  light ;  and  that  a  spirit  which,  amid  the 
sharp  press  of  manifold  cares  and  distractions,  had 
ever  vibrated  with  lofty  sympathies,  was  not  now 
more  constant  to  its  faith  in  the  beneficent  powers 
and  processes  of  the  Unseen  Time. 


CHAPTER  IX 

BURKE   AND   HIS    PARTY — PROGRESS    OF   THE 
REVOLUTION IRELAND LAST  YEARS 

FOR  some  months  after  the  publication  of  the 
Reflections,  Burke  kept  up  the  relations  of  an 
armed  peace  with  his  old  political  friends.  The 
Indian  impeachment  went  on,  and  in  December 
(1790)  there  was  a  private  meeting  on  the  business 
connected  with  it,  between  Pitt,  Burke,  Fox,  and 
Dundas,  at  the  house  of  the  Speaker.  It  was 
described  by  one  who  knew,  as  most  amiable,  and 
there  seems  to  have  been  a  general  impression  in 
the  world  at  this  moment  that  Fox  might  by  some 
means  be  induced  to  join  Pitt.  What  troubled  the 
slumbers  of  good  Whigs  like  Gilbert  Elliot,  was  the 
prospect  of  Fox  committing  himself  too  strongly  on 
French  affairs.  Burke  himself  was  in  the  deepest 
dejection  at  the  prospect ;  for  Fox  did  not  cease 
to  express  the  most  unqualified  disapproval  of  the 
Reflections ;  he  thought  that,  even  in  point  of 
composition,  it  was  the  worst  thing  that  Burke 
had  ever  published.  It  was  already  feared  that 
his  friendship  for  Sheridan  was  drawing  him 
farther  away  from  Burke,  with  whom  Sheridan 
had  quarrelled,  into  a  course  of  politics  that  would 
both  damage  his  own  reputation  and  break  up  the 
strong  union  of  which  the  Duke  of  Portland  was 
the  nominal  head. 

New  floods  in  France  had  not  yet  carried  back 
the   ship   of  state   into   raging  waters.     Pitt   was 

172 


CHAP,  ix        THE  RUSSIAN  ARMAMENT  173 

thinking  so  little  of  danger  from  that  country  that 
he  had  plunged  into  a  policy  of  intervention  in 
the  affairs  of  eastern  Europe.  When  writers  charge 
Burke  with  breaking  violently  in  upon  Pitt's  system 
of  peace  abroad  and  reform  at  home,  they  overlook 
the  fact  that  before  Burke  had  begun  to  preach 
his  crusade  against  the  Jacobins,  Pitt  had  already 
prepared  a  war  with  Russia.  The  nation  refused 
to  follow.  They  agreed  with  Fox  that  it  was  no 
concern  of  theirs  whether  or  not  Russia  took  from 
Turkey  the  country  between  the  Boug  and  the 
Dniester  ;  they  felt  that  British  interests  would  be 
more  damaged  by  the  expenses  of  a  war  than  by 
the  acquisition  by  Russia  of  Ockzakow.  Pitt  was 
obliged  to  throw  up  the  scheme,  and  to  extricate 
himself  as  well  as  he  could  from  rash  engagements 
with  Prussia.  It  was  on  account  of  his  services  to 
the  cause  of  peace  on  this  occasion  that  Catherine 
ordered  the  Russian  ambassador  to  send  her  a  bust 
of  Fox  in  white  marble,  to  be  placed  in  her  colonnade 
between  Demosthenes  and  Cicero.  We  may  take 
it  for  granted  that  after  the  Revolution  rose  to  its 
full  height  the  bust  of  Fox  accompanied  that  of 
Voltaire  down  to  the  cellar  of  the  Hermitage. 

While  the  affair  of  the  Russian  armament  was 
still  occupying  the  minister,  an  event  of  signal 
importance  happened  in  the  ranks  of  his  political 
adversaries.  The  alliance  which  had  lasted  between 
Burke  and  Fox  for  five-and-twenty  years  came  to 
a  sudden  end,  and  this  rift  gradually  widened  into 
a  destructive  [breach  throughout  the  party.  There 
is  no  parallel  in  our  parliamentary  history  to  the 
fatal  scene.  In  Ireland,  indeed,  only  eight  years 
before,  Flood  and  Grattan,  after  fighting  side  by 
side  for  many  years,  had  all  at  once  sprung  upon 
one  another  in  the  Parliament  House  with  the  fury 
of  vultures  :  Flood  had  screamed  to  Grattan  that 
he  was  a  mendicant  patriot,  and  Grattan  had  called 
Flood  an  ill-omened  bird  of  night,  with  a  sepulchral 


174  BURKE 


CHAP. 


note,  a  cadaverous  aspect,  and  a  broken  beak.  The 
Irish,  like  the  French,  have  the  art  of  making  things 
dramatic,  and  Burke  was  the  greatest  of  Irishmen. 
On  the  opening  of  the  session  of  1791,  the  Govern- 
ment had  introduced  a  bill  for  the  better  govern- 
ment of  Canada.  It  introduced  questions  about 
Church  establishments  and  hereditary  legislators. 
In  discussing  these  Fox  made  some  references  to 
France.  It  was  impossible  to  refer  to  France 
without  touching  the  Reflections  on  the  French 
Revolution.  Burke  was  not  present,  but  he  heard 
what  Fox  had  said,  and  before  long  Fox  again 
introduced  French  affairs  in  a  debate  on  the  Russian 
armament.  Burke  arose  in  violent  heat  of  mind  to 
reply,  but  the  House  would  not  hear  him.  He 
resolved  to  speak  when  the  time  came  for  the  Canada 
Bill  to  be  recommitted.  Meanwhile  some  of  his 
friends  did  all  they  could  to  dissuade  him  from 
pressing  the  matter  further.  Even  the  Prince  of 
Wales  is  said  to  have  written  him  a  letter.  There 
were  many  signs  of  the  rupture  that  was  so  soon  to 
come  in  the  Whig  ranks.  Men  so  equally  devoted 
to  the  common  cause  as  Windham  and  Elliot  nearly 
came  to  a  quarrel  at  a  dinner-party  at  Lord  Malmes- 
bury's,  on  the  subject  of  Burke's  design  to  speak ; 
and  Windham,  who  for  the  present  sided  with  Fox, 
enters  in  his  diary  that  he  was  glad  to  escape  from 
the  room  without  speaking  to  the  man  whom,  since 
the  death  of  Dr.  Johnson,  he  revered  before  all 
other  men  besides. 

On  the  day  appointed  for  the  Canada  Bill,  Fox 
called  at  Burke's  house,  and  after  some  talk  on 
Burke's  intention  to  speak,  and  on  other  matters, 
they  walked  down  to  Westminster  and  entered  the 
House  together,  as  they  had  so  many  a  time  done 
before,  but  were  never  to  do  again.  They  found 
that  the  debate  had  been  adjourned,  and  it  was  not 
until  May  6th  that  Burke  had  an  opportunity  of 
explaining  himself  on  the  Revolution  in  France. 


QUARREL  WITH  FOX  175 

He  had  no  sooner  risen  than  interruptions  broke 
out  from  his  own  side,  and  a  scene  of  great  disorder 
followed.  Burke  was  incensed  beyond  endurance 
by  this  treatment,  for  even  Fox  and  Windham  had 
taken  part  in  the  tumult  against  him.  With  much 
bitterness  he  commented  on  Fox's  previous  eulogies 
of  the  Revolution,  and  finally  there  came  the  fatal 
words  of  severance.  "  It  is  indiscreet,"  he  said, 
"  at  any  period,  but  especially  at  my  time  of  life, 
to  provoke  enemies,  or  give  my  friends  occasion  to 
desert  me.  Yet  if  my  firm  and  steady  adherence 
to  the  British  Constitution  place  me  in  such  a 
dilemma,  I  am  ready  to  risk  it,  and  with  my  last 
words  to  exclaim,  'Fly  from  the  French  Constitu- 
tion.' '  Fox  at  this  point  eagerly  called  to  him 
that  there  was  no  loss  of  friends.  "  Yes,  yes," 
cried  Burke,  "  there  is  a  loss  of  friends.  I  know  the 
price  of  my  conduct.  I  have  done  my  duty  at  the 
price  of  my  friend.  Our  friendship  is  at  an  end." 

The  members  who  sat  on  the  same  side  were 
aghast  at  proceedings  that  went  beyond  their 
worst  apprehensions.  Even  the  ministerialists  were 
shocked.  Pitt  agreed  much  more  with  Fox  than 
with  Burke,  but  he  would  have  been  more  than 
human  if  he  had  not  watched  with  complacency 
his  two  most  formidable  adversaries  turning  their 
swords  against  one  another.  Wilberforce,  who  was 
more  disinterested,  lamented  the  spectacle  as  shame- 
ful. In  the  galleries  there  was  hardly  a  dry  eye. 
Fox,  as  might  have  been  expected  from  his  warm 
and  generous  nature,  was  deeply  moved,  and  is 
described  as  weeping  even  to  sobbing.  He  repeated 
his  former  acknowledgment  of  his  debt  to  Burke, 
and  he  repeated  his  former  expression  of  faith  in 
the  blessings  which  the  abolition  of  royal  despotism 
would  bring  to  France.  With  unabated  vehemence 
Burke  again  rose  to  denounce  the  French  Constitu- 
tion— "  a  building  composed  of  untempered  mortar 
— the  work  of  Goths  and  Vandals,  where  everything 


176  BURKE  CHAP. 

was  disjointed  and  inverted."  After  a  short  re- 
joinder from  Fox  the  scene  came  to  a  close,  and  the 
once  friendly  intercourse  between  the  two  heroes 
was  at  an  end.  When  they  met  in  the  managers' 
box  in  Westminster  Hall  on  the  business  of 
Hastings's  trial,  they  met  with  the  formalities  of 
strangers.  There  is  a  story  that  when  Burke  left 
the  House  on  the  night  of  the  quarrel,  it  was  raining, 
and  Mr.  Curwen,  a  member  of  the  Opposition,  took 
him  home  in  his  carriage.  Burke  at  once  began  to 
declaim  against  the  French.  Curwen  dropped  some 
remark  on  the  other  side.  "  What !  "  Burke  cried 
out,  grasping  the  check-string,  "  are  you  one  of 
these  people  ?  Set  me  down  1 "  It  needed  all 
Curwen's  force  to  keep  him  where  he  was ;  and 
when  they  reached  his  house  Burke  stepped  out 
without  saying  a  single  word. 

We  may  agree  that  all  this  did  not  indicate 
the  perfect  sobriety  and  self-control  proper  to  a 
statesman  in  what  was  a  serious  crisis  not  only  to 
his  party  but  to  Europe.  It  was  about  this  time 
that  Burke  said  to  Addington,  who  was  then  Speaker 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  that  he  was  not  well. 
"  I  eat  too  much,  Speaker,"  he  said,  "  I  drink  too 
much,  and  I  sleep  too  little."  It  is  even  said  that 
he  felt  the  final  breach  with  Fox  as  a  relief  from 
unendurable  suspense  ;  and  he  quoted  the  lines 
about  Aeneas,  after  he  had  finally  resolved  to  quit 
Dido  and  the  Carthaginian  shore,  at  last  being 
able  to  snatch  slumber  in  his  snip's  tall  stern. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  how  severe  had  been  the 
tension.  Yet  the  performance  to  which  Burke 
now  applied  himself  is  one  of  the  gravest  and 
most  reasonable  of  all  his  compositions.  He  felt 
it  necessary  to  vindicate  the  fundamental  consist- 
ency between  his  present  and  his  past.  We  have 
no  difficulty  in  imagining  the  abuse  to  which  he 
was  exposed  from  those  whose  abuse  gave  him 
pain.  In  a  country  governed  by  party,  a  politician 


ix  RESENTMENT  OF  THE  PARTY        177 

who  quits  the  allies  of  a  lifetime  must  expect  to 
pay  the  penalty.  The  Whig  papers  told  him  that 
he  was  expected  to  surrender  his  seat  in  Parlia- 
ment. They  imputed  to  him  all  sorts  of  sinister 
motives.  His  name  was  introduced  into  ironical 
toasts.  For  a  whole  year  there  was  scarcely  a 
member  of  his  former  party  who  did  not  stand 
aloof  from  him.  Windham,  when  the  feeling  was 
at  its  height,  sent  word  to  a  host  that  he  would 
rather  not  meet  Burke  at  dinner.  Dr.  Parr,  though 
he  thought  Mr.  Burke  the  greatest  man  upon  earth, 
declared  himself  most  indignantly  and  most  fixedly 
on  the  side  of  Mr.  Sheridan  and  Mr.  Fox.  The 
Duke  of  Portland,  though  always  described  as 
strongly  and  fondly  attached  to  him,  and  Gilbert 
Elliot,  who  thought  that  Burke  was  right  in  his 
views  on  the  Revolution,  and  right  in  expressing 
them,  still  could  not  forgive  the  open  catastrophe, 
and  for  many  months  all  the  old  habits  of  intimacy 
among  them  were  entirely  broken  off. 

Burke  did  not  bend  to  the  storm.  He  went 
down  to  Margate,  and  there  finished  the  Appeal 
from  the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs.  Meanwhile  he 
despatched  his  son  to  Coblenz  to  give  advice  to  the 
royalist  exiles,  who  were  then  mainly  in  the  hands 
of  Calonne,  one  of  the  very  worst  of  the  ministers 
whom  Louis  XVI.  had  tried  between  his  dismissal 
of  Turgot  in  1774,  and  the  meeting  of  the  States- 
General  in  1789.  This  measure  was  taken  at  the 
request  of  Calonne,  who  had  visited  Burke  at 
Margate.  The  English  government  did  not  dis- 
approve of  it,  though  they  naturally  declined  to 
invest  either  young  Burke  or  any  one  else  with 
authority  from  themselves.  As  little  came  of  the 
mission  as  might  have  been  expected  from  the 
frivolous,  unmanly,  and  enraged  spirit  of  those 
to  whom  it  was  addressed. 

In  August  (1791),  while  Richard  Burke  was  at 
Coblenz,  the  Appeal  was  published.  This  was  the 

N 


178  BURKE 


CHAP. 


last  piece  that  Burke  wrote  on  the  Revolution,  in 
which  there  is  any  pretence  of  measure,  sobriety,  and 
calm  judgment  in  face  of  a  formidable  and  perplex- 
ing crisis.  Henceforth  it  is  not  political  philosophy, 
but  the  minatory  exhortation  of  a  prophet.  He  is 
now  only  Demosthenes  thundering  against  Philip, 
or  Cicero  launching  tirades  against  Mark  Antony. 

The  Reflections  had  not  been  published  many 
months  before  Burke  wrote  the  Letter  to  a  Member 
of  the  National  Assembly  (January  1791),  in  which 
strong  disapproval  had  grown  into  furious  animosity. 
It  contains  the  elaborate  diatribe  against  Rousseau, 
the  grave  panegyric  on  Cromwell  for  choosing  Hale 
to  be  Chief  Justice,  and  a  sound  criticism  on  the 
laxity  and  want  of  foresight  in  the  manner  in  which 
the  States-General  had  been  convened.  Here  first 
Burke  advanced  to  the  position  that  it  might  be  the 
duty  of  other  nations  to  interfere  to  restore  the 
king  to  his  rightful  authority,  just  as  England 
and  Prussia  had  interfered  to  save  Holland  from 
confusion,  as  they  had  interfered  to  preserve  the 
hereditary  constitution  in  the  Austrian  Netherlands, 
and  as  Prussia  had  interfered  to  snatch  even  the 
malignant  and  the  turban'd  Turk  from  the  pounce 
of  the  Russian  eagle.  Was  not  the  King  of  France 
as  much  an  object  of  policy  and  compassion  as  the 
Grand  Seignior  ?  As  this  was  the  first  piece  in 
which  Burke  hinted  at  a  crusade,  so  it  was  the  first 
in  which  he  began  to  heap  upon  the  heads,  not  of 
Hebert,  Fouquier  -  Tinville,  Billaud,  nor  even  of 
Robespierre  or  Danton — for  none  of  these  had  yet 
been  heard  of — but  of  able  and  conscientious  men 
in  the  Constituent  Assembly,  language  of  a  viru- 
lence which  Fox  once  said  seriously  that  Burke  had 
picked,  even  to  the  phrases  of  it,  out  of  the  writings 
of  Salmasius  against  Milton,  but  which  is  really  only 
to  be  paralleled  by  the  much  worse  language  of 
Milton  against  Salmasius.  It  was  in  truth  exactly 
the  kind  of  incensed  speech  which,  at  a  later  date, 


I*    BURKE  ADVOCATES  INTERFERENCE  179 

the  factions  in  Paris  levelled  against  one  another, 
when  Girondins  screamed  for  the  heads  of  Jacobins, 
and  Robespierre  denounced  Danton,  and  Tallien 
cried  for  the  blood  of  Robespierre. 

Burke  declined  most  wisely  to  suggest  any  plan 
for  the  National  Assembly.  "  Permit  me  to  say," 
— this  is  in  the  letter  of  January  1791,  to  a  member 
of  the  Assembly, — "  that  if  I  were  as  confident  as  I 
ought  to  be  diffident  in  my  own  loose  general  ideas, 
I  never  should  venture  to  broach  them,  if  but  at 
twenty  leagues'  distance  from  the  centre  of  your 
affairs.  I  must  see  with  my  own  eyes  ;  I  must  in 
a  manner  touch  with  my  own  hands,  not  only  the 
fixed,  but  momentary  circumstances,  before  I  could 
venture  to  suggest  any  political  project  whatso- 
ever. I  must  know  the  power  and  disposition  to 
accept,  to  execute,  to  persevere.  I  must  see  all  the 
aids  and  all  the  obstacles.  I  must  see  the  means 
of  correcting  the  plan,  where  correctives  would  be 
wanted.  I  must  see  the  things  :  I  must  see  the  men. 
Without  a  concurrence  and  adaptation  of  these 
to  the  design,  the  very  best  speculative  projects 
might  become  not  only  useless  but  mischievous. 
Plans  must  be  made  for  men.  People  at  a  distance 
must  judge  ill  of  men.  They  do  not  always  answer 
to  their  reputation  when  you  approach  them.  Nay, 
the  perspective  varies,  and  shows  them  quite  other 
than  you  thought  them.  At  a  distance,  if  we  judge 
uncertainly  of  men,  we  must  judge  worse  of  oppor- 
tunities, which  continually  vary  their  shapes  and 
colours,  and  pass  away  like  clouds."  Our  admira- 
tion at  such  words  is  quickly  stifled  when  we  recall 
the  confident,  unsparing,  immoderate  criticism  that 
both  preceded  and  followed  this  truly  rational  ex- 
position of  the  danger  of  advising,  in  cases  where 
we  know  neither  the  men  nor  the  opportunities. 
Why  was  savage  and  unfaltering  denunciation  any 
less  unbecoming  than,  as  he  admits,  crude  pre- 
scriptions would  have  been  unbecoming  ? 


180  BURKE  CHAP. 

By  the  end  of  1791,  when  he  wrote  the  Thoughts 
on  French  Affairs,  he  had  penetrated  still  farther 
into  the  essential  character  of  the  Revolution.  Any 
notion  of  a  reform  to  be  effected  after  the  decorous 
pattern  of  1688,  so  conspicuous  in  the  first  great 
manifesto,  had  wholly  disappeared.  The  changes 
in  France  he  allowed  to  bear  little  resemblance  or 
analogy  to  any  of  those  previously  brought  about 
in  Europe.  It  is  a  revolution,  he  said,  of  doctrine 
and  theoretic  dogma.  The  Reformation  was  the 
last  revolution  of  this  sort  that  had  happened  in 
Europe;  and  he  immediately  goes  on  to  remark  a 
point  of  striking  resemblance  between  them.  The 
effect  of  the  Reformation  was  "  to  introduce  other 
interests  into  all  countries  than  those  which  arose 
from  their  locality  and  natural  circumstances." 
In  like  manner  other  sources  of  faction  were  now 
opened,  combining  parties  among  the  inhabitants 
of  different  countries  into  a  single  connection. 
From  these  sources,  effects  were  likely  to  arise  fully 
as  important  as  those  which  had  formerly  arisen 
from  the  jarring  interests  of  the  religious  sects.  It 
is  a  species  of  faction  which  "  breaks  the  locality 
of  public  affections."  1 

He  was  thus  launched  on  the  full  tide  of  his 
policy.  The  French  Revolution  must  be  hemmed 
in  by  a  cordon  of  fire.  Those  who  sympathised  with 
it  in  England  must  be  gagged,  and  if  gagging  did  not 
suffice,  they  must  be  taught  respect  for  the  con- 
stitution in  dungeons  and  on  the  gallows.  His  cry 
for  war  abroad  and  harsh  coercion  at  home  waxed 
louder  every  day.  As  Fox  said,  it  was  lucky  that 
Burke  took  the  royal  side  in  the  Revolution,  for  his 

1  De  Tocqueville  has  unconsciously  imitated  Burke's  very  phrases. 
"  Toutes  les  revolutions  civiles  et  politiques  ont  eu  une  patrie,  et  s'y  sont 
enfermees.  La  Revolution  I runr.-iise  ...  on  1'a  vue  rapprocher  ou 
diviser  les  homines  en  depit  des  lois,  des  traditions,  des  caracteres,  de 
langue,  rendant  parfois  ennemis  des  compatriotes,  et  freres  des  etrangers  ; 
ou  plutdt  elle  a  forme  au-dessus  de  loutes  les  nationalites  particulieres,  une 
patrie  intellectuelle  commune  donl  les  hommes  de  toutes  les  nations  ont  pu 
devenir  citoyens"  (Ancien  Regime,  p.  15). 


HIS  FINAL  POLICY  181 

violence  would  certainly  have  got  him  hanged  if  he 
had  happened  to  take  the  other  side. 

It  was  in  the  early  summer  of  1792  that  Miss 
Burney  again  met  Burke  at  Mrs.  Crewe's  villa  at 
Hampstead.  He  entered  into  an  animated  con- 
versation on  Lord  Macartney  and  the  Chinese 
expedition,  reviving  all  the  old  enthusiasm  of  his 
companion  by  his  allusions  and  anecdotes,  his  brill- 
iant fancies  and  wide  information.  When  politics 
were  introduced,  he  spoke  with  an  eagerness  and 
a  vehemence  that  instantly  banished  the  graces, 
though  it  redoubled  the  energies  of  his  discourse. 
"  How  I  wish,"  Miss  Burney  writes,  "  that  you 
could  meet  this  wonderful  man  when  he  is  easy, 
happy,  and  with  people  he  cordially  likes  !  But 
politics,  even  on  his  own  side,  must  always  be 
excluded ;  his  irritability  is  so  terrible  on  that 
theme,  that  it  gives  immediately  to  his  face  the 
expression  of  a  man  who  is  going  to  defend  himself 
from  murderers." 

Burke  still  remained  without  a  following,  but 
the  ranks  of  his  old  allies  gradually  began  to  show 
signs  of  wavering.  His  panic  about  the  Jacobins 
within  the  gates  slowly  spread.  His  old  faith, 
about  which  he  had  once  talked  so  much,  in  the 
ancient  rustic,  manly,  home  -  bred  sense  of  the 
English  people,  he  dismissed  as  if  it  had  been  some 
idle  dream  that  had  come  to  him  through  the  ivory 
gate.  His  fine,  comparison  of  the  nation  to  a 
majestic  herd,  browsing  in  peace  amid  the  impor- 
tunate chirrupings  of  a  thousand  crickets,  became 
so  little  appropriate,  that  he  was  now  beside  himself 
with  apprehension  that  the  crickets  were  about  to 
rend  the  oxen  in  pieces.  Even  then,  the  herd  stood 
tranquilly  in  their  pastures,  only  occasionally  turn- 
ing a  dull  eye,  now  to  France,  and  now  to  Burke. 
In  the  autumn  of  1791  Burke  dined  with  Pitt  and 
Lord  Grenville,  and  he  found  them  resolute  for  an 
honest  neutrality  in  the  affairs  of  France,  and 


182  BURKE  CHAP. 

"  quite  out  of  all  apprehensions  of  any  effect  from 
the  French  Revolution  in  this  kingdom,  either  at 
present  or  any  time  to  come."  Francis  and  Sheridan, 
it  is  true,  spoke  as  if  they  almost  wished  for  a 
domestic  convulsion ;  and  cool  observers  who  saw 
him  daily,  even  accused  Sheridan  of  wishing  to 
stir  up  the  lower  ranks  of  the  people  by  the  hope 
of  plundering  their  betters.  But  men  who  after- 
wards became  alarmists,  are  found,  so  late  as  the 
spring  of  1792,  declaring  in  their  most  confidential 
correspondence  that  the  party  of  confusion  made 
no  way  with  the  country,  and  produced  no  effect. 
Home  Tooke  was  its  most  conspicuous  chief,  and 
nobody  pretended  to  fear  the  subversion  of  the 
realm  by  Home  Tooke.  Yet  Burke,  in  letters 
where  he  admits  that  the  democratic  party  is 
entirely  discountenanced,  and  that  the  Jacobin 
faction  in  England  is  under  a  heavy  cloud,  was  so 
possessed  by  the  spectre  of  panic,  as  to  declare 
that  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  was  as  much  fighting 
the  battle  of  the  Crown  of  England,  as  the  Duke 
of  Cumberland  fought  that  battle  at  Culloden. 

Time  and  events,  meanwhile,  had  been  power- 
fully telling  for  Burke.  While  he  was  writing  his 
Appeal,  the  French  king  and  queen  had  destroyed 
whatever  confidence  sanguine  dreamers  might  have 
had  in  their  loyalty  to  the  new  order  of  things, 
by  attempting  to  escape  over  the  frontier.  They 
were  brought  back,  and  a  manful  attempt  was  made 
to  get  the  new  constitution  to  work,  in  the  winter 
of  1791-92.  It  was  soon  found  out  that  Mirabeau 
had  been  right  when  he  said  that  for  a  monarchy  it 
was  too  democratic,  and  for  a  republic  there  was  a 
king  too  much.  This  was  Burke's  Reflections  in  a 
nutshell.  But  it  was  foreign  intervention  that 
finally  ruined  the  king,  and  destroyed  the  hope  of 
an  orderly  issue.  Frederick  the  Great  had  set  the 
first  example  of  what  some  call  iniquity  and  viol- 
ence in  Europe,  and  others  in  milder  terms  call  a 


ST^TE  OF  ENGLISH  FEELING        183 

readjustment  of  the  equilibrium  of  nations.  He  had 
taken  Silesia  from  the  House  of  Austria,  and  he  had 
shared  in  the  first  partition  of  Poland.  Catherine 
II.  had  followed  him  at  the  expense  of  Poland, 
Sweden,  and  Turkey.  However  we  may  view  these 
transactions,  and  whether  we  describe  them  by  the 
stern  words  of  the  moralist,  or  the  more  deprecatory 
words  of  the  diplomatist,  they  are  the  first  sources 
of  that  storm  of  lawless  rapine  which  swept  over 
every  part  of  Europe  for  five-and-twenty  years  to 
come.  The  intervention  of  Austria  and  Prussia  in 
the  affairs  of  France  was  originally  less  a  deliberate 
design  for  the  benefit  of  the  old  order,  than  an 
interlude  in  the  intrigues  of  eastern  Europe.  But 
the  first  effect  of  intervention  on  behalf  of  the 
French  monarchy  was  to  bring  it  in  a  few  weeks  to 
the  ground. 

In  the  spring  of  1792  France  replied  to  the 
preparations  of  Austria  and  Prussia  for  invasion 
by  a  declaration  of  war.  It  was  inevitable  that 
the  French  people  should  associate  the  court  with 
the  foreign  enemy  that  was  coming  to  its  deliver- 
ance. Everybody  knew  as  well  then  as  we  know 
it  now  that  the  queen  was  as  bitterly  incensed 
against  the  new  order  of  things,  and  as  resolutely 
unfaithful  to  it,  as  the  most  furious  emigrant  on 
the  Rhine.  Even  Burke  himself,  writing  to  his 
son  at  Coblenz,  was  constrained  to  talk  about 
Marie  Antoinette  as  that  "  most  unfortunate  woman, 
who  was  not  to  be  cured  of  the  spirit  of  court 
intrigue  even  by  a  prison."  The  king  may  have 
been  loyally  resigned  to  his  position,  but  resignation 
will  not  defend  a  country  from  the  invader ;  and 
the  nation  distrusted  a  chief  who  only  a  few  months 
before  had  been  arrested  in  full  flight  to  join  the 
national  enemy.  Power  naturally  fell  into  the 
hands  of  the  men  of  conviction,  energy,  passion, 
and  resource.  Patriotism  and  republicanism  be- 
came synonyms,  and  the  constitution  against  which 


184  BURKE  CHAP 

Burke  had  prophesied  was  henceforth  a  dead  letter. 
The  spirit  of  insurrection  that  had  slumbered 
since  the  fall  of  the  Bastille  and  the  march 
to  Versailles  in  1789,  now  awoke  in  formidable 
violence,  and  after  the  preliminary  rehearsal  of 
what  is  known  in  the  revolutionary  calendar  as 
the  20th  of  June  (1792),  the  people  of  Paris  re- 
sponded to  the  Duke  of  Brunswick's  insensate 
manifesto  by  the  more  memorable  day  of  the 
10th  of  August.  Brunswick,  accepting  the  hateful 
language  which  the  French  emigrants  put  into  his 
mouth,  had  declared  that  every  member  of  the 
national  guard  taken  with  arms  in  his  hands  would 
be  immediately  put  to  death  ;  that  every  inhabitant 
who  should  dare  to  defend  himself  would  be  put  to 
death  and  his  house  burnt  to  the  ground ;  and 
that  if  the  least  insult  was  offered  to  the  royal 
family,  then  their  Austrian  and  Prussian  Majesties 
would  deliver  Paris  to  military  execution  and  total 
destruction.  This  is  the  vindictive  ferocity  that 
only  civil  war  can  kindle.  To  convince  men  that 
the  manifesto  was  not  an  empty  threat,  on  the  day 
of  its  publication  a  force  of  nearly  140,000  Austrians, 
Prussians,  and  Hessians  entered  France.  The  sec- 
tions of  Paris  replied  by  marching  to  the  Tuileries,  and 
after  a  furious  conflict  with  the  Swiss  guards,  they 
stormed  the  chateau.  The  king  and  his  family  had 
fled  to  the  National  Assembly.  The  same  evening 
they  were  thrown  into  prison,  whence  the  king  and 
queen  only  came  out  on  their  way  to  the  scaffold. 

It  was  the  king's  execution  in  January  1793 
that  finally  raised  feeling  in  England  to  the  intense 
heat  that  Burke  had  for  so  long  been  invoking. 
The  evening  on  which  the  courier  brought  the  news 
was  never  forgotten  by  those  who  were  in  London 
at  the  time.  The  playhouses  were  instantly  closed, 
and  the  audiences  insisted  on  retiring  with  half  the 
amusement  for  which  they  had  paid.  People  of 
the  lowest  and  the  highest  rank  alike  put  on  mourn- 


ix  THE  DAGGER  SCENE  185 

ing.  The  French  were  universally  denounced  as 
fiends  upon  earth.  It  was  hardly  safe  for  a  French- 
man to  appear  in  the  streets  of  London.  Placards 
were  posted  on  every  wall,  calling  for  war,  and  the 
crowds  who  gathered  round  them  read  them  with 
loud  hurrahs. 

It  would  be  a  complete  mistake  to  say  that 
Pitt  ever  lost  his  head,  but  he  lost  his  feet.  The 
momentary  passion  of  the  nation  forced  him  out 
of  the  pacific  path  in  which  he  would  have  chosen 
to  stay.  Burke  had  become  the  greatest  power 
in  the  country,  and  was  in  closer  communication 
with  the  ministers  than  any  one  out  of  office.  He 
went  once  about  this  time  with  Windham  and 
Elliot  to  inform  Pitt  as  to  the  uneasiness  of  the 
public  about  the  slackness  of  our  naval  and  mili- 
tary preparation.  "Burke,"  says  one  of  the  party, 
"  gave  Pitt  a  little  political  instruction  in  a  very 
respectful  and  cordial  way,  but  with  the  authority 
of  an  old  and  most  informed  statesman ;  and 
although  nobody  ever  takes  the  whole  of  Burke's 
advice,  yet  he  often,  or  always  rather,  furnishes 
very  important  and  useful  matter,  some  part  of 
which  sticks  and  does  good.  Pitt  took  it  all  very 
patiently  and  cordially." 

It  was  in  the  December  of  1792  that  Burke 
had  enacted  that  famous  bit  of  melodrama  out  of 
place  known  as  the  Dagger  Scene.  The  govern- 
ment had  brought  in  an  Alien  Bill,  imposing  certain 
pains  and  restrictions  on  foreigners  coming  to  this 
country.  Fox  denounced  it  as  a  concession  to 
foolish  alarms,  and  was  followed  by  Burke,  who 
began  to  storm  as  usual  against  murderous  atheists. 
Then  without  due  preparation  he  began  to  fumble 
in  his  bosom,  suddenly  drew  out  a  dagger,  and 
with  an  extravagant  gesture  threw  it  on  the  floor 
of  the  House,  crying  that  this  was  what  they  had 
to  expect  from  their  alliance  with  France.  The 


186  BURKE  CHAP. 

stroke  missed  its  mark,  and  there  was  a  general 
inclination  to  titter,  until  Burke,  collecting  himself 
for  an  effort,  called  upon  them  with  a  vehemence 
to  which  his  listeners  could  not  choose  but  respond, 
to  keep  French  principles  from  their  heads,  and 
French  daggers  from  their  hearts ;  to  preserve  all 
their  blandishments  in  life,  and  all  their  consola- 
tions in  death ;  all  the  blessings  of  time,  and  all 
the  hopes  of  eternity.  All  this  was  not  prepared 
long  beforehand,  for  it  seems  that  the  dagger  had 
only  been  shown  to  Burke  on  his  way  to  the  House 
as  one  that  had  been  sent  to  Birmingham  to  be  a 
pattern  for  a  large  order.  Whether  prepared  or 
unprepared,  the  scene  was  one  from  which  we  gladly 
avert  our  eyes. 

Negotiations  had  been  going  on  for  some  months, 
and  they  continued  in  various  stages  for  some 
months  longer,  for  a  coalition  between  the  two 
great  parties  of  the  State.  Burke  was  persistently 
anxious  that  Fox  should  join  Pitt's  government. 
Pitt  always  admitted  the  importance  of  Fox's 
abilities  in  the  difficult  affairs  that  lay  before  the 
ministry,  and  declared  that  he  had  no  sort  of 
personal  animosity  to  Fox,  but  rather  a  personal 
good-will  and  good-liking.  Fox  himself  said  of  a 
coalition,  "It  is  so  damned  right,  to  be  sure,  that 
I  cannot  help  thinking  it  must  be."  But  the  diffi- 
culties were  insuperable.  The  more  rapidly  the 
government  drifted  in  Burke's  direction,  the  more 
impossible  was  it  for  a  man  of  Fox's  political 
sympathies  and  convictions  to  have  any  dealings 
with  a  Cabinet  committed  to  a  policy  of  irrational 
panic,  to  be  carried  out  by  a  costly  war  abroad 
and  cruel  repression  at  home.  "  What  a  very 
wretched  man ! '  was  Burke's  angry  exclamation 
one  day,  when  it  became  certain  that  Fox  meant 
to  stand  by  the  old  flag  of  freedom  and  generous 
common  sense. 

When  the  coalition  at  length  took  place  (1794), 


*  WILLIAM  WINDHAM  187 

the  only  man  who  carried  Burke 's  principles  to 
their  fullest  extent  into  Pitt's  Cabinet  was  Wind- 
ham.  It  is  impossible  not  to  feel  the  attraction 
of  Windham's  character,  his  amiability,  his  rever- 
ence for  great  and  virtuous  men,  his  passion  for 
knowledge,  the  versatility  of  his  interests.  He  is 
a  striking  example  of  the  fact  that  literature  was 
a  common  pursuit  and  occupation  to  the  chief 
statesmen  of  that  time  (always  excepting  Pitt), 
to  an  extent  that  has  been  gradually  tending  to 
become  rarer.  Windham,  in  the  midst  of  his 
devotion  to  public  affairs,  to  the  business  of  his 
country,  and,  let  us  add,  a  zealous  attendance  on 
every  prize-fight  within  reach,  was  never  happy 
unless  he  was  working  up  points  in  literature  and 
mathematics.  There  was  a  literary  and  classical 
spirit  abroad,  and  in  spite  of  the  furious  preoccupa- 
tions of  faction,  a  certain  ready  disengagement  of 
mind  prevailed.  If  Windham  and  Fox  began  to 
talk  of  horses,  they  seemed  to  fall  naturally  into 
what  had  been  said  about  horses  by  the  old  writers. 
Fox  held  that  long  ears  were  a  merit,  and  Windham 
met  him  by  the  authority  of  Xenophon  and  Oppian 
in  favour  of  short  ones,  and  finally  they  went  off 
into  what  it  was  that  Virgil  meant  when  he  called 
a  horse's  head  argutum  caput.  Burke  and  Wind- 
ham  travelled  in  Scotland  together  in  1785,  and 
their  conversation  fell  as  often  on  old  books  as 
on  Hastings  or  on  Pitt.  They  discussed  Virgil's 
similes  ;  Johnson  and  L'Estrange,  as  the  extremes 
of  English  style ;  what  Stephens  and  A.  Gellius 
had  to  say  about  Cicero's  use  of  the  word  gratiosus. 
If  they  came  to  libraries,  Windham  ran  into  them 
with  eagerness,  and  very  strongly  enjoyed  all  "  the 
feel  that  a  library  usually  excites."  He  is  con- 
stantly reproaching  himself  with  a  remissness, 
which  was  purely  imaginary,  in  keeping  up  his 
mathematics,  his  Greek  tragedies,  his  Latin  his- 
torians. There  is  no  more  curious  example  of  the 


188  BURKE  CHAP. 

remorse  of  a  bookman  impeded  by  affairs.  "  What 
progress  might  men  make  in  the  several  parts  of 
knowledge,"  he  says  very  truly,  in  one  of  these 
moods,  "  if  they  could  only  pursue  them  with  the 
same  eagerness  and  assiduity  as  are  exerted  by 
lawyers  in  the  conduct  of  a  suit."  But  this  distrac- 
tion between  the  tastes  of  the  bookman  and  the 
pursuits  of  public  business,  united  with  a  certain 
quality  of  his  constitution  to  produce  one  great 
defect  in  his  character,  and  it  was  the  worst  defect 
that  a  statesman  can  have.  He  became  the  most 
irresolute  and  vacillating  of  men.  He  wastes  the 
first  half  of  a  day  in  deciding  which  of  two  courses 
to  take,  and  the  second  half  in  blaming  himself 
for  not  having  taken  the  other.  He  is  constantly 
late  at  entertainments,  because  he  cannot  make 
up  his  mind  in  proper  time  whether  to  go  or  to 
stay  at  home ;  hesitation  whether  he  shall  read 
in  the  red  room  or  in  the  library,  loses  him  three 
of  the  best  hours  of  a  morning ;  the  difficulty  of 
early  rising  he  finds  to  consist  less  in  rising  early 
than  in  satisfying  himself  that  the  practice  is 
wholesome  ;  his  mind  is  torn  for  a  whole  forenoon 
in  an  absurd  contest  with  himself,  whether  he 
ought  to  indulge  a  strong  wish  to  exercise  his 
horse  before  dinner.  Every  page  of  his  diary  is  a 
register  of  the  symptoms  of  this  unhappy  disease. 
When  the  Revolution  came,  he  was  absolutely 
forced,  by  the  iron  necessity  of  the  case,  after 
certain  perturbations,  to  go  either  with  Fox  or 
with  Burke.  Under  this  compulsion  he  took  one 
headlong  plunge  into  the  policy  of  alarm.  Every- 
body knows  how  desperately  an  habitually  irresol- 
ute man  is  capable  of  clinging  to  a  policy  or  a 
conviction,  to  which  he  has  once  been  driven  by 
dire  stress  of  circumstance.  Windham,  having  at 
last  made  up  his  mind  to  be  frightened  by  the 
Revolution,  was  more  violently  and  inconsolably 
frightened  than  anybody  else. 


ix  IRELAND  189 

Pitt,  after  he  had  been  forced  into  war,  at  least 
intended  it  to  be  a  war  on  the  good  old-fashioned 
principles  of  seizing  the  enemy's  colonies  and 
keeping  them.  He  was  taunted  by  the  alarmists 
with  caring  only  for  sugar  islands,  and  making 
himself  master  of  all  the  islands  in  the  world  except 
Great  Britain  and  Ireland.  To  Burke  all  this  was 
an  abomination,  and  Windham  followed  Burke  to 
the  letter.  He  even  declared  the  holy  rage  of  the 
Third  Letter  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  published  after 
Burke's  death,  to  contain  the  purest  wisdom  and 
the  most  unanswerable  policy.  It  was  through 
Windham's  eloquence  and  perseverance  that  the 
monstrous  idea  of  a  crusade,  and  all  Burke's  other 
violent  and  excited  precepts,  gained  an  effective 
place  and  hearing  in  the  Cabinet,  in  the  royal  closet, 
and  in  the  House  of  Commons,  long  after  Burke 
himself  had  left  the  world. 

We  have  already  seen  how  important  an  element 
Irish  affairs  became  in  the  war  with  America.  The 
same  spirit  that  had  been  stirred  by  the  American 
war  was  inevitably  kindled  in  Ireland  by  the 
French  Revolution.  The  association  of  United  Irish- 
men now  came  into  existence,  with  aims  avowedly 
revolutionary.  They  joined  the  party  that  was 
striving  for  the  relief  of  the  Catholics  from  certain 
disabilities,  and  for  their  admission  to  the  franchise. 
Burke  had  watched  all  movements  in  his  native 
country,  from  the  Whiteboy  insurrection  of  1761 
downwards,  with  steady  vigilance,  and  he  watched 
the  new  movement  of  1792  with  the  keenest  eyes. 
It  made  him  profoundly  uneasy.  He  could  not 
endure  the  thought  of  ever  so  momentary  and 
indirect  an  association  with  a  revolutionary  party, 
either  in  Ireland  or  any  other  quarter  of  the  globe, 
yet  he  was  eager  for  a  policy  that  should  reconcile 
the  Irish.  He  was  so  for  two  reasons.  One  of 
them  was  his  political  sense  of  the  inexpediency  of 
proscribing  men  by  whole  nations,  and  excluding 


190  BURKE 


CHAP. 


from  the  franchise  on  the  ground  of  religion  a 
people  as  numerous  as  the  subjects  of  the  King  of 
Denmark  or  the  King  of  Sardinia,  equal  to  the 
population  of  the  United  Netherlands,  and  larger 
than  were  to  be  found  in  all  the  states  of  Switzer- 
land. His  second  reason  was  his  sense  of  the 
urgency  of  facing  trouble  abroad  with  a  nation 
united  and  contented  at  home  ;  of  abolishing  in 
the  heart  of  the  country  that  "  bank  of  dis- 
content, every  hour  accumulating,  upon  which 
every  description  of  seditious  men  may  draw 
at  pleasure." 

In  the  beginning  of  1792  Burke's  son  went  to 
Dublin  as  the  agent  and  adviser  of  the  Catholic 
Committee,  who  at  first  listened  to  him  with  the 
respect  due  to  one  in  whom  they  expected  to 
meet  the  qualities  of  his  father.  They  soon  found 
out  that  he  was  utterly  without  either  tact  or 
judgment ;  that  he  was  arrogant,  impertinent, 
vain,  and  empty.  Wolfe  Tone  declared  him  to 
be  by  far  the  most  impudent  and  opinionative 
fellow  that  he  had  ever  known  in  his  life.  Nothing 
could  exceed  the  absurdity  of  his  conduct,  and  on 
one  occasion  he  had  a  very  narrow  escape  of  being 
taken  into  custody  by  the  Serjeant-at-arms,  for 
rushing  down  from  the  gallery  into  the  Irish  House 
of  Commons,  and  attempting  to  make  a  speech 
in  defence  of  a  petition  he  had  drawn  up,  that 
was  being  attacked  by  a  member  in  his  place. 
Richard  Burke  went  home,  it  is  said,  with  two 
thousand  guineas  in  his  pocket,  which  the  Catholics 
had  cheerfully  paid  as  the  price  of  getting  rid  of 
him.  He  returned  shortly  after,  but  only  helped 
to  plunge  the  business  into  further  confusion,  and 
finally  left  the  scene  covered  with  odium  and 
discredit.  His  father's  Letter  to  Sir  Hercules  Lang- 
rishe  (1792)  remains  an  admirable  monument  of 
wise  statesmanship,  a  singular  interlude  of  calm 
and  solid  reasoning  in  the  midst  of  a  fiery  whirl- 


DEATH  OF  RICHARD  BURKE         191 

wind  of  intense  passion.  Burke  perhaps  felt  that 
the  state  of  Ireland  was  passing  away  from  the 
sphere  of  calm  and  solid  reason,  when  he  knew 
that  Dumouriez's  victory  over  the  allies  at  Valmy, 
which  filled  Beaconsfield  with  such  gloom  and  dis- 
may, was  celebrated  at  Dublin  by  an  illumination. 

Burke,  now  in  his  sixty -fourth  year,  had  for 
some  time  announced  his  intention  of  leaving  the 
House  of  Commons  as  soon  as  he  had  brought 
to  an  end  the  prosecution  of  Hastings.  In  1794 
the  trial  came  to  a  close ;  the  thanks  of  the 
House  were  formally  voted  to  the  managers  of 
the  impeachment ;  and  when  the  scene  was  over 
Burke  applied  for  the  Chiltern  Hundreds.  Lord 
Fitzwilliam  nominated  Richard  Burke  for  the  seat 
which  his  father  had  thus  vacated  at  Malton.  Pitt 
was  then  making  arrangements  for  the  accession 
of  the  Portland  Whigs  to  his  government,  and  it 
was  natural,  in  connection  with  these  arrange- 
ments, to  confer  some  favour  on  the  man  who 
had  done  more  than  anybody  else  to  promote  the 
new  alliance.  It  was  proposed  to  make  Burke 
a  peer  under  the  style  of  Lord  Beaconsfield, — a 
title  in  a  later  age  borrowed  for  himself  by  a 
man  of  genius  with  inborn  gifts  of  irony.  To 
the  title  it  was  proposed  to  attach  a  yearly  income 
for  two  or  more  lives.  But  the  bolt  of  destiny 
was  at  this  instant  launched.  Richard  Burke, 
the  adored  centre  of  all  his  father's  hopes  and 
affections,  was  seized  with  illness  and  died  (August 
1794).  We  cannot  look  without  tragic  emotion  on 
the  pathos  of  the  scene,  which  left  the  remnant  of 
the  old  man's  days  desolate  and  void.  A  Roman 
poet  has  described  in  touching  words  the  woe  of  the 
aged  Nestor,  as  he  beheld  the  funeral  pile  of  his  son, 
too  untimely  slain — 

Oro  parumper 

Attendas  quantum  de  legibus  ipse  queratur 
Fatorum  et  nimio  de  stamine,  quum  videt  acris 


192  BURKE  CHAP. 

Antilochi  barbam  ardcntem  :   quum  quaerit  ab  omni 
Quisquis  adest  socius,  cur  haec  in  tempora  duret, 
Quod  facinus  dignum  tarn  longo  admiserit  aevo. 

Burke's  grief  finds  yet  nobler  expression.  "The 
storm  has  gone  over  me,  and  I  lie  like  one  of  those 
old  oaks  which  the  late  hurricane  has  scattered  about 
me.  I  am  stripped  of  all  my  honours  ;  I  am  torn 
up  by  the  roots  and  lie  prostrate  on  the  earth.  .  .  . 
I  am  alone.  I  have  none  to  meet  my  enemies  in 
the  gate.  ...  I  live  in  an  inverted  order.  They 
who  ought  to  have  succeeded  me  have  gone  before 
me.  They  who  should  have  been  to  me  as  posterity 
are  in  the  place  of  ancestors." 

Burke  only  lived  three  years  after  this  desolating 
blow.  The  arrangements  for  a  peerage,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  came  to  an  end.  But  Pitt  was  well  aware 
of  the  serious  embarrassments  by  which  Burke  was 
so  pressed  that  he  saw  actual  beggary  very  close  at 
hand.  The  king,  too — who  had  once,  by  the  way, 
granted  a  pension  to  Burke's  detested  Rousseau, 
though  Rousseau  was  too  proud  to  draw  it — seems 
to  have  been  honourably  interested  in  making  a 
provision  for  Burke.  What  Pitt  offered  was  an 
immediate  grant  of  £1200  a  year  from  the  civil 
list  for  Mrs.  Burke's  life,  to  be  followed  by  a  pro- 
position to  Parliament  in  a  message  from  the  king, 
to  confer  an  annuity  of  greater  value  upon  a  states- 
man who  had  served  the  country  to  his  own  loss  for 
thirty  years.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  grant,  £2500 
a  year  in  amount,  much  to  Burke's  chagrin,  was 
never  brought  before  Parliament,  but  was  conferred 
directly  by  the  Crown,  as  a  charge  on  the  four  and 
a  half  per  cent  fund  for  two  or  more  lives.  It  seems 
as  if  Pitt  were  afraid  of  challenging  the  opinion 
of  Parliament;  and  the  storm  which  the  pension 
raised  out  of  doors  was  a  measure  of  the  trouble 
which  the  defence  of  it  would  have  inflicted  on  the 
government  inside  the  House  of  Commons.  Accord- 
ing to  the  rumour  of  the  time,  Burke  sold  two 


ATTACK  ON  BURKE  193 

of  his  pensions  upon  lives  for  £27,000,  and  there  was 
left  the  third  pension  of  £1200.  By  and  by,  when 
the  resentment  of  the  Opposition  was  roused  to  the 
highest  pitch  by  the  infamous  Treason  and  Sedition 
Bills  of  1795,  the  Duke  of  Bedford  and  Lord  Lauder- 
dale,  seeking  to  accumulate  every  possible  com- 
plaint against  the  government,  assailed  the  grant  to 
Burke,  as  made  without  the  consent  of  Parliament, 
and  as  a  violent  contradiction  to  the  whole  policy 
of  the  plan  for  economic  reform.  The  attack,  if  not 
unjustifiable  in  itself,  came  from  an  unlucky  quarter. 
A  chief  of  the  house  of  Bedford  was  the  most  unfit 
person  in  the  world  to  protest  against  grants  by 
favour  of  the  Crown.  Burke  was  too  practised  a 
rhetorician  not  to  see  the  opening,  and  his  Letter 
to  a  Noble  Lord  is  the  most  splendid  repartee  in  the 
English  tongue. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Burke's  defence  should 
have  provoked  rejoinder.  A  cloud  of  pamphlets 
followed  the  Letter  to  a  Noble  Lord — some  in  dog- 
gerel verse,  others  in  a  magniloquent  prose  imitated 
from  his  own,  others  mere  poisonous  scurrility.  The 
nearest  approach  to  a  just  stroke  that  I  can  find, 
after  turning  over  a  pile  of  this  trash,  is  an  expression 
of  wonder  that  he,  who  was  inconsolable  for  the  loss 
of  a  beloved  son,  should  not  have  reflected  how  many 
tender  parents  had  been  made  childless  in  the  pro- 
fusion of  blood  of  which  he  himself  had  been  the 
most  relentless  champion.  Our  disgust  at  the  pages 
of  insult  that  were  here  levelled  at  a  great  man,  is 
perhaps  moderated  by  the  thought  that  Burke 
himself,  who  of  all  people  ought  to  have  known 
better,  had  held  up  to  public  scorn  and  obloquy 
men  of  such  virtue,  attainments,  and  real  service  to 
mankind  as  Richard  Price  and  Joseph  Priestley. 

It  was  during  these  months  that  he  composed 
the  Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  though  the  third 
and  fourth  of  them  were  not  published  until  after 
his  death.  There  have  been  those  to  whom  these 


194  BURKE  CHAP. 

compositions  appeared  to  be  Burke's  masterpieces. 
In  fact  they  are  deplorable.  They  contain  pass- 
ages of  fine  philosophy  and  of  skilful  and  plausible 
reasoning,  but  such  passages  only  make  us  wonder 
how  they  come  to  be  where  they  are.  The  reader 
is  in  no  humour  for  them.  In  splendours  of  rhetoric, 
in  fine  images,  in  sustention,  in  irony,  they  surpass 
anything  that  Burke  ever  wrote,  but  of  the  qualities 
and  principles  that,  far  more  than  his  rhetoric,  have 
made  Burke  so  admirable  and  so  great — of  justice, 
of  firm  grasp  of  fact,  of  a  reasonable  sense  of  the 
probabilities  of  things — there  are  only  traces  enough 
to  light  up  the  gulfs  of  empty  words,  reckless 
phrases,  and  senseless  vituperations,  that  surge  and 
boil  around  them. 

It  is  with  the  same  emotion  of  "  grief  and  shame  " 
with  which  Fox  heard  Burke  argue  against  relief 
to  dissenters,  that  we  hear  him  abusing  the  courts 
of  law  because  they  did  not  convict  Hardy  and 
Home  Tooke.  The  pages  against  divorce  and 
civil  marriage,  even  granting  that  they  point  to 
the  right  judgment  in  these  matters,  express  it  with 
a  vehemence  that  is  irrational,  and  in  the  dialect, 
not  of  a  statesman,  but  of  an  enraged  capucin.  The 
highly  wrought  passage  in  which  Burke  describes 
external  aggrandisement  as  the  original  thought 
and  the  ultimate  aim  of  the  earlier  statesmen  of  the 
Revolution,  is  no  better  than  ingenious  nonsense. 
The  whole  performance  rests  on  a  gross  and  inex- 
cusable anachronism.  There  is  a  contemptuous 
refusal  to  discriminate  between  groups  of  men 
who  were  as  different  from  one  another  as  Oliver 
Cromwell  was  different  from  James  Nayler,  and 
between  periods  as  unlike  in  all  their  conditions  as 
the  Athens  of  the  Thirty  Tyrants  was  unlike  Athens 
after  Thrasybulus  had  driven  the  Tyrants  out. 
He  assumes  that  the  men,  the  policy,  the  maxims  of 
the  French  government  are  the  men,  the  policy,  and 
the  maxims  of  the  handful  of  obscure  miscreants 


ix  THE  REGICIDE  PEACE  195 

who  had  hacked  priests  and  nobles  to  pieces  at  the 
doors  of  the  prisons  four  years  before.  Carnot  is 
to  him  merely  "  that  sanguinary  tyrant,"  and  the 
heroic  Hoche  becomes  "  that  old  practised  assassin," 
while  the  Prince  of  Wales,  by  the  way,  and  the  Duke 
of  York  are  the  hope  and  pride  of  nations.  To  heap 
up  that  incessant  iteration  about  thieves,  murderers, 
house-breakers,  assassins,  bandits,  bravoes  with 
their  hands  dripping  with  blood  and  their  maw 
gorged  with  property,  desperate  paramours,  bom- 
bastical  players,  the  refuse  and  rejected  offal  of 
strolling  theatres,  bloody  buffoons,  bloody  felons — 
all  this  was  as  unjust  to  hundreds  of  disinterested, 
honest,  and  patriotic  men  who  were  then  earnestly 
striving  to  restore  a  true  order  and  solid  citizenship 
in  France,  as  the  scurrility  of  an  Orangeman  is 
unjust  to  millions  of  devout  Catholics. 

Burke  was  the  man  who  might  have  been 
expected  before  all  others  to  know  that  in  every 
system  of  government,  whatever  may  have  been 
the  crimes  of  its  origin,  there  is  sure,  by  the  bare 
necessity  of  things,  to  rise  up  a  party  or  an  indi- 
vidual, whom  their  political  instinct  will  force  into 
resistance  to  the  fatalities  of  anarchy.  Man  is  too 
strongly  a  political  animal  for  it  to  be  otherwise. 
It  was  so  at  each  period  and  division  in  the  Revolu- 
tion. There  was  always  a  party  of  order,  and  by 
1795,  when  Burke  penned  these  reckless  philippics, 
order  was  only  too  easy  in  France.  The  Revolution 
had  worn  out  the  passion  and  moral  enthusiasm 
of  its  first  years,  and  all  the  best  men  of  the  revolu- 
tionary time  had  been  consumed  in  a  flame  of  fire. 
When  Burke  talked  about  this  war  being  wholly 
unlike  any  war  that  ever  was  waged  in  Europe  before, 
about  its  being  a  war  for  justice  on  the  one  side,  and 
a  fanatical  bloody  propagandism  on  the  other,  he 
shut  his  eyes  to  the  plain  fact  that  the  Directory 
had  after  all  really  sunk  to  the  moral  level  of 
Frederick  and  Catherine,  or  for  that  matter,  of 


196  BURKE 


CHAP. 


Louis  the  Fourteenth  himself.  This  war  was  only 
too  like  the  other  great  wars  of  European  his- 
tory. The  French  government  had  become  poli- 
tical, exactly  in  the  same  sense  in  which  Thugut 
and  Metternich  and  Herzberg  were  political.  The 
French  Republic  in  1797  was  neither  more  nor  less 
aggressive,  immoral,  piratical,  than  the  monarchies 
that  had  partitioned  Poland,  and  had  intended  to 
redistribute  the  continent  of  Europe  to  suit  their 
own  ambitions.  The  Coalition  began  the  game,  but 
France  proved  too  strong  for  them,  and  they  had  the 
worst  of  their  game.  Jacobinism  may  have  inspired 
the  original  fire  that  made  her  armies  irresistible, 
but  Jacobinism  of  that  stamp  had  now  gone  out  of 
fashion,  and  to  denounce  a  peace  with  the  Directory 
because  the  origin  of  their  government  was  regicidal, 
was  as  childish  as  it  would  have  been  in  Mazarin 
to  decline  a  treaty  of  regicide  peace  with  the  Lord 
Protector. 

What  makes  the  Regicide  Peace  so  repulsive  is 
not  that  it  recommends  energetic  prosecution  of 
the  war,  and  not  that  it  abounds  in  glaring  fallacies 
in  detail,  but  that  it  is  in  direct  contradiction  with 
the  strong,  positive,  rational,  and  sane  method  that 
had  before  uniformly  marked  Burke's  political 
philosophy.  Here  lay  his  inconsistency,  not  in 
abandoning  democratic  principles,  for  he  had  never 
held  them,  but  in  forgetting  his  own  rules  that 
nations  act  from  adequate  motives  relative  to  their 
interests,  and  not  from  metaphysical  speculation ; 
that  we  cannot  draw  an  indictment  against  a  whole 
people ;  that  there  is  a  species  of  hostile  justice 
which  no  asperity  of  war  wholly  extinguishes  in  the 
minds  of  a  civilised  people.  "  Steady  independent 
minds,"  he  had  once  said,  "  when  they  have  an 
object  of  so  serious  a  concern  to  mankind  as  govern- 
ment under  their  contemplation,  will  disdain  to 
assume  the  part  of  satirists  and  declaimers."  Show 
the  thing  that  you  ask  for,  he  cried  during  the 


TRACT  ON  ECONOMICS  197 

American  war,  to  be  reason,  show  it  to  be  common 
sense.  We  have  a  measure  of  the  reason  and 
common  sense  of  Burke's  attitude  in  the  Regicide 
Peace,  in  the  language  it  inspired  in  Windham 
and  others,  who  denounced  Wilberforce  for  canting 
when  he  spoke  of  peace ;  who  stigmatised  Pitt  as 
weak  and  a  pander  to  national  avarice  for  thinking 
of  the  cost  of  the  war ;  and  who  actually  charged 
the  liverymen  of  London  who  petitioned  for  peace, 
with  open  sedition. 

It  is  a  striking  illustration  of  the  versatility  of 
Burke's  moods  that  immediately  before  sitting  down 
to  write  the  Fourth  Letter  on  a  Regicide  Peace  he 
had  composed  one  of  the  most  lucid  and  accurately 
meditated  of  all  his  tracts,  which,  short  as  it  is, 
contains  ideas  on  free  trade  that  were  only  too  far 
in  advance  of  the  opinion  of  his  time.  In  1772  a 
Corn  Bill  had  been  introduced — it  was  passed  in  the 
following  year — of  which  Adam  Smith  said  that  it 
was  like  the  laws  of  Solon,  not  the  best  in  itself,  but 
the  best  that  the  situation  and  tendency  of  the  times 
would  admit.  In  speaking  upon  this  measure, 
Burke  had  laid  down  those  sensible  principles  on 
the  trade  in  corn,  which  he  now  hi  1795  worked 
out  in  the  Thoughts  and  Details  on  Scarcity.  Those 
who  do  not  concern  themselves  with  economics  will 
perhaps  be  interested  in  the  singular  passage,  vigor- 
ously objected  to  by  Dugald  Stewart,  in  which 
Burke  sets  up  a  genial  defence  of  the  consumption 
of  ardent  spirits.  It  is  interesting  as  an  argument, 
and  it  is  most  characteristic  of  the  author. 

The  curtain  was  now  falling.  All  who  saw  him 
felt  that  Burke's  life  was  quickly  drawing  to  a 
close.  His  son's  death  had  struck  the  final  blow. 
We  could  only  wish  that  the  years  had  brought  to 
him  what  it  ought  to  be  the  fervent  prayer  of  us 
all  to  find  at  the  close  of  the  long  struggle  with 
ourselves  and  with  circumstance — a  disposition  to 
happiness,  a  composed  spirit  to  which  time  has 


198  BURKE  CHAP. 

made  things  clear,  an  unrebellious  temper,  and 
hopes  undimmed  for  mankind.  If  this  was  not  so, 
Burke  at  least  busied  himself  to  the  end  in  great 
interests.  His  charity  to  the  unfortunate  emigrants 
from  France  was  diligent  and  unwearied.  Among 
other  solid  services  he  established  a  school  near 
Beaconsfield  for  sixty  French  boys,  principally  the 
orphans  of  Quiberon,  and  the  children  of  other  emi- 
grants who  had  suffered  in  the  cause.  Almost  the 
last  glimpse  that  we  have  of  Burke  is  in  a  record  of  a 
visit  to  Beaconsfield  by  the  author  of  the  Vindiciae 
Gallicae.  Mackintosh  had  written  to  Burke  to  ex- 
press his  admiration  for  his  character  and  genius, 
and  recanting  his  old  defence  of  the  Revolution. 
44  Since  that  time,"  he  said,  4t  a  melancholy  experi- 
ence has  undeceived  me  on  many  subjects,  in  which 
I  was  then  the  dupe  of  my  enthusiasm."  When 
Mackintosh  went  to  Beaconsfield  (Christmas,  1796) 
he  was  as  much  amazed  as  every  one  else  with 
the  exuberance  of  his  host's  mind  in  conversation. 
Even  then  Burke  entered  with  cordial  glee  into  the 
sports  of  children,  rolling  about  with  them  on  the 
carpet,  and  pouring  out  in  his  gambols  the  sublimest 
images,  mixed  with  the  most  wretched  puns.  He 
said  of  Fox,  with  a  deep  sigh,  "  He  is  made  to  be 
loved."  There  was  the  irresistible  outbreak  against 
44  that  putrid  carcase,  that  mother  of  all  evil — the 
French  Revolution."  It  reminded  him  of  the 
accursed  things  that  crawled  in  and  out  of  the 
mouth  of  the  vile  hag  in  Spenser's  Cave  of  Error ; 
and  he  repeated  the  nauseous  stanza.  Mackintosh 
was  to  be  the  faithful  knight  of  the  romance,  the 
brightness  of  whose  sword  was  to  flash  destruction 
on  the  filthy  progeny. 

It  was  on  the  9th  of  July  1797  that,  in  the  sixty- 
eighth  year  of  his  age,  preserving  his  faculties  to 
the  last  moment,  he  expired.  With  magnanimous 
tenderness  Fox  proposed  that  he  should  be  buried 
among  the  great  dead  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  but 


DEATH  OF  BURKE  199 

Burke  had  left  strict  injunctions  that  his  funeral 
should  be  private,  and  he  was  laid  in  the  little  church 
at  Beaconsfield.  It  was  a  terrible  moment  in  the 
history  of  England  and  of  Europe.  An  open  mutiny 
had  just  been  quelled  in  the  fleet.  There  had  been 
signs  of  disaffection  in  the  army.  In  Ireland  the 
spirit  of  revolt  was  smouldering,  and  in  a  few  months 
broke  out  in  the  fierce  flames  of  a  great  rebellion. 
And  it  was  the  year  of  the  political  crime  of  Campo 
Formio,  that  sinister  pacification  in  which  violence 
and  fraud  once  more  asserted  their  unveiled  ascend- 
ancy in  Europe.  These  sombre  shadows  were  fall- 
ing over  the  western  world  when  a  life  went  out 
that,  notwithstanding  some  grave  aberrations,  had 
shed  strong  lights  on  secrets  of  human  nature  and 
social  order. 


CHAPTER  X 

BURKE'S  LITERARY  CHARACTER 

A  STORY  is  told  that  in  the  time  when  Burke  was 
still  at  peace  with  the  dissenters,  he  visited  Priestley, 
and  after  seeing  his  library  and  his  laboratory, 
and  hearing  how  his  host's  hours  were  given  to 
experiment  and  meditation,  he  exclaimed  that  such 
a  life  must  make  him  the  happiest  and  most  to  be 
envied  of  men.  It  must  sometimes  have  occurred 
to  Burke  to  wonder  whether  he  had  made  the  right 
choice  when  he  locked  away  the  fragments  of  his 
History,  and  plunged  into  the  distraction  of  party 
and  Parliament.  But  his  interests  and  aptitudes 
were  too  strong  and  overmastering  for  him  to  have 
been  right  in  doing  otherwise.  Contact  with  affairs 
was  an  indispensable  condition  for  the  full  use  of  his 
great  faculties,  in  spite  of  their  being  less  faculties 
of  affairs  than  of  speculation.  Public  life  was  the 
actual  field  in  which  to  test,  and  work  out,  and  use 
with  good  effect  the  moral  ideas  which  were  Burke's 
most  sincere  and  genuine  interests.  And  he  was 
able  to  bring  these  moral  ideas  into  such  effective 
use  because  he  was  so  entirely  unfettered  by  the 
narrowing  spirit  of  formula.  No  man,  for  instance, 
who  thought  in  formulae  would  have  written  the 
curious  passage  that  I  have  already  referred  to,  in 
which  he  eulogises  gin,  because  "  under  the  pressure 
of  the  cares  and  sorrows  of  our  mortal  condition, 
men  have  at  all  times  and  in  all  countries  called  in 
some  physical  aid  to  their  moral  consolation."  He 

200 


AS  AN  ORATOR  201 

valued  words  at  their  proper  rate,  that  is  to  say, 
he  knew  that  some  of  the  greatest  facts  in  the  life 
and  character  of  man,  and  in  the  institutions  of 
society,  can  find  no  description  and  no  measure- 
ment in  words.  Public  life,  as  we  can  easily  per- 
ceive, with  its  shibboleths,  its  exclusive  parties,  its 
measurement  by  conventional  standards,  its  atten- 
tion to  small  expediencies  before  the  larger,  is  not 
a  field  where  such  characteristics  are  likely  to  make 
an  instant  effect. 

Though  it  is  not  wrong  to  say  of  Burke  that  as 
an  orator  he  was  transcendent,  yet  in  that  im- 
mediate influence  upon  his  hearers  which  is  com- 
monly supposed  to  be  the  mark  of  oratorical  success, 
all  the  evidence  is  that  Burke  generally  failed.  We 
have  seen  how  his  speech  against  Hastings  affected 
Miss  Burney,  and  how  the  speech  on  the  Nabob  of 
Arcot's  debts  was  judged  by  Pitt  not  to  be  worth 
answering.  Perhaps  the  greatest  that  he  ever  made 
was  that  on  conciliation  with  America ;  the  wisest 
in  its  temper,  the  most  closely  logical  in  its  reasoning, 
the  amplest  in  appropriate  topics,  the  most  generous 
and  conciliatory  in  the  substance  of  its  appeals. 
Yet  Erskine,  who  was  in  the  House  when  this  was 
delivered,  said  that  it  drove  everybody  away, 
including  people  who,  when  they  came  to  read  it, 
read  it  over  and  over  again,  and  could  hardly  think 
of  anything  else.  As  Moore  says  rather  too  floridly, 
but  with  truth — "  In  vain  did  Burke's  genius  put 
forth  its  superb  plumage,  glittering  all  over  with  the 
hundred  eyes  of  fancy — the  gait  of  the  bird  was 
heavy  and  awkward,  and  its  voice  seemed  rather 
to  scare  than  attract."  Burke's  gestures  were 
clumsy  ;  he  had  sonorous  but  harsh  tones  ;  he  never 
lost  a  strong  Irish  accent ;  and  his  utterance  was 
often  hurried  and  eager.  Apart  from  these  dis- 
advantages of  accident  which  have  been  overcome 
by  men  infinitely  inferior  to  Burke,  it  is  easy  to 
perceive,  from  the  matter  and  texture  of  the  speeches 


202  BURKE  CHAP. 

that  have  become  English  classics,  that  the  very 
qualities  which  are  excellences  in  literature  were 
drawbacks  to  the  spoken  discourses.  A  listener 
in  Westminster  Hall  or  the  House  of  Commons, 
unlike  the  reader  by  his  fireside  in  another  century, 
is  always  thinking  of  arguments  and  facts  that  bear 
directly  on  the  special  issue  before  him.  What  he 
wishes  to  hear  is  some  particularity  of  event  or 
inference  which  will  either  help  him  to  make  up  his 
mind,  or  justify  him  if  his  mind  is  already  made 
up.  Burke  never  neglected  these  particularities, 
and  he  never  went  so  wide  as  to  fall  for  an  instant 
into  vagueness,  but  he  went  wide  enough  into  the 
generalities  that  lent  force  and  light  to  his  view, 
to  weary  men  who  cared  for  nothing,  and  could  not 
be  expected  to  care  for  anything,  but  the  business 
actually  in  hand  and  the  most  expeditious  way 
through  it.  The  contentiousness  is  not  close  enough 
and  rapid  enough  to  hold  the  interest  of  a  practical 
assembly,  which,  though  it  was  a  hundred  times  less 
busy  than  the  House  of  Commons  to-day,  seems  to 
have  been  eager  in  the  inverse  proportion  of  what  it 
had  to  do,  to  get  that  little  quickly  done. 

Then  we  may  doubt  whether  there  is  any 
instance  of  an  orator  throwing  his  spell  over  a 
large  audience,  without  frequent  resort  to  the 
higher  forms  of  commonplace.  Two  of  the  greatest 
speeches  of  Burke's  time  are  supposed  to  have 
been  Grattan's  on  Tithes  and  Fox's  on  the  West- 
minster Scrutiny,  and  these  were  evidently  full 
of  the  splendid  commonplaces  of  the  first-rate 
rhetorician.  Burke's  mind  was  not  readily  set  to 
these  tunes.  The  emotion  to  which  he  commonly 
appealed  was  that  too  rare  one,  the  love  of  wisdom  ; 
and  he  combined  his  thoughts  and  knowledge  in 
propositions  of  wisdom  so  weighty  and  strong,  that 
the  minds  of  ordinary  hearers  were  not  on  the 
instant  prepared  for  them. 

It  is  true  that  Burke's  speeches  were  not  without 


AS  A  WRITER  203 

effect  of  an  indirect  kind,  for  there  is  good  evidence 
that  at  the  time  when  Lord  North's  ministry  was 
tottering,  Burke  had  risen  to  a  position  of  the  first 
eminence  in  Parliament.  When  Boswell  said  to 
him  that  people  would  wonder  how  he  could  bring 
himself  to  take  so  much  pains  with  his  speeches, 
knowing  with  certainty  that  not  one  vote  would 
be  gained  by  them,  Burke  answered  that  it  is  very 
well  worth  while  to  take  pains  to  speak  well  in 
Parliament ;  for  if  a  man  speaks  well,  he  gradually 
establishes  a  certain  reputation  and  consequence 
in  the  general  opinion ;  and  though  an  Act  that 
has  been  ably  opposed  becomes  law,  yet  in  its 
progress  it  is  softened  and  modified  to  meet  objec- 
tions whose  force  has  never  been  acknowledged 
directly.  "  Aye,  sir,"  Johnson  broke  in,  "  and 
there  is  a  gratification  of  pride.  Though  we  cannot 
out-vote  them,  we  will  out-argue  them." 

Out-arguing  is  not  perhaps  the  right  word  for 
most  of  Burke's  performances.  He  is  at  heart 
thinking  more  of  the  subject  itself  than  of  those 
on  whom  it  was  his  apparent  business  to  impress 
a  particular  view  of  it.  He  surrenders  himself 
wholly  to  the  matter,  and  follows  up,  though  with 
a  strong  and  close  tread,  all  the  excursions  to 
which  it  may  give  rise  in  an  elastic  intelligence 
— "  motion,"  as  De  Quincey  says,  "  propagating 
motion,  and  life  throwing  off  life."  But  then  this 
exuberant  way  of  thinking,  this  willingness  to  let 
the  subject  lead,  is  less  apt  in  public  discourse  than 
it  is  in  literature,  and  from  this  comes  the  literary 
quality  of  Burke's  speeches. 

With  all  his  hatred  for  the  bookman  in  politics, 
Burke  owed  much  of  his  own  distinction  to  that 
generous  richness  and  breadth  of  judgment  which 
had  been  ripened  in  him  by  literature  and  his 
practice  in  it.  Like  some  other  men  in  our  his- 
tory, he  showed  that  books  are  a  better  prepara- 
tion for  statesmanship  than  early  training  in  the 


204  BURKE  CHAP. 

subordinate  posts  and  among  the  permanent  officials 
of  a  public  department.  There  is  no  copiousness 
of  literary  reference  in  his  works,  such  as  over- 
abounded  in  civil  and  ecclesiastical  publicists  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  Nor  can  we  truly  say 
that  there  is  much,  though  there  is  certainly  some, 
of  that  tact  which  literature  is  alleged  to  confer  on 
those  who  approach  it  in  a  just  spirit  and  with  the 
true  gift.  The  influence  of  literature  on  Burke  lay 
partly  in  the  direction  of  emancipation  from  the 
mechanical  formulae  of  practical  politics ;  partly 
in  the  association  which  it  engendered,  in  a  power- 
ful understanding  like  his,  between  politics  and  the 
moral  forces  of  the  world,  and  between  political 
maxims  and  the  old  and  great  sentences  of  morals  ; 
partly  in  drawing  him,  even  when  resting  his  case 
on  prudence  and  expediency,  to  appeal  to  the 
widest  and  highest  sympathies ;  partly,  and  more 
than  all,  in  opening  his  thoughts  to  the  many 
conditions,  possibilities,  and  "  varieties  of  untried 
being  "  in  human  character  and  situation,  and  so 
giving  an  incomparable  flexibility  to  his  methods 
of  political  approach. 

This  flexibility  is  not  to  be  found  in  his  manner 
and  composition.  That  derives  its  immense  power 
from  other  sources ;  from  passion,  intensity,  im- 
agination, size,  truth,  cogency  of  logical  reason. 
If  any  one  has  imbued  himself  with  that  exacting 
love  of  delicacy,  measure,  and  taste  in  expression, 
which  was  until  our  own  day  a  sacred  tradition  of 
the  French,  then  he  will  not  like  Burke.  Those 
who  insist  on  charm,  on  winningness  in  style,  on 
subtle  harmonies  and  exquisite  suggestion,  are 
disappointed  in  Burke ;  they  even  find  him  stiff 
and  over-coloured.  And  there  are  blemishes  of 
this  kind.  His  banter  is  nearly  always  ungainly, 
his  wit  blunt,  as  Johnson  said  of  it,  and  very  often 
unseasonable.  We  feel  that  Johnson  must  have 
been  right  in  declaring  that  though  Burke  was 


HIS  STYLE  205 

always  in  search  of  pleasantries,  he  never  made  a 
good  joke  in  his  life.  As  is  usual  with  a  man  who 
has  not  true  humour,  Burke  is  also  without  true 
pathos.  The  thought  of  wrong  or  misery  moved 
him  less  to  pity  for  the  victim  than  to  anger  against 
the  cause.  Then,  there  are  some  gratuitous  and 
unredeemed  vulgarities  ;  some  images  whose  bar- 
barity makes  us  shudder,  of  creeping  ascarides 
and  inexpugnable  tapeworms.  But  it  is  the  mere 
foppery  of  literature  to  suffer  ourselves  to  be  long 
detained  by  specks  like  these. 

The  varieties  of  Burke's  literary  or  rhetorical 
method  are  very  striking.  It  is  almost  incredible 
that  the  superb  imaginative  amplification  of  the 
description  of  Hyder  Ali's  descent  upon  the  Car- 
natic  should  be  from  the  same  pen  as  the  grave, 
simple,  unadorned  Address  to  the  King  (1777), 
where  each  sentence  falls  on  the  ear  with  the 
accent  of  some  golden-tongued  oracle  of  the  wise 
gods.  His  stride  is  the  stride  of  a  giant,  from  the 
sentimental  beauty  of  the  picture  of  Marie  Antoi- 
nette at  Versailles,  or  the  red  horror  of  the  tale 
of  Debi  Sing  in  Rungpore,  to  the  learning,  positive- 
ness,  and  cool  judicial  mastery  of  the  Report  on 
the  Lords'  Journals  (1794),1  which  Philip  Francis, 
no  mean  judge,  declared  on  the  whole  to  be  the 
"  most  eminent  and  extraordinary "  of  all  his 
productions.  Even  in  the  coolest  and  driest  of 
his  pieces,  there  is  the  mark  of  greatness,  of  grasp, 
of  comprehension.  In  all  its  varieties  Burke's 
style  is  noble,  earnest,  deep-flowing,  because  his 
sentiment  was  lofty  and  fervid,  and  went  with 
sincerity  and  ardent  disciplined  travail  of  judg- 
ment. Fox  told  Francis  Horner  that  Dryden's 
prose  was  Burke's  great  favourite,  and  that  Burke 
imitated  him  more  than  any  one  else.  We  may 
well  believe  that  he  was  attracted  by  Dryden's 
ease,  his  copiousness,  his  gaiety,  his  manliness  of 

1  Works,  xi.  1-152. 


206  BURKE  CHAP. 

style,  but  there  can  hardly  have  been  any  con- 
scious attempt  at  imitation.  Their  topics  were 
too  different.  Burke  had  the  style  of  his  subjects, 
the  amplitude,  the  weightiness,  the  laboriousness, 
the  sense,  the  high  flight,  the  grandeur,  proper  to 
a  man  dealing  with  imperial  themes,  the  freedom 
of  nations,  the  justice  of  rulers,  the  fortunes  of 
great  societies,  the  sacredness  of  law.  Burke  will 
always  be  read  with  delight  and  edification,  because 
in  the  midst  of  discussions  on  the  local  and  the 
accidental,  he  scatters  apophthegms  that  take  us 
into  the  regions  of  lasting  wisdom.  In  the  midst  of 
the  torrent  of  his  most  strenuous  and  passionate 
deliverances,  he  suddenly  rises  aloof  from  his  im- 
mediate subject,  and  in  all  tranquillity  reminds  us 
of  some  permanent  relation  of  things,  some  enduring 
truth  of  human  life  or  society.  We  do  not  hear 
the  organ  tones  of  Milton,  for  faith  and  freedom 
had  other  notes  in  the  seventeenth  century.  There 
is  none  of  the  complacent  and  wise-browed  sagacity 
of  Bacon,  for  Burke's  were  days  of  eager  personal 
strife  and  party  fire  and  civil  division.  We  are 
not  exhilarated  by  the  cheerfulness,  the  polish,  the 
fine  manners  of  Bolingbroke,  for  Burke  had  an 
anxious  conscience,  and  was  earnest  and  intent 
that  the  good  should  triumph.  And  yet  Burke 
is  among  the  greatest  of  those  who  have  wrought 
marvels  in  the  prose  of  our  English  tongue. 

The  influence  of  Burke  on  the  publicists  of  the 
generation  after  the  Revolution  was  much  less 
considerable  than  might  have  been  expected.  In 
Germany,  where  there  has  been  so  much  excellent 
writing  about  Staatswissenschaft,  with  such  poverty 
and  darkness  in  the  wisdom  of  practical  politics, 
there  is  a  long  list  of  writers  who  have  drawn  their 
inspiration  from  Burke.  In  France,  publicists  of 
the  sentimental  school,  like  Chateaubriand,  and 
the  politico-ecclesiastical  school,  like  De  Maistre, 
fashioned  a  track  of  their  own.  In  England,  Burke 


HIS  INFLUENCE  207 

made  a  deep  mark  on  contemporary  opinion  during 
the  last  years  of  his  life,  and  then  his  influence 
underwent  a  certain  eclipse.  The  official  Whigs 
considered  him  a  renegade  and  a  heresiarch,  who 
had  committed  the  deadly  sin  of  breaking  up  the 
party ;  and  they  never  mentioned  his  name  with- 
out bitterness.  To  men  like  Godwin,  the  author  of 
Political  Justice,  Burke  was  as  Antichrist.  Bentham 
and  James  Mill  thought  of  him  as  a  declaimer  who 
lived  upon  applause,  and  who,  as  one  of  them  says, 
was  for  protecting  everything  old,  not  because  it 
was  good  but  because  it  existed.  In  one  quarter 
only  did  he  exert  a  profound  influence.  His  maxim 
that  men  might  employ  their  sagacity  in  discover- 
ing the  latent  wisdom  that  underlies  general  pre- 
judices and  old  institutions,  instead  of  exploding 
them,  inspired  Coleridge,  as  I  have  already  said  ; 
and  the  Coleridgian  school  are  Burke's  direct 
descendants,  whenever  they  deal  with  the  signific- 
ance and  the  relations  of  Church  and  State.  But 
they  connected  these  views  so  closely  with  their 
views  in  metaphysics  and  theology,  that  the  asso- 
ciation with  Burke  was  effectually  disguised. 

The  only  English  writer  of  that  age  whom  we 
can  name  along  with  Burke  in  the  literature  of 
enduring  power,  is  Wordsworth,  that  deep-glowing 
representative  in  another  field,  and  with  many 
rare  elements  added  that  were  all  his  own,  of 
those  harmonising  and  conciliatory  forces  that 
make  man's  destiny  easier  to  him,  through  rever- 
ence for  the  past,  for  duty,  for  institutions.  He 
was  born  in  the  year  of  the  Present  Discontents 
(1770),  and  when  Burke  wrote  the  Reflections, 
Wordsworth  was  standing,  with  France  "  on  the 
top  of  golden  hours,"  listening  with  delight  among 
the  ruins  of  the  Bastille,  or  on  the  banks  of  the 
Loire,  to  "  the  homeless  sound  of  joy  that  was 
in  the  sky."  When  France  lost  faith  and  freedom, 
and  Napoleon  had  built  his  throne  on  their  grave, 


208  BURKE  CHAP.  * 

he  began  to  see  those  strong  elements  which  for 
Burke  had  all  his  life  been  the  true  and  fast  founda- 
tion of  the  social  world.  Wide  as  is  the  difference 
between  an  oratorical  and  declamatory  mind  like 
Burke's,  and  the  least  oratorical  of  all  poets,  yet 
under  this  difference  of  form  and  temper  there  is 
striking  likeness  in  spirit.  There  was  the  same 
energetic  feeling  about  moral  thought  and  feeling, 
the  same  frame  of  counsel  and  prudence,  the  same 
love  for  the  slowness  of  time,  the  same  slight 
account  held  of  mere  intellectual  knowledge,  and 
even  the  same  ruling  sympathy  with  that  side  of 
the  character  of  Englishmen  which  Burke  exulted 
in,  as  "  their  sullen  resistance  of  innovation." 


INDEX 


Addison,  18 

America,  Account  of  the  European 

Settlements  in,  19 

American  taxation,  speech  on,  8,  77 
American  War  of  Independence,  57- 

58,  74-82  ;  attitude  of  the  nation, 

75  ;    Burke's   pamphlets,  77-82  ; 

great  argument  of  the  war  party, 

79 

Annual  Register,  19,  27,  34 
Assembly,  Letter  to  a  Member  of  the 

National,  178-179 

Ballitore,  4,  5,  6 

BarrS,  93 

Barri,  Madame  du,  66 

Barry,  30,  109 

Battersea,  10 

Beaconsfield,  30, 31, 33, 68, 104, 115, 
199 

Beaconsfield,  Lord,  191 

Bedford,  Duke  of,  35,  36,  45,  193 

Beggar's  Opera,  The  (Gay),  106,  113 

Bolingbroke,  Lord,  12-14,  47,  50,  51 

Bristol,  70-73,  74,  91 

Bristol,  Letter  to  the  Sheriffs  of,  77, 
161 

Brocklesby,  Dr.,  110,  111 

Brunswick,  Duke  of,  184 

Burgoyne,  General,  83,  84 

Burke,  Edmund — birth,-  3-4  ;  father 
and  mother,  4,  8 ;  schooldays, 
4-5  ;  career  at  Dublin  University, 
5-7  ;  friendship  with  R.  Shackle- 
ton,  6,  33,  116-117;  at  Middle 
Temple,  8  ;  nine  obscure  years, 
8  ;  first  steps  in  literature,  9  ; 
unfounded  rumours,  11  ;  mar- 
riage, 11-12  ;  his  first  book,  the 
Vindication,  12-17,  20  ;  Essay  on 
the  Sublime  and  Beautiful,  12,  17- 
18  ;  goes  to  Ireland  with  Hamil- 
ton, 20-21  ;  receives  a  pension 
from  Irish  treasury,  25  ;  and  re- 
signs it,  26 ;  becomes  private 
secretary  to  Lord  Rockingham, 


27-28  ;  becomes  member  for 
Wendover,  28,  69 ;  purchases 
Beaconsfield,  30-31  ;  the  mystery 
of  his  means,  30-34  ;  never  free 
from  debt,  34  ;  pamphlet  on  the\ 
Present  Discontents,  45-58  ;  cred-  • 
ited  with  the  letters  of  Junius, 
45-46,  59-60  ;  defence  of  party 
system,  50-52  ;  proposed  reme- 
dies, 52-56 ;  love  of  the  con- 
stitution, 56-57,  163,  175  ;  asked 
to  go  out  to  India,  60  ;  acts  as 
whip  to  Rockingham  party,  61- 
62  ;  pays  a  visit  to  Paris,  63-67  ; 
leaves  Wendover,  69  ;  is  elected 
for  Bristol,  70-72  ;  his  view  of  a 
member's  duty  to  his  constituent 
71-72;  American  War,  74-82; 
Burke's  speeches  and  writings 
on  it,  76-78  ;  economical  reform, 
84-91  ;  Burke's  object,  85-86 ; 
speech  on  economical  reform,  89- 
90  ;  loses  his  seat  at  Bristol,  91  ; 
his  exclusion  from  high  office,  and 
its  reasons,  92,  96-97,  132,  134- 
136 ;  becomes  Paymaster  in 
Rockingham  Ministry,  91  ;  joins 
the  Coalition,  96 ;  speech  on 
Fox's  India  Bill,  99  ;  fall  of  the 
Whigs,  100  ;  Burke's  friends  : 
Barry,  30,  109  ;  Garrick,  20,  34, 
101,  102  ;  Reynolds,  102-103  ; 
Johnson,  103-106  ;  Dowdeswell, 
106,  107 ;  Crabbe,  107-108  ; 
Emin,  109  ;  Arthur  Young,  115  ; 
relations  to  women,  111  ;  friend- 
ship for  Fox,  113-114  ;  impeach- 
ment of  Warren  Hastings,  122- 
130  ;  the  Regency  Bill,  131-132  ; 
violence  in  the  debates,  135  ;  Re- 
flections on  the  French  Revolution, 
see  French  Revolution  ;  opposes 
Fox,  144  ;  rupture  with  Fox,  173- 
176 ;  resentment  of  his  party, 
176-177 ;  mission  to  Calonne, 
177 ;  advocates  interference  in 


209 


210 


BURKE 


French  affairs,  178 ;  his  final 
policy,  180-181  ;  execution  of 
Louis,  184 ;  the  dagger  scene, 
185-186 ;  intervention  in  Irish 
affairs,  189-101  ;  leaves  Parlia- 
ment, 101  ;  his  son's  death,  101- 
102  ;  accepts  a  pension,  102-108  ; 
Letters  on  a  Regicide  Peace,  198- 
107  ;  Burke's  inconsistency,  106  ; 
decline  and  death,  107-108 

True  title  to  lasting  fame,  1-8  ; 
conservatism,  50, 142, 161  ;  sensi- 
bility, 124-127,  154-156;  as  an 
orator,  201-208  ;  as  a  writer,  203- 
206  ;  style,  204-206  ;  literary  in- 
fluence, 206-208 

Burke,  Garret,  4,  33 

Burke,  Mrs.  (mother),  4,  8 

Burke,  Mrs.  (wife),  11,  133 

Burke,    Richard    (brother),    4,   81, 
01 

Burke,  Richard  (son),  63,  64,  02, 
136,  177,  100,  101 

Burke,  William,  27,  28,  81,  32,  35, 
136 

Burney,  Fanny,  111,  112,  181,  201 

Bute,  Lord,  26 

Calonne,  177 

Camden,  Lord,  40 

Canada  Bill,  the,  174 

Carter,  Mrs.,  Ill 

Catholic  Emancipation,  73 

Cavendish,  Lord  John,  61 

Chatham,  Earl  of,  29,  55 

Clerical  Petition,  the,  161 

Clive,  120 

Coalition,  the,  06-100,  111 

Coleridge,  S.  T.,  130,  140,  161,  167, 

207 

Constitutional  Society,  the,  53,  55 
Crabbe,  107-108 
Crosby,  Lord  Mayor,  41 
Curwen,  Mr.,  176 

De  Maistre,  Joseph,  159-160,  206 
Dictionary,  Johnson's,  9 
Diderot,  65,  101,  105 
Dissenters,  Bill  for  relief  of,  67 
Dodsley,  18,  27,  31,  34 
Dowdeswell,  William,  106,  107 
Drama,  Hints  for  an  Essay  on  the, 

10 

Dryden,  205 
Du  Deffand,  Madame,  64,  66 

East  India  Company,  60,  07-100 
Economic  reform,  84-01  ;    Burke's 
object,  85  ;   the  royal  household, 


86-87  ;    administration  of  Crown 

estates,  88  ;   office  of  Paymaster, 

80  ;  speech  on,  89 
Elliot,  Sir  Gilbert,  131,  132,   134, 

172 
Emin,  Joseph,  100 

Fitzherbert,  William,  27 
Fitzwilliam,  Lord,  05,  136 
Flood,  7,  173 

Fox,  Charles,   78,  04,  96,   97,   99, 
100,  112,  113,  120,  131,  182,  134, 
137,  144,  145,  172-176,  202 
Francis,  Sir  Philip,  32,  154 
Franklin,  43 

French  Affairs,  Thoughts  on,  180 
French  Assembly,  the,  157-158 
French  emigrants,  177,  198 
French  king,  death  of  the,  184 
French  Revolution,  Reflections  on  the, 
78  ;    Burke's  early  distrust,  140  ; 
his  conservatism,   141-143,  161  ; 
his  point  of  view,  143  ;   origin  of 
the  Reflections,  143  ;    not  an  im- 
provisation,  146 ;    effects   of   its 
publication,    146-148 ;     date    at 
which  it  was  written,  148-149  ; 
instances    of    Burke's    foresight, 
150-152  ;  the  social  question,  153- 
157 ;     Burke's    sensibility,    154- 
156  ;    his  insufficient  knowledge, 
156-157,  161  ;    his  political  mys- 
ticism, 158-162  ;  his  method,  162- 
164  ;    why  the  book  lives,  164- 

166  ;  philosophical  reaction,  166- 

167  ;  Burke  compared  with  Sir  T. 
More,  168  ;  and  with  Turgot,  169- 
170  ;  his  misgivings,  170 

Friends  of  the  People,  163 

Garrick,  David,  20,  34,  101,  102 
George  III.,  43,  48,  58,  74,  100,  113, 

118,  131 

Gibbon, 102,  112 
Godwin,  13,  207 
Goldsmith,  7,  16,  101 
Grafton,  Duke  of,  46,  59 
Grattan,  173,  202 
Gregories,  30-31 

Grenville,  George,  8,  27,  30,  114 
Guibert,  M.  de,  65 

Halifax,  Lord,  21 

Hamilton,  W.  Gerard,  20,  25-26, 
118 

Hastings,  Warren,  32, 122-130  ;  im- 
peachment, 127-128 ;  acquittal, 
128  ;  effects  of  impeachment,  129, 
130 


INDEX 


211 


History  of  England,  Abridgment  of 

the,  19 

Holbach,  105 
Holland,  Lord,  89 
Hume,  11,  16,  64,  101 

India  Bill,  Fox's,  97-100,  122 
Ireland,  Burke  in,  20,  21,  24-26 
Ireland,   state  of,  in   1760,  20-35, 
118-121,  189-191 

Johnson,  Dr.,  9,  12,  13,  16,  27,  29, 

45,  68,  103-106,  203,  204 
Junius,  letters  of,  45-46,  59-60 

Langrishe,   Letter   to   Sir  Hercules, 

190 

Langton,  Bennet,  29,  106 
Lespinasse,  Mdlle.,  64,  65 
Lessing,  17,  18,  19 
Literary  Club,  the,  101,  111 
Locke,  165 

Lord  George  Gordon  Riots,  83 
Luttrell,  Colonel,  40 

Mackintosh,  156,  198 

Malton,  70 

Mansfield,  Lord,  39,  57 

Marie  Antoinette,  66,  154-155,  165, 

183,  205 
Middlesex  election,  the,  88-41,  42, 

54,59 

Mirabeau,  114,  148 
Montesquieu,  47,  48 
Moore,  135,  201 
More,  Hannah,  106,  111 
More,  Sir  Thomas,  168 

Nabob  of  Arcot,  123,  201 

Nagle  family,  the,  4 

Newcastle,  Duke  of,  26,  27 

Noble  Lord,  Letter  to  a,  92,  93,  193 

North  Briton,  No.  45,  39 

North,  Lord,  54,  59,  74,  83,  91,  96, 

160,203 

Nugent,  Dr.,  11,  19 
Nugent,  Lord,  119 

Oliver,  Alderman,  41 

Paine,  Thomas,  156 

"  Parliament,  the  Unreported,"  39- 

42 

Patriot  King  (Bolingbroke),  47 
Paymaster,  office  of,  89,  91,  93,  97, 

133 
Pitt,  26,  96,  118,  119-122,  173,  185, 

186,  187,  189,  192 


Portland,  Duke  of,  96,  134,  137 

Powell  and  Bembridge,  case  of, 
97 

Present  Discontents,  pamphlet  on, 
45-58 ;  breadth  and  power  of 
Burke's  method,  48-49  ;  defence 
of  party  government,  50-52 ; 
Burke's  remedies,  52-56  ;  his  love 
for  the  constitution,  56-57,  163, 
175 

Present  State  of  the  Nation,  30 

Price,  Dr.,  143,  165, 193 

Priestley,  94,  96,  193,  200 

Regency  Bill,  Pitt's,  132 

Regicide  Peace,  Letters  on  a,  189, 

193-197 

Revolution  of  1688,  21-22 
Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  102-103 
Richmond,  Duke  of,  38,  52,  60,  61, 

62,94 

Rigby,  35,  83 
Robertson,  Dr.,  102 
Robespierre,  149,  178 
Rockingham  Cabinet,  the,  28,  54, 

61-63,  91-93 
Rockingham,  Marquis  of,  27,  28,  29, 

33,  34,  55,  61,  62,  69,  70,  93 
Rousseau,  15,  65,  192 
Russian  armament,  the,  173 

Scarcity,  Thoughts  and  Details  on, 

197 

Shackleton,  Abraham,  4 
Shackleton,    Richard,    6,    33,    116- 

117 

Shelburne,  Lord,  93-96 
Sheridan,  94,  112,  113,  131,  172 
Slave-trade,  Burke  and  the,  124 
Smith,  Adam,  11,  47,  197 
Stewart,  Dugald,  17,  197 
Stone,  Archbishop,  22,  25 
Sublime  and  Beautiful,  Inquiry  into 

the,  12,  17-18 
Swift,  Dean,  7,  46,  47 

Talbot,  Lord,  86 

Thurlow,  Lord  Chancellor,  108 

Tone,  Wolfe,  190 

Tooke,  Home,  182,  194 

Townshend,  Charles,  60 

Trinity  College,  Dublin,  Burke  at, 

5-7 

Turgot,  169-170 
"  Turk's  Head,"  the,  105,  111 

United  Irishmen,  189 


212 


BURKE 


Verney,  Lord,  28,  31,  82,  69 

Vesey,  Mrs.,  Ill 

Vindication  of  Natural  Society,  12- 

17,20 
Voltaire,  65 

Wales,  Prince  of,  118,  174,  195 
Waller,  Edmund,  88,  116 
Walpole,  Horace,  20,  87,  66,  75,  96 
Wendover,  28,  69 
Weymouth,  Lord,  43 
Whig  Junto,  the,  52 


Whigs,  Appeal  from  the  New  to  the 

Old,  177-178,  182 
Whigs,  fall  of  the,  100 
Whiteboyism,  22,  24 
Wilberforce,  114,  115,  124,  175 
Wilkes,  John,  39-43,  52,  54,  69 
Windham,  W.,  132,  134,  135,  137, 

174,  175,  177,  187-189 
Wofflngton,  Peg,  11 
Wordsworth,  140,  207-208 

Young,  Arthur,  33,  115,  156-157 


THE   END 


Printed  by  R.  &  R.^CLARK.  LIMITED,  Edinburgh. 


THE  EDITION DE  LUXE  OF  THE  WORKS 
OF  LORD  MORLEY  CONSISTS  OF  FIVE 
HUNDRED  COPIES  FOR  ENGLAND  AND 
TWO  HUNDRED  AND  FIFTY  FOR  AMERICA, 
PRINTED   BY    R.   &   R.   CLARK,   EDINBURGH, 
AND  PUBLISHED  BY  MACMILLAN  AND  COM- 
PANY, LIMITED,  LONDON.     THE  CONTENTS 
OF    THIS    EDITION     ARE     PROTECTED     BY 
COPYRIGHT. 


Morley,  John  Morley,  viscount 

Works 
v.  14 


PLEASE  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
CARDS  OR  SUPS  FROM  THIS  POCKET 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  LIBRARY