cP^ Uu MEMOIR OF THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. rRIN'lED BY JOHN STARK, EDIVBUKGH. MEMOIR OF THE POLITICAL LIFE OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EDMUND BURKE WITH EXTRACTS FROM HIS WRITINGS. " Durkc, the greatest of political philosophers." Sir J. Mackintosh. BY GEORCIE CROLY, LL.D. KECTOIl OF ST STEPHEN'S, WALBUOOK, LONDON. v(jj,i;mk riKST. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD cl SONS, LDINBUlKill; AND THOMAS CADELL, LONDON. M.DCCC.XL. fTTlTERT'lAYEFn mi\i: CAfJFORNIA bAMA JIA1{BA1U PREFACE. So:me years ago, when the feelings of the people were strongly disturbed by theories' of j)olitical change, a considerable number of works were issued from the press, with the object of allaying the })ublic excitement. Among the rest the following pages appeared. It was thought, that, in a period singularly resemblingthat which immediately preceded the French Revolution of 17H<), there might be some advantage in lay- ing before the public, in a more succinct and ac- cessible form than in his volumes, the opinions of that extraordinary and powerful mind, which had acted so large a part in saving England and her monarchy from the errors of the French throne, and the crimes of the llej)ublic. VI PREFACE. The rank of Burke, as a writer of consuin- iiiate eloquence, liad been decided from the be- ginning of his career ; the progress of the Re- vohition placed him in equal eminence as a Statesman ; and every year since has added to his renown as a propliet. While the works of this admirable mind are left to us, the country is in possession of a storehouse of political wisdom, from which she cannot supply herself too large- ly, or too often ; she has a great Oracle, to whose responses she cannot trust with a too so- lemn reliance ; for the peculiar and pre-emi- nent character of Burke's genius was its love of reality. With the most palpable powers for reaching the loftiest heights of speculation, he is the least abstract of all speculators. With the poetic fancy which so strongly tempts its possessor to spurn the ground, " Among the colours of the rainljow live. And play in the jjlighted clouds," and with an opulence of language that, like the tissues thrown on the road of an oriental prince, covered the wild and the thorny before him PREFACE. Vll with richness and beauty, he never suffers him- self to forget the value of f /tings. The applica- tion of reason to the purposes of life ; the study of the sources of moral strength ; the inquiry into that true " wealth of nations," which makes men safer from the shocks of society, are his per- petual object. — He pours his river through the moral landscape, not to astonish by its rapi- dity and volume, or delight by its picturesque windings, but to carry fertility on its surface, and gold in its sands. The papers which form the present publica- tion originally appeared in Blackwood's Maga- zine, a work which, by the constitutional truth and manliness of its principles, had acquired extensive credit witli a i)eople, who love fair- dealing and fearlessness like their own. The republicanism whicli tliey tlien offered their contribution to oppose, has since broken out, with still more formidable menace to the State. Tlie boldest pretext of overthrow had hitherto never gone beyond the " imj)rovemc'nt of the Constitution." JJut, we now hear a demand for Vm PREFACE. a new fabric. What was once Reform, is now Revolution ; Monarchy, once admitted by all parties to be the natural Government of the State, is now pronounced a prejudice, and the popular aspiration is Democracy. And this new terror is no dream of the study ; no thin shape of mysticism floating before the eyes of visionaries ; Ribandism and Chartism are its substantial forms. However widely differing in their origin, their determination is the same. Travelling by different routes, they march to the same point ; and whether hatred of the Church leads them to subvert the Throne, or hatred of the Throne, to subvert the Church, neither will have achieved its object, until both meet on the ruins of the Constitution. That the property and intelligence of the Empire, M'hen once roused, will resist courageously, and if roused early enough will resist trium- phantly, is beyond question. Rut it will be too late, when the twin conspiracies shall have be- come one, and when the people of England shall see some new and monstrous shape of govern- PltEFACE. IX meiit deinaiiding their submission ; some huge, crude, and presumptuous Babel of Society, at once threatening Earth, and insulting Heaven ; some new " City and Tower" of infidel build- ing ; where the Democratic Principle, known only by its evil attributes ; like an Indian Idol, with its hundred hands grasping only swords and serpents ; shall sit to be worshipped with tlie horrid and sanguinary rites of supersti- tion, or the still more horrid impurities of po- pular passion, let loose to riot witliout fear of God or man. That the nation may yet emerge from those trials ; we may be justified in believing, for she liad emerged before. But it is equally evident, that if she does, it must be by the same vigour, and virtue, whicli then ensured Iter safety. When Ikirke wrote his immortal " Reflections on the French Revolution," there were thousands in England as full of frenzy, as ever were the wearers of crowns of straw. Every public sense was in a state of illusion, France was the great X PREFACE. temptress, and to the multitude, her naked an- tics were dignity, her blasphemies the language of nature, and her unspeakable bloodshed the in- evitable price of freedom. A crowd of writers, some of remarkable popular ability, and all of popular fame, laboured to increase and envenom the national frenzy, some by dazzling the people with projects of confiscation, others, by exciting their jealousy of rank, and others, by alluring the uneducated pride of the mind, and playing before it theories of unlimited progress, and bril- liant perfectibility. Those arts had nearly suc- ceeded ; the soberness and sincerity of the na- tional spirit were universally silenced for the time ; the haughty effrontery and contemptu- ous scoffing of the new school of freedom and j)hilosophy, bore down all idea of resistance; and the purer understanding of England seemed spell-bound, like Milton's noble Lady ; " In stony fetters fixt and motionless," while the shapes of this revolutionary revel were triumphing and glittering before her. But, PREFACE. XI a more powerful presence was to come, and re- buke them ; a genius of a loftier rank, and bor- rowing its strength from sources above the cup of the enchanter, burst in, broke his wand, and turning the revellers into their true shapes of grossness and vice, freed the captive of the spell. This was the achievement of Burke, and none was ever more effective, or more essential to the peace of an emj)ire. It is in no affectation of public danger, that those who wish well to their country, now call on it, to prepare. The whole course of public mea- sures, for the last seven years, has been repub- lican. The changes of public men within that j)eriod have scarcely affected this strong ten- dency of tilings. If the feeble have given way, and tlie corrupt have only made the course more headlong ; the firmest helmsmen of the State have felt the current too strong for them, to re- turn. Whether yielding, or resisting, every liour has brought us nearer the verge of that miglity cataract, of which we ah'eady hear the roar. XU PREFACE. The Extracts from Burke's published works are made in an order ilkistrative of his personal feelings, his public career, and the national exi- gencies of his time. They are accompanied with notices of the events of his private life, chiefly from his Biography by Mr Prior ; and with remarks connected \v'ith the circumstances of the anxious period in which we live ; the whole forming an anti-revolutionary Manual of the wisdom of the wisest of men. CONTENTS or VOLUME FIRST. CHAPTER I. Value of Biography — Birth of Burke — Early Scenery — Eduration — Fondness for Milton — Destined to the Bar — Arrival in Lon- don — Proposes to go to America — Attacks Bolingbroke — John- son's praise of Burke — Earl of Charlemont — Connexion with Single- Speech Hamilton, . . . _ Page 1 CHAPTER H. Burke appointed Private Secretary tit to manly and well-directed exertion in those noble Institutions, unless he is prepared to begin & LIFE OF BURKE. life anew -when he has passed their walls ; to turn that career into a lottery which might have heen a cer- tainty ; and to encounter that long period of toil and defeated hope, which must intervene before he can break through the barriers of professional success, and pioneer his way through the rugged ascents and deso- late bleaknesses that lie before even the most gifted and gallant adventurer. Some slight records of Burke's literary predilec- tions, at this period, remain. Shakspeare, Addison, Le Sage, Smollett, and Fielding, were his frequent perusal, as they were that of every man of his time. He praised Demosthenes as " the first of orators," decla- red Plutarch tobethe "pleasantestreading in thcAvhole range of Memoirs," preferred the Greek historians to the Latin, and was attracted by Horace, and enamour- ed of Virgil. So far there was nothing singular in his tastes. He thought as all the world has thought, for these two thousand years. But he also preferred Euripides, in all his tameness, to the simple vigour of Sophocles ; professed his admiration of Lucretius, de- sultory and didactic as he is ; and even ventured to speak of the ^neid, in all its dreary languor, perhaps the most inanimate poem that ever effused itself from the pen of a real poet, as " superior to the Iliad," of all the works of poetry, the most various, vigorous, and natural, — the model of living description, noble senti- ment, and mingled strength and splendour of character. On those points he might assert liis full claim to sin- gularity. But those were the opinions of a boy, proud FONDNESS FOR MILTON. 9 and pleased with the first perception of deciding- for himself, the first unfettered excursion into the wilder- ness of criticism. He afterwards grew wiser, as he grew calm. But even in his immature age, he had largely formed the taste for which he was subsequently so distinguish- ed. Milton's richness of language, boundless learning, and scriptural grandeur of conception, were the first and last themes of his applause. Young, from whose epigrammatic labour of expression, and clouded though daring fancy, modern taste shrinks, was a favourite in Burke's day ; and Burke followed the public opinion, and satisfied himself that he was cultivating his mind by committing a large portion of the dreamy wander- ings of the Night Thoughts to memory. He also Avrote some translations of the Latin poets, and some original verses, which exhibiting his command of rhyme, exhibit nothing more. Burke's profession was naturally marked out by that of his father. In Ireland, where no man is con- tented with his own rank, the son of a tlirivlng attor- ney is universally designed for the bar. Burke put his name on the list of tlic future dispensers of justice in that country of lawyers. But, by tiie custonj of the time, he also entered himself of the Middle Temple; a measure now unnecessary for the call to the Irish bar, but still generally adopted, from its advantages in ac- quainting the student with tlw; habits of the lOnglish bar, and in allowing tlie advocate to transfer himself to English practice whenever circumstances may in- 10 LIFE OF BURKE. duce him to leave tlie Irish Courts for Westminster Hall. Burke arrived in London in 1750. It is re- markable, that he had already, in some degree, formed the political views which characterised the most emi- nent period of his life; thus the features of his mind, like those of the countenance, in age, returned onl)- to their first expression, and shewed that his politics were his nature. While but a student in the University, he had been roused, by his indig-nation at fictitious pa- triotism, to write a pamphlet against Brooke, the au- thor of that much-praised, but infinitely childish ro- mance, the Fool of Quality, who aspired to the name of a popidar champion, on the credit of having- com- posed an insolent and absurd tragedy. His second tri- bute to good order was a letter to Dr Lucas, a man who bustled himself into importance with the mob of the Irish metropolis ; and after a life of clamour, fac- tion, and persevering folly; of the demand of rights that were worth nothing, and the complaint of wrongs that existed only in his own brain; died in the odour of rabble sanctity, leaving his debts and liis family as his bequest to popular benefaction. The observant spirit, and philosophical turn of Burke's early mind, are evinced in a correspondence which he held with an Irish friend. He remarks, on his pas- sage to the metropolis — " The prospects could not fail to attract the attention of the most indifferent; country seats sprinkled round me on every side, some in the n)odern taste, some in the style of old De Coverley Hall, all smiling on the neat but humble cottage; ARRIVAL IN LONDON. 11 every villao'e as neat and compact as a bee-hive, re- sounding with the busy hum of industry; and inns like palaces." He then sketches the mighty City, intelligently, yet with the ambitious and antithetical touch of clever in- experience — " the buildings are very tine; it may be called the Pink of Vice ; but its hospitals and chari- table institutions, whose turrets pierce the skies, like so many electrical conductors, avert the wrath of Hea- ven. Its inhabitants may be divided into two classes, the undoers and the undone ! An Englishman is cold and distant at Hrst ; he is cautious even in forming an acquaintance : he must know you well before ho en- ters into friendship with you ; but if he does, he is not the first to dissolve the sacred bond ; in short, a real Englishman is one who performs more than ho pro- mises ; in company, he is rather silent ; extremely pru- dent in his expressions, even in politics, his favourite topic. The women are not quite so reserved, they consult their glasses to the best advantage, and as na- ture is very libcM al in her gifts to their j)ersons, and even to their minds, it is not easy for a young man to cscajjc their glances, or to shut his ears to their softly flowing accents. " As to the state of learning in this city, you know I have not been long enough in it to form a i)roper judgment of the sidtjcct. 1 (b)n't think, however, there is as much respect paid to a man of letters on this side of the water, as you imagine. I don't find that genius, the *rath primrose, that forsaken dies,* is patronised 12 LIFE OF BURKE. by any of the nobility. So that writers of the first talents are left to the capricious patronage of the pub- lic." All this is like the letter of any other lively obser- ver. But the passage which follows, fantastic as it is, is the property of Burke. " Notwithstanding discou- ragement, literature is cultivated in a high degree — Poetry raises her enchanting voice to heaven — His- tory arrests the wings of time in his flight to the gulf of oblivion — Philosophy, the queen of arts, and the daughter of Heaven, is daily extending her intellectual empire — Fancy sports on airy wing, like a meteor on the bosom of a summer cloud — and even Metaphysics spins her cobwebs and catches somejiies." His judg- ment of that great scene, in which he was so early, and so long to be, distinguished, is curious. " The House of Commons not unfrequently exhibits explosions of eloquence, that rise superior to those of Greece and Rome, even in their proudest days. Yet, after all, a man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade wind, and then he may sail secure over the Pactolean sands." He then touches on the stage ; which, like every worshipper of the tradltiontil excellence of the drama, he concludes to have fallen off utterly from its original merits ; a complaint renewed in every succeeding age, and probably with much the same forgetfulness of the true state of the former. We are to remember, too, that liiuke's lamentation was in the days of Garrick, ARRIVAL IN LONDON. 13 Barry, Mrs Yates, and a whole g-alaxy of first-rate performers ; sustained by the activity, if not the ge- nius, of such dramatists as Murphy, the elder Colman, Farquhar, and a long list of ingenious men, who kept the theatres in continued exertion, and whose labours, in not a few instances, still survive for the pleasure and interest of posterity. " As for the stage, it is sunk, in my opinion, to the lowest degree ; I mean with regard to the trash that is exhibited on it. But I don't attribute this to the taste of the audience, for when Sliakspeare warbles his native wood-notes, the boxes, pit, and gallery are crowded, and the gods are true to every word, if properly winged to the heart." The whole letter is a striking picture of his feelings, on the subjects most impressive to a young and suscep- tible mind. " Soon after my arrival in town, I visited Westminster Abbey. '^I'he moment I entered, I felt a kind of awe pervade my mind, which I cannot de- scribe ; the very silence seemed sacred. * * * Some would Imagine that all those monuments were so many monuments of folly. I don't think so. What useful lessons of morality and kouihI jdiilusophy do they not exhibit ! W'licn the high born b(;aiity surveys her face in the polished Parian, tliough dumb the marble, yet it tells her that it was placed to guard the remains of as fine a form, and as fair a face as her own. They bhew, besides, how anxious we are to extend our loves and friendships beyond the grave, and to snatch as much as we can from oblivion, such i;t our natural love of immortality. But it is here that letters obtain their 14 LIFE OF BURKE. noblest triumph ; it is here that the swarthy daughters of Ciichnus may liang their trophies on high. For wlicn all the pride of" the chisel, and the pomp of heraldry, yield to the silent touches of time, a single line, a half-worn out inscription, remain faithful to their trust. Blest be the man who first introduced these strangers into our islands, and may they never want protection or merit. I have not the least doubt, that the finest poem in the English language, I mean Milton's II Penseroso, was composed in the long re- sounding aisle of a mouldering cloister or ivyed abbey. Yet, after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tomb of the Capulets ? I should like, how- ever, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust. The good old expression, ' family burying-ground,' has something pleasing in it, at least to me." At this period he appears to have spent some time in rambling through England, for his recovery from a tendency to consumption ; and to have lingered away the rest of his hours in desultory reading. He thus passed, or perhaps wasted, the years from 1730 to 1753. But such a mind must have had many mis- givings in such a course, and be was at length stimu- lated to tfi'urt, by the vacancy of the Professorship of logic in Glasgow. The founder, or the earliest or- nament, of the metaphysical school of Scotland, was an Irishman, Francis Hutcheson. This circumstance might have appeared to Burke as offering some en- couragement to an attempt, whose immediate motives, PROPOSES TO GO TO AMERICA. 15 whether want of money, or want of occupation, must now be sought lor in vain. The attempt itself has been disputed ; but it is fully established by evidence, that in 1752, or 1753, he was a candidate for the chair of Logic in Glasg-ow ; fortunately for his own re- nown, and the reverse for that of the electors and the college, he was an unsuccessful one. His triumphant rival was a name, whose laurels seem to have been limited to Glasgfow, a Mr James Clow. He had already given up the bar; whether through 11 health, disinclination to the severe restrictions of its first steps, or the miscellaneous style of life and study which had become favourite and familiar with him. He supped and talked at the Grecian CofFee-house, then the evening resource of all the clever idlers of the Inns of Court. He was asked to dinner by Gar- rick, then delighting all the world, and whoso civilities must have been highly flattering to an obscure Irish student. He made an occasional trial of his powers in old Mackliu's Debating Society; and in the inter- vals of his leisure he is said to have employed himself in joining the general war of pamphlets against the Newcastle Administration. But this rambling life must have been insuflicient f(»r the vigour of Burke's mind ; itcoidd scarcely have received much approbation from his jiulgment. The idea of shifting the; scene altogether at length occur- red to him ; and the prospect of an ajjpointment in Americ.1, seems to have engrossed him for a while. But liib father's dislike to the idea of his lo(diing for 16 LIFE OF BURKE. fortune in lands so remote from Ireland, checked this cherished object ; and Burke, in a letter which begins with " Honoured sir," and expresses with his usual grace the feelings of a gentle and dutiful spirit, gave up the design. He still lingered two years longer ; unknown, but not idle ; for at the end of three years, in 1 756, he publish- ed his " Vindication of Natural Society," and his cele- brated " Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful." The " Vindication" deserves praise for its authorship, panegyric for its intention. Bolingbroke had given from }outh to age, the unhappy example of genius ren- dered useless, rank degraded, and opportunities thrown away. Gifted with powers which might have raised, or sustained, the fortunes of empire, his youth was dis- tinguished only by systematic vice, his manhood by unprincipled ambition, and his age by callous infideli- ty. His life is yet to be written ; and it would form an unrivalled lesson to those who solicit Avorldly dis- tinction by giving popularity to crime. It would show the profligate statesman defeated in all his objects, and the still more profiigate champion of unbelief alike stung by the censures and the neglect of wiser man- kind. Burke's would have been the pen to have done justice to such a subject. We should have seen his fine sagacity detecting the courtly insidiousness, the smiling hostility, and the inveterate malice of the enemy alike of government and religion. His heart would have taught him to brand the sullen rage of the infidel, his loyalty to expose the restless disaffection of the rebel, ATTACKS BOLINOBROKE. 17 and his sense of virtue to scourge the impurity of the man of the passions. Burke's singular knowledge of past puhlic transactions, and his personal experience of the life of statesmen, would have given the force of maxims to his conclusions ; and in the punishment of this showy impostor, we should have had the most eloquent, majestic, and instructive of all lessons to the rising mind of nations. The " Vindication" was an attack, less on Boling- broke's Jacohite politics, than on his irreligion. A gross and pernicious scorn of all the truths wliich man should hold sacred, had been the fashion of the age. It had been generated among the misty metaphysics of Germany, and rapidly swelled to its full growth in the public and personal licentiousness of the court of France. From France, England, disdaining to borrow the meanest implement for the meanest uses of life, had stooped to borrow the favourite notions of party in the State, and in the Church. Bolingbroke, exiled for his political intrigues, filled up the dreariness of his so- litude by copying French intidclity ; and paid his debt of gratitude to England by preparing the poisons of Berlin and Paris for the lips of his countrymen. It was to the honour of Hiu'ke, that, in his youth, and in the midst of a general delusion f)f all who constituted the leaders of public taste, he should sacredly discern where the truth lay, and nianl'ully came (ortli armed in its cause. His process was unanswer.ilile. Nomi- nally adopting the tenets of Holiiigb okc, he pushed them on tc; [)ractiral absurdit). -^pp'yi'ig 'o sofiety YOL. I. u 18 LIFE OF BURKE. the modes of argument which the infidel liad applied to relig-ion, he showed that thej' justified ahsuvdities against which common sense revolts, and crimes against which the common safety arms itself; that the plea which might serve to overthrow Christianity, would be equally forcible against the existence of order ; and that the perfection of the infidel system would reason mankind into the uselessness of a Monarchy, as rapidly as into the burden of a Revelation. In a passage, which seems to come glowing from the pen of Bolingbroke in his hour of triumph, his young antagonist thus happily at once seizes on the sounding amplification of his style, and ridicules the philosophical folly of his argument : " In looking over any state, to form a judgment on it, it presents itself in two lights, the external and the internal. The first, that relation which it bears in point of enmity or friendship to other states. The second, that relation which its component parts, the governors and the governed, bear to each other. * * * * The glaring side of all national history is enmity. The only actions on which we have seen, and always will see all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruc- tion of one another. ' War,' says Machiavel, * ought to be the only study of a prince ;' and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. ' He ought,' says this great political doctor, ' to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him lei- sure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute mili- tary plans.' A meditation on the conduct of political ATTACKS BOLINGBItOKE. 19 societies made old Hobbos Imagine tliat war was the state of nature ; and trul}-, if a man judged of the in- dividuals of our race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms, he might imagine that every sort of virtue was foreign and unnatural to the mind of man. " The first accounts which we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood ; and in these early ages, when the race of mankind began first to form them- selves into parties and combinations, the first effects of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed and best calculated, was their mu- tual destruction. All ancient history is dark and un- certain. One thing, however, is clear : There were conquerors and conquests in those days, and conse- qiiently all that devastation by which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he led out of Egypt an army of above 700,000 men ; that he over- ran the Mediterranean coast as far as Colchis ; that In some places he met l)ut little resistance, and of course hhod not a great deal of blood, but that lie found In others a people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them (\v.av. Whoever considers the army which this coiujuoror headed, the space he traversed, and the opposition he freq\iently met, wilh the natural accidents {»f sickness, and the dearfh and badness of provision to whidi lie )iiii-l have been subjrcl in the variety of climates and countries his march lay through 20 LIFE OF BURKE — if he knows any thing-, he must know that even the conqueror's army must luive suffered greatly. It will be far from excess to suppose that one-half was lost in the expedition. If this was the state of the victorious the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as the greatest slaughter is always in the flight ; and great carnage did in those times and countries ever at- tend the first rage of conquest. It will therefore be very reasonable to allow on their account as much as, added to the losses of the conquerors, may amount to a million of deaths. And then we shall see this con- queror, the oldest whom we have on record, opening the scene by the destruction of at least one million of his species, unprovoked but by his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and with- out any benefit to himself, (for Justin expressly tell us he did not maintain his conquest,) but solely to make so many people in so distant countries feel experi- mentally how severe a scourge Providence intends for the human race, when it gives one man the power over many, and arms his naturally impotent and feeble rage Avith the hands of millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience to the pas- sions of their ruler." Thus pursuing his way through ancient history, and still designating it as one common display of misery and massacre ; the whole resulting from the facts that society exists, and that it has rulers at its head ; he comes to the scene which Europe exhibited on the fall of the great tyrant dynasty of Rome. " There have ATTACKS BOLINGBUOKE. 21 been periods when no less than nniversal destruction to the race of mankind seems to have been threatened. Such was that, when the Goths, the Vandals, and tlie Huns, poured into Gaul, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Africa, carrying destruction with them as they ad- vanced, and leaving horrid deserts everywhere behind them. ' Vastum ubique silentium, secret! coUes, fu- raantia procul tecta, nemo exploratoribus obvius,' is Avhat Tacitus calls ' facies victoria?.' It was always 80 ; but here it was emphatically so. From the north proceeded the swarms of Goths, Vandals, Huns, Os- trogoths, who ran towards the south into Africa itself, which suffered as all to the north had done. About this time, another torrent of barbarians, animated by the same fury, and encouraged by the same success, poured out of the south, and ravaged all to the north- east and west, to the remotest parts of Persia on one hand, and to the banks of the Loire on the other, de- stroying all the proud and curious monuments of hu- man art, that not even the memory of tiie former in- habitants might survive. ♦ • * ♦ J s|,;,ii only, iu one word, mention the horrid effects of bigotry and ava- rice in the conquest of Sj)anish America ; a con«juest, on a low estimation, effected by the nnu-dcr of ten miUions of the species. * * * * J need not enhirge on the torrents of silent and inglorious blood wbicfi have glutted the tiiirsty sands of Afric, or discoloured the polar snow, or fed the savage forests of Amcrictt for so many ages of cf)ntinual u ar. * * • * I go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, t>2 LIFE OF BURKE. without a pedantical exactness, to give your lordsliip some feeling- of the effects of political society. I charge the whole of those effects upon political society. The numhers I particularized amount to about thirty-six millions. * * * * In a state of nature, it had becu impossible to find a number of men sufficient for such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose. Society and politics, which have given us such de- structive views, have given us also the means of sa- tisfying them. * * * * How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example of those animals which still follow her laws, and even of those to which she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than any ever she intended we should use. It is an incontestlble truth, that there is more havoc made in one year by men of men, than has been made by all the lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hysenas, rhinoceroses, elephants, bears, and wolves upon their several species, since the beginning of the world, though those agree ill enough with each other, and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind, ye Orpheuses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycur- guses, Numas, your regulations have done more mis- chief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in their greatest terrors or furies has ever done, or ever could do." He then, from a long and detailed examination of the chief provisions and orders of sociely, draws the ATTACKS BOLINGBROKi:. 23 conclusion; that man Is a loser by association with his kind, by government, by jurisprudence, by commerce, by every shape and step of civilisation ! Of course, this conclusion revolts common sense ; and the wildest de- clairaer against religion will protest against thus send- ing man back to the forest, and stripping him of all the advantages of society, on account of the disadvantages. He will protest against arguingfrom the abuse of society in the rule of a certain number of violent men, to its vast, general, and beneficial uses to the infinite multi- tude. But the same protest is as directly applicable to the rejection of religion on account of the casual evils connected with its progress, the religious wars fomented by human passions, the corrupt practices of venal priests, the tyranny of jealous persecutors, the guilty artifice, or the blinding superstition. If the essential good is to be rejected for the sake of the ac- cidental evil ; civilisation must be cast away, as well as religion. But if the mighty stock of human good which religion bequeathes to mankind, the im- measurable consolations, the high motives, the pure guidance, the noble and perpetual stimulants reaching through all the depths of the human race, reaching too through them all undebascd by human guilt, and main- taining the connexion of man in all his grades uiili Deity, arc to weigh heavier in the balance than the mere human abuses of religion; then let us acknou'- ledgc that the infidel is not simply weak, but criminal, that he shuts his eyes against light for the love of dark' 24 LIFE or BURKE. ness, and that he is convicted of folly by all that re- mains to him of reason. The concluding fragment of the essay is striking, as an evidence of the early period at which Burke had matured his pen. The style is no longer the fantastic and figurative declamation of Bolingbroke ; it is Burke, as he stood before the world in the latest days of his triumph over the atheistic and revolutionary impulses of Europe ; strong, yet dignified ; energetic, yet cloth- ed in the garb of that philosophic melancholy, which afterwards impressed his practical wisdom so power- fully upon the general heart. He speaks in the person of Bolingbroke to a friend. " You are but just entering into the world. I am going out of it. I have played long enough to be heartily sick of the drama. Whether I have acted my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more candour than I, or than the present age, with our pre- sent passions, can possibly pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit to the sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our existence, and the real weight of our opinions. We set out, much in love with both, but we leave much behind us as we advance. But the passions which press our opinions are withdrawn, one after another, and the cool light of reason, at the set- ting of our life, shows us what a false splendour played upon those objects of our more sanguine seasons." This tract is remarkable for its declaration of opi- ATTACKS BOLINGBUOKE. 25 nions on the right side, when it was the pride of every man who pretended to literature, to stand on the wrong. But it is scarcely less reniarkahle, as actually forming- the model of much of that revolutionary writ- ing, which so recklessly laboured to inflame the popu- lar passions, on the first burst of the French insurgen- cy. Burke, in his virtuous ridicule, had involuntarily prepared an armoury for Paine in his profligate serious- ness. The contemptuous flights of the great orator had pointed out the way for the Jacobin to ascend to the assault of all that we were ciccustomed to reve- rence and value. The burlesque charges of feeble government, misjudging law, ministerial weaknesses, and national prejudices, were eagerly adopted by the champions of overthrow, as irrefragable arguments against the altar and the throne ; and Burke must have seen with surprise, or increased scorn, the ar- rows which he had shot out in sport, and for the mere trial of his boyish strength, gravely gathered up, and fitted to the Jacobin string, to be used against the noblest and most essential institutions of the empire. The essay attracted considerable notice. Chester- field and VVarburton were said to have regarded it for awhile as an authentic work of the infidel lord. The opinion prevailed so far ; tliat Mallet, who, as the re- siduary legatee of his blaspjjcmies, thought himself the legitimate d(;fender of his fame, volunteered a pub- lic disclaimer on the subject ; and the critics were thencefortii left to wonder on whose shoulders tho mantle of the noble personage had fallen. Still 13urko VOL. I. c 26 LIFE OF BURKE. was unheard of; but his second performance was des- tined to do justice to his ability. In the same year was pubUshed the Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful. No work of its period so suddenly sprang into popu- larity. The purity, vigour, and grace of its language, the clearness of its conceptions, and its bold soarings into the clouds of metaphysics, which, dark and con- fused as they had rendered all former theory, were by the flashes of Burke's fine imagiuiition, turned in- to brightness and beauty, attracted universal praise. Its author was looked for among the leading veterans of literature. To the public astonishment, he was found to be an obscure student of twenty-six, utterly vm- known, or known only as having attempted a canvass for a Scottish professorship, and having failed. He now began to be felt in society. The reputation of his book preceded him, and he gradually became on a footing of acquaintance, if not altogether of intimacy, with some of the more remarkable names connected with life and literature; the Earl of Bath, Markham, soon after Archbishop of York, Reynolds, Soame Jenyns, Lord Littleton, Warburton, Hume, and Johnson. This was a distinction which implied very striking merits in so young a man, unassisted by rank or opulence, and with the original sin of being an Irishman, a formi- dable disqualification in England fifty years ago. His treatise had been the pioneer to his storm of the sul- len rampart of English formality. But, to have not only climbed there, but made good his lodgment, evi- dently implies personal merits of no ordinary kind. Johnson's praise of burke. 27 To good-humoured and cordial manners, and singular extent and variety of knowledge, he added great force and elegance of conversation. Johnson's, even the fastidious Johnson's, opinion of him, is well known, as placing him already in the very highest rank of in- tellectual companionship. — " Burke, sir ;" said he, " is an extraordinary man, his stream of talk is perpetual." Another of his dicta was, " Burke's talk is the ehulli- tion of his mind ; he does not talk from a desire of distinction, but because his mind is full." — " Burke is the onhj man whose common conversation corresponds with the general fame which he has in the world. Take up whatever topic you please, he is ready to meet you." In another instance, where some one had been paying Johnson himself the tribute due to his memo- rable powers, he again gave the palm to his friend. " Burke, sir, is such a man, that if you meet him for the first time, in the street, where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped tiside for shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner, that when you parted, you would say, — that is an extraordinary man. Now, Sir, you may be long enoiigii with me, without finding any thing extraordi- nary." A portion of this fortunate quality must he attributed to his fondness for general sfiuly, and to the vigorous memory by which he retained all that he had accjuir- ed. But a nnuh larger portion nmst be due to that salient and glowing power ot thought, that vivid men- tal seizure, by wliich all his knowledge became a 28 LIFE OF BUUKE. member ofliis mind; that elective attraction for all that was original, brilliant, and intellectual, by which ever)- new acquisition resolved itself into an increase, not of his intellectual burden, but of the essential ac- tivity and strength of his faculties. He had a great assimilating mind. Johnson's often-recorded expression, " that no man of sense would meet Mr Burke by accident under a gateway, to avoid a shower, without being convinced that he was the first man in England," once found a di- rect and amusing illustration in the testimony of an utter stranger. Burke, in passing through Litchtield, had gone with a friend to look at the cathedral, while the horses were changing. One of the clergy, seeing two gentlemen somewhat at a loss in this noble build- ing, politely volunteered as their cicerone. The con- versation flowed, and he was speedily struck with sur- prise at the knowledge of one of the travellers. In his subsequent account of the adventure to some friends, who met him on his return, " I have been convers- ing," said he, " for this half hour, with a man of the most extraordinary powers of mind, and extent of in- formation, which it has ever been my fortune to meet, and I am now going to the inn to ascertain, if possible, who the wonder is." The traveller had completely overlaid the cicerone, even in his local knowledge. On every topic which came before them, whether the architecture, history, remains, income, or learning of the cathedral, or persecutions, lives, and achievements of its ancient chapter, he had been boundless in Johnson's praise of burke. 29 anecdote and illustration. The eleroyman's surprise was fully accounted for, by being- told at the inn that this singular companion was " Mr Burke," and the ge- neral regret of all to whom he mentioned the circum- stance, was, that the name had not been known in time for them to have taken advantage of so high a gratifi- cation. But, for three years more, this memorable man was confined to the struggles of private life. He was still actively, though obscurely, employed in writing or editing a" History of the European Settlements in Ame- rica," in seven solid volumes, which obtained but slight public notice ; in laying the foundations of a History of England, which, however, never reached beyond a few sheets ; and in establishing, in 175b, in conjunction with Dodsley, the Annual Register. But in this work, the genius of the author wears a disguhe. We look in vain forthe fire and fancy, which seemed to be essentials of his authorship. And one of the most remarkable features of the whole performance, is the strong self-denial with which the pbilosojiluu- and llu; orator li;i(l already learn- ed to tame down the ardour of his mind. But the work was judiciousand manly: it came forth too at a time w lieu the public re<|uire(l soujething higher I ban a chronicle of the passing day; and, like all works which lill up a chasm in j)ublic curiosity, it succeeded to a remarkable e.vtent. I' ivc or six (!(litioiis of'tlii! earlier volumes were rapidly received. Still, income from such sources must be precarious. He had now married, had a son ; yet he had hitiierto made no advance in an actual provision for 30 LIFE OF BURKE. life ; and a few years more of the natural toils which beset a man left to his own exertions for the support of a family, would probably have driven him to Ame- rica, his old and favourite speculation against the frowns of fortune in Europe. At length the life for which he was made, the stirring and elevated interests of political and parliamentary distinction, appeared to open before him. He owed this change to an Irish- man, the Earl of Chai*lemont. Ireland still remembers the name of that estima- ble person with gratitude. A narrow fortune, and reluctant public abilities, did not prevent him from being a great public benefactor. He was the en- courager of every plan for national advantage, the patron of literature, the head of the chief literary institution of Ireland, and of every other, tend- ing to promote the good of the country. Though living much on the Continent, and in England, in early life, and long associated with all that was emi- nent in rank and talents in Great Britain, he generous- ly and honestly fixed his residence on his native soil, tui'bulent as it was, remote from all the scenes conge- nial to his habits, and perplexed with furious party. For this determination, he seems to have had no other ground than a sense of duty. And he had his reward. No man in Ireland was ever reverenced with such une- quivocal public honour. In all the warfare of party, no shaft ever struck his pure and lofty crest. Old con- nexions, and the custom of the time, which made every man of independent fortune enter public life on the side EARL OF CHARLEMONT. 31 of opposition, designated him a Whig. But no man less bowed to partisanship, no man more clearly wash- ed the stains of faction from his hands, no man was fur- ther from the insanity of revolution. With gentle, but manly firmness, he repelled popularity ; from the moment when it demanded his principles as its pur- chase. With generous, but indignant scorn, he raised up his voice equally against the insidious zeal which would substitute an affected love of country for pa- triotism ; and the insurrectionary rage which would cast off the mild dominion of England, for the licence of democracy at home. He finally experienced the fate of all men of honour thrown into the midst of faction. His directness was a tacit reproach to its oblicrs. They lost the national coniuUnicc. from that moment. Uutb- and violent agiUitors first usurped the power, thendividedit, and then fjuarrelled for the division. The glaring evil 3'2 LIFE OF BURKE. of the bayonet drawn for political objects, startled the common sense of the country, and drove it to take reftig-e with the minister. The National army, which had been raised amid the shouts of the nation, was now cashiered by its universal outcr3\ The agitators went down among the common wreck; and, in the universal swell and uproar of the popular mind, the fame and virtues of the venerable commander of the Volunteers, alone floated undiminished to the shore. But, if for one quality alone, the name of this noble- man ouoht to be held in memory. Perhaps no other public individual of his day extended such prompt and honourable protection to men of ability, in their ad vance- ment in the various ways of life. He had two boroughs at his command in the Irish House of Commons, and in all the venality which so daringly distinguished partisanship in that House, no one ever heard of the sale of the boroughs of Lord Charlemont. He applied his influence to the high-minded purpose of introdu- cing men of talents into the Legislature. An accidental intercourse with Burke, chiefly in consequence of the character which he derived from the treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful; induced this nobleman to serve his interests, by a connexion with the Secretary for Ireland, so well known by the name of single-speech Hamilton. Hamilton's character is a problem to this hour. A single efl'ort of eloquence had placed him among the hopes of the British senate. He never repeated it. Its reputation, and the friendship of Lord Halifax, SINGLE-SPEECH HAMILTON. 33 then President of the Board of Trade, made him a member of the Board in 1756. But Hamilton still con- tinued silent. In four years after, he was made Secre- tary for Ireland, on the appointment of his noble friend as Lord Lieutenant. In the Irish House, the neces- sities of his situation, as Prime Minister of the Vice- royalty, overcame his nervousness, and he spoke, on several occasions, with effect. But, on his return to the English Parliament, his powers were again shut up ; and, by a strange pusillanimity, a tenderness of oratorical repute, unworthy of the member of an English public assembly ; during the remainder of his life, his voice was never heard. Yet, probably no man led a more anxious and self-condemning life. During this period, public distinction, and distinction peculiarly by eloquence, seems to have never left his thoughts. He compiled, he wrot»^ lu; made common- places of rhet(»ric, he was perpetually preparing for the grand explosion, to which he was never to lay the triiin. He saw, ant of mighty r(!Volutions, and sweeping overthrows of established authority, when the old Inil- 38 LIFE OF BURKE. warks are broken down into fragments, and all lies naked to the step; that young vigour can despise an- cient vigilance, force its way over the ruins, and be master, in its own right; indebted but to its own soli- tary prowess and self-dependent energy. Yet all may be for the best. Even in the re- straints laid upon the saliency of genius, there maybe that larger good, which redounds in securing states from rash ambition, the besetting sin of powerful minds. It may be useful, even to the productive services of such minds, that they should undergo in part the train- ing which belongs to delay and disappointment. The pride of talent may be wisely taught, that the feelings of a race whose mediocrity it would be ready to trample under its feet, that the common-places and formali- ties of the system, that even the feeble prejudices which grow up round institutions, like the moss and Avild blossoms, harmless ornaments round the walls of our castles, are entitled to some share of its regard; that there are other ministers of good on earth than the impetuous stride and burning glance of genius; that the general genial harvests of social life are not to be ploughed in by the lightning, nor reaped by the whirlwind. At least, we may well rejoice in the alter- native, which leaves us the tjuiet of society, undisturb- ed by revolution. To pass in peace through life is the first gift of government to nations. A few " bright particular stars" may thus be lost to the national eye, — flashing for a moment, and then sunk below the hori- zon for ever. But we may well be content with a sky MEMBER FOR WENDOVER. 39 which gives us the light of day, and the seasons in their time ; unstartled by the terrors or the wonders of those flaming- phenomena which, if tliey descend to in- crease the splendour, may come to shock the harmony of the sphere. Burke was now brought into Parliament for Wen- dover, in Buckinghamshire, by the influence of Lord Verney, and on July the 17th, 1765, received his ap- pointment, as private secretary to the Minister. Yet even at this moment his fortunes were on the verge of wreck. His country operated against him ; and, as in the crude conceptions of the English populace, every Irishman must he a Roman Catholic and a Jacobite ; the old Duke of Newcastle, a man who through life exhi- bited the most curious combination of acutenessand ab- surdity, of address in office, and eccentricity every- where else; instantly adopting the wisdom of the coffee- houses, hurried to the Marquis of Rockingham, to pro- test against his bringing this firebrand into the maga- zine of gunpowder which then composed the Ministry. The Martpiis, a simple man, was terrified at what he had done; but a Ktraightlorward one, lie had the manli- ness to mention the statement inmiediately to liis new associate. Burke, probably not without some con- tempt for the uu(h'rstauding8 of both tlie iu)ble Lords, satisfactorily shewed that it was even possible to be an Irishman atul a I'rotestaut at the same time ; and refer- ring to his career in his College, where he had obtain- ed a scholarship, — an honour rcser\('d ex|)ressly for Protestant students, — he at length succeedeil in ap- 40 LITE OF BURKE. peaslnfT' the trppidations of (he two Ministers, and esta- blishing- the facts, — that, being a Protestant gentleman by birth, he was not a Jesuit; and being educated in the Irish University for the bar, he was not educated at St Omers for the priesthood. But it may be easily conceived, that this rapidity of suspicion was not palatable to the feeling-s of the indi- vidual. He instantly retorted upon the Premier ; and declared, that to retain office was thenceforth incompa- tible with his honour ; that suspicion so easily roused and so readily adopted, would naturally introduce re- serve into their intercourse ; and that conceiving a half confidence to be worse than none, he must imme- diately resign. The Marquis listened ; but he was a native English gentleman ; the dignity of conscious spi- rit and virtue in Burke attracted only his applause. He desired that the subject should be entirely forgot- ten, professed himself more than ever gratified by the manliness of his conduct, and refused to hear of his re- signation. Burke, of course, gave way to this generous refusal ; and proved himself worthy of the most perfect confidence, by his zeal and services during the life of his noble friend, and by many an eloquent tribute to his grave. In one of his speeches in Parliament, several years after the death of the Marquis, he thus feelingly alluded to his appointment and his patron : — " In the year sixty-five, being in a very private sta- tion, far enough from any idea of business, and not hav- ing the honour of a seat in this House, it was my for- tune, unknowing and unknown to the then Ministry, Chatham's ministry. 41 by the intervention of a common friend, to become con- nected with a very noble person at the head of the Treasury department. It was indeed in a situation of little rank and of no consequence, suitable to the me- diocrity of my talents and pretensions ; but a situation near enough to enable me to see, as well as others, what was going; on. And I did see in this noble per- son such sound principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear and sagacious sense, and such un- shaken fortitude; as bound me, as well as others bet- ter than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward." The new JNlinistry opened the session of Pai'liament on the 14th of .January 1766. Burke immediately shewed the value of his accession. His first speech was on American aftairs, and his force, fancy, and in- formation astonished the House. Pitt, (Lord Cha- tham,) whose praise was fame, followed him in the de- bate, and pronounced a panegyric (a most unusual con- descension) on the new orator. He observed that, " the young mendjer had proved himself a very able ad- vocate. He had himself intended to enter at length into the details, but lie li;id Ix-en anticipated with so much iiig(!n\jify :ind cldciuciiee, that there was little left for him to say. He congratulatcul him on his suc- cess, and his friends «)m I Ik; value of the accpiisition \vljicli till y had made." 'i'he stirring limes through which we have ]>assed, and tlu! still more stirring times which seem to lie be- fore us, throw an air of li^ilitncss over transactions VOL. r. u 42 LIFE OF BURKE. deemed momentous in the days of our fathers. The last quarter of a century shoots up between, like the pillar of the Israelites, covering- all behind us with cloud, and all before us with tlame. We have become accustomed in all things to a larger wielding of power, for larger consequences, — not armies but nations marching- into the field — not empires but continents convulsed with overthrow, or rejoicing in the fracture of their chains, — conspiracies of kingdoms, and tri- umphs of the woi'ld. To us the strifes of domestic party, which excited the passions of our ancestors, have the look of child's play; and we hear the angry declama- tion and the prophetic menace, with something not far from scorn for the men who uttered and the men who believed. The whole has too much the air of a battle on the stage. And it must be acknowleged, that the mimic spirit of the hostility Avas well authenticated, in the perpetual changes of the actors, in the rapid shift- ings of their costume, in their adoption, night after night, of new characters, and their being constant to nothing but a determination to be always before the public, until age or national contempt drove them from the scene. But other things and other times are in reserve for their offspring. We already see the gathering of storms that shall try the strength of every institution of England, and mankind. A new evil has been let loose upon the earth, from a darker source than any that the timid crimes, or colourless follies, of past ages ever opened. French Jacobinism has spread through PICTURE OF PARTY. 43 the world. Its Babel has been cast down in France J but the fall has diminished nothino- of its malignity, and nothing of its power. Its confusion of tongues there, has only inducted it into the knowledge of every lan- guage on earth ; and the scattered strength of atheism and revolt has gone forth to propagate the kingdom of violence, and the idolatry of the passions, round the globe. The multitude thus in every quarter of the con- tinent are already in the hands of Jacobinism. A spi- rit of fantastic and scornful innovation is abroad, mar- shalling every casual discontent into its levy against the laws and thrones of all nations. Every complaint of idleness, of folly, or of fortune, swells the same muster- roll of grievance, until the array shall be complete, the signal is given, and with rebellion in the van, and ra- pine in the rear, the whole sullen host is moved against the last refuges of government, and religion. Un- less some hand mightier than that of human champion- ship drive back the tempter to his dungeon, the ruin of all that deserves our honiage is inevitable. The rise or fall of rival administrations will then cease to be a matter of moment to any living- being, lie their merits what they may, they will hold their power but by the caprice of the crowd. If they are virtuous, they will but raise the scatt'old for themselves ; if they are vi- cious, they will but wash it w ith the blood of others. All the old generous impulses of public service, all the glowing and lofty aspirations which gave men nerve in their ascent up the steeps of honour, and made the ruggedncssof the lu'igbt, and the tempests on its brow, 44 LIFE OF BURKE. only dearer portions of the triumph, will be at an end ; there will be but one motive to power, pelf, one check to treason, fear. Successive administrations will be gathered and dissolved with the rapidity of a snow- fall. Their rise and progress will be no more noted, and no more worth being noted, than the floating of bubbles down the stream. The names of parties will be equally obnoxious, or equjiUy forgotten. One great faction will absorb all. A hundred-headed democracy will usurp the functions of government, and turn cabi- nets into bureaus for registering the plunder, or tribu- nals for shedding the blood of the nation. Is this an imaginary picture of the rule of the mul- titude? Or is it some sullen remnant dug up from the sepulchres, where the crimes of antiquity lie, fortu- nately, hid from the world ? It is a creation of our own day, its fiery track is felt still throughout every field of Europe. In France we saw a power, Avhich had no name in courts or cabinets, start up with the swiftness of an exhalation, and spread death through the state. England was saved. A man, of the qualities made for the high exigencies of empires, guided her councils, and appealing to the memories and the virtues of the country, rescued the constitution. Let the successors to his power be the successors to his intrepidity, and, no matter by what name they are known, we shall honour them. No voice shall call their triumph in question, or be fretfully raised in the general acclama- tion that follows their car to the temple of victory. But the day for the old feeble compliances is past in PICTURE OF PARTY. 45 every kingdom of Europe. The day for stern deter- mination, prompt vigour, sleepless vigilance, and sacred fidelity, is come. The materials of revolt are heaped high, and fermenting in every province of the Conti- nent. We know the conflagration that is prepared at home, we have heard the insolent menace of the hun- dred thousands that are to march with banners flying, from our manufacturing towns to meet the insurgent million of the capital, and concoct laws for King, minis- ters, and nation, under the shadow of the pike. But we should remember too, how such menaces were met before ; how the throne was strengthened by the very blast that was to scatter its fragments through the world ; how the temple, instead of a ruin, was turned into an asylum for the grateful virtues of the land; how the national terror was transmuted into valour and patriotism; and how, even in the rolling of the thunders that still shook the continent, England was taught to see but the agency of a power above man, armed for the preservation of her empire. Burke's early diKtinction in rarliaiiunit was the re- sult of a mind remarkably constituted for public effort ; but it was also the r«'.sult of that active and masculine diligence which characterised him through life. Con- tenjplating statesmanship as holding the highest rank of intellectual jtursuits, and not unnaturally excited by the lustre of its rewards, he bad, from an early period, applied bimscllto (he study of politics. As he advanced nearer its confines, he had cultivated jjublic sjx'aking, in some instauces at debating dulis, by attending the 4G LIFE OF BURKE. debates in the House of Commons, and by making him- self acquainted with the principal subjects which were likely to attract discussion. Such was his diligence, that on the subject which must have been the most re- pulsive to his imaginative mind, the details of the com- mercial system, he was soon conceived to be among the best informed men in England. This was the day of ministerial revolution — cabi- nets were abortions. The reign had commenced with an unpopular ministry, solely sustained by the charac- ter of the monarch. But no ministry can stand long on any strength but its own. The King, weary of upholding the Bute cabinet against its original ten- dency to go down, at length cast it off, and it sank, never to rise again. The Grenville ministry succeeded to its place, and its unpopularity. It was charged with the Bute principles without their palliatives, with pur- chasing place by the spoils of the people, with crushing the national liberties with one hand, while it was sur- rendering the national honour to foreigners with the other; Avith being a government of nepotism, favouri- tism, and secret patronage, a Bute ministry in mas- querade. The general outcry at once demanded its overthrow, and the restoration of Pitt. The King, with a submissiveness which fully contradicts the charges of obstinacy, now offered the government to the man of the popular choice. Burke, in a letter to the celebrated Flood, written in 1765, with admirable sagacity, narrates the course of the negotiation, and almost predicts its results. PICTURE OF PARTY. 47 " There is a strong probability that new men will come in, and not improbably with new ideas. There is no doubt that there is a iixed resolution to get rid of them all, (unless perhaps of Grenville,) but principally of the Duke of Bedford. So that you will have mnch more reason to be surprised to find the ministry standing, by the end of the next week, than to hear of their entire removal." His idea of Lord Chatham is singular ; yet the event shewed his knowledge of that memorable man's character. " Nothing but an intractable tem- per in your friend Pitt can prevent a most admir- able and lasting system from being put together. And this crisis will shew whether j)r'ulc or patriotism be predominant in his character ; for you may be assured, he has it now in his power to come into the service of his country upon any plan of politics he may think pro- per to dictate, with great and honourable terms for himself and every friend he has in the world, and with such a strength of power as will be equal to every thing but absolute despotism over the King and kingdom. A few days will shew whether he will take (his part, or that of continuing on his back at Hayes talhivij fustian! excluded from all ministerial, and incapable oi all Parliamentary service. Tor liisgoutis worse than ever, but his pride may disable him more than hisgout." The history amply confirmed the conjecture. The Duke of Cumberland was sent by the King to offer the premiership to Pitt. He reftised it. The ministry, elated by the discovery that a substitute was not to be found, and indignant at the attempt to find one, raised 48 LIFE OF BURKE. their demands upon the King. But the royal re- sources were not yet exhausted, and within two months the Marquis of Rockingham was phiced at the head of a new cabinet. Burke's paneg-yric on the new premier was the exuberance of a glowing' fancy,set in motion by a grateful heart. Still it was an eri'or. The Marquis was not the leader to collect the scattered energies of party, and shape them into system. Compared with Bute, he wanted conciliation ; and with Grenville, knowledge of life and business. Honest but frigid, relying- on personal rank for official dignity, and for public contidence on hereditary prejudices, and forget- ting the new force which had risen to disperse all such prejudices, he found himself suddenly in the rear of public opinion ; saw even his own adherents starting for- ward before him ; soon saw his whole force broken up, and, after a struggle of a few months between pride and feebleness, retreated from a field into which he ought never to have entered. Burke, on this event, pro- bably as a matter of duty, wrote his defence, '^A short History of a short Administration," a work of a few pages, and dry as it was brief. — A cold epitaph, and only the fitter for the tomb that it covered. Pitt now came in triumphantly, with the people yoked to his chariot; with the Kingmorerelucfant, but nearly as much yoked as the people. He rapidly form- ed an administration, and commenced his career with an energy which justified the national election. But, with all the qualities which could raise him to the high- est rank, he wanted the one important quality which PICTURE OF PARTY. 49 . could alone keep him there. He made no allowances for the feelings, the habits, or the weaknesses, of other men. In a despotic government, perhaps, he would have been minister for life, and the admiration, if not the terror, of Europe ; his clearness of political vision, the lofty mastery with which he grasped the thunders of the state, and the unerring vigour with which he launched them ; his natural habits of command, his se- vere integrity, and his brilliant, bold, and indefatigable ambition, would have achieved all the miracles of des- potic policy, and raised a small kingdom into power, or extended a large one into European supremacy. But the time for this display of umiiitigated strength was past in England. Even in France, the era of the Richlieus and Mazarines was no more. Great schemes of independent government were no longer to be creat- ed. The minister must work witli such materialsas were supplied to him ; and Chatham, who under a Philip the Second, would have turned the Netherlands into a de- sert ; or stilled their hostility by throwing the Aveight of the world upon them ; or who, midcr a Henry the Eighth, wouhl have alike trampled out the Refor- mation, or blasted its enemies with the breath of his nostrils ; was forced, in the day of George the Third, to concede annt even his sagacity may bo forgiven for VOL. I. F 66 LIFE OF BURKE. being unable to anticipate the horrors of revolutionary- rage. The depths of the rebel heart were not yet con- vulsed and laid open by the sense of uncontrollable power ; the terrible deposits of the revolutionary vol- cano were not yet shaken and kindled into flame. It is also to be remembered, that during this discus- sion, the question was not of Whigs or Tories, accord- ing to their later qualities. In Burke's earlier day, the Whigs were but another name for the landed interest, the great body of family and fortune of the country, claiming to be all but hereditary governors of the empire ; but little connected with any inferior class, and scarcely recognising the existence of the populace ; no more dreaming of an appeal to the multitude for the support of their measures, than they would have dreamt of allying them with their blood ; a genuine English aristocracy. They had the disqualifications produced by time upon all things human, and they were perhaps too proud to be easily accessible to the pub- lic feelings; too fully satisfied with their ancient posses- sion to think, that while all went well with the Peer- age, the nation could suffer any serious evil ; and too fond of the silk and ermine of their state to be prepar- ed to cast them off, and grapple naked with those new public difficulties which new times were bringing on, and which demanded the whole unemban*assed muscle and activity of the man. JStill, in that class, there was once a great safeguard for both the Crown and the people ; a nobleness more of mind than even of rank ; an embodying of generous and stately principle, derived from an early superiority Burke's pamphlet. 67 to the motives and habits which the common exigencies of things sometimes impose on men struggling through the more obscure ways of life ; a patrician dignity, which spread from the manners to the mind, and if it did not give full security against the assumption of a power beyond right, yet prevented all the meaner abuses of the functions of government, all personal and petty tyranny, all the baser tamperings witli po- pular corruption, and all the ignoble jealousy, livid rancour, and bloodthirsty persecution, inseparable from power suddenly consigned to the hands of the multi- tude. In adverting to the remedies proposed for public re- novation Buike touches upon the two grand expedients, which are now received with such cheers. Triennial Parliaments, and the exclusion of all men holding office, from Parliament. His language on those heat- ing topics, shews how maturely he had formed his ear- liest political impressions. " If I wrote merely to please the popular palate, it wouhl indce'l be as little troublesome to me as to an- other, to extol those remedies so famous in specula- tion ; but to wbicli tlieir greatest admirers have never attempted seriously to resort in practice. I confess, tben, I have no sort of reliance upon eitlier a Triennial Parliament or a Place Hill. With regard to the former, perhaps it might rather serve to counteract tlian to promote the ends that an; jnoiiiottil Ii\ it. To say nothing of the horriide disorders among tlie |)eeplo attending fre«pieiit elections, I sbould be fearful of committing, every three years, the independent gen- 68 LIFE OF BURKE. tlemen of the country in a contest with the Treasury. It is easy to see which of the parties would be ruined first. Whoever has taken a careful view of public proceedings, so as to ground his speculations on his experience, must have observed how prodigiously greater the power of Ministry is in the first and last Session of a Parliament, than it is in the intermediate periods, when members sit a little firm in their seats. The evil complained of, if it exists in the present state of things, would hardly be removed by a triennial Parliament ; for, unless the influence of Government in elections can be entirely taken away^ the more fre- quently they return, the more they will harass private independence ; the more generally will men be com- pelled to fly to the settled, systematic influence of Government, and to the resources of a boundless civil list. Certainly something may be done, and ought to be done, towards lessening- that influence in elections. ***** " But nothing can so perfectly remove the evil, as not to render such contentions, too fre- quently repeated, utterly ruinous, first to independence of fortune, and then to independence of spirit. With great truth, 1 may aver, that I never remember to have talked on this suV)ject with any man much conver- sant with public business, who considered short Par- liaments as a real improvement of the Constitution." He next examines the merits of a Place Bill, a mea- sure which unquestionably will be one of the favourite proposals, at the first convenient season, of that extra- vagant and angry faction, which, making its way into public influence by intrigue, will retain it by perfidy ; burke' S PA31PHLET. 69 which flourishes the knife for national rights, and will yet perform its promise, by plunging it into the bowels of the Constitution. " The next remedy," says he, " is a Place Bill. The same principle guides in both ; I mean, that is entertained by many, of the infallibility of laws and regulations in the cure of public distempers. With- out being as unreasonably doubtful, as many are un- wisely confident, I will only say, that this also is a matter very well worthy of serious and mature reflec- tion. It is not easy to foresee, what the effect Avould be, of disconnecting with Parliament the greater part of those who huld civil employments, and of such mighty and important bodies as the military and naval establishments. It were better, perhaps, that they should have a corrupt interest in the forms of the Con- stitution, than that they should liave none at all. This is a question altogotlier diflerent from the disfjualilica- tion of a particular description of revenue oflicers from seats in Parliankcnt, or, perhaps, of all the lower sorts of them from \oles in elections. In X\n\ former ease, only the lew are aflecled ; in tlu^ latter, only tiie in- considerable. But a grcMt olbeial, a great profession- al, a great military and naval interest, all necessrwily comprehending many [)eople of the first weight, ability, wealth, and spirit, has been gradually formed in the kingd(»ni. 'lliose uvw intercHts iimst be let into a sluwc of representation ; else possibly they may be inclined to destroy those institutions of which they arc not per- mitted l{^Mit not to sacrifice to you, to any jnan, or to any set of men living. They are a trust 92 LIFE OF BURKE. from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. 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. * * * * * If government 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, 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 con- clusion are pei'haps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arg-uments ? ****** Au- thoritative instructions, mandates, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution. Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different states, and with hostile interests, which interests each must maintain as an agent against other agents. But Parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation with one interest, that of the u'hole. You choose a member indeed ; but when you have chosen him, he is not member for Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament." And those words were not the bravado of a man se- cure of his seat. He acted up to their spirit, even when the loss of his seat was involved in the action. In 1780, he repeated his declaration — " I did not obey your instructions. No; I conformed to the instruc- SPEECH AT THE HUSTINGS. 93 tions of truth and nature, and maintained your interests against your opinions, with a constancy that became me. A representative worthy of you ought to be a person of stability. I am to look indeed to your opinions. But to such opinions as you and I must look to, five years hence. I was not to look at the flash of the day. I knew that you chose me in my place, along with others, to be a pillar of the State, and not a weather- cock on the top of the edifice, exalted for my levity and versatility ; and of no use but to indicate the shift- ings of every popular gale." Election jests are not always long lived. But Cru- ger's deficiencies, in comparison with Burke's ability as a speaker, gave rise to a burlesque of the opulent man of trade, which is still memorable at Bristol. On the conclusion of Burke's fine address, Cruger stood up ; but his fount of eloquence would not flow. At length the genius of the counting-hous^e saved him from \itter silence. " I say ditto to Mr Burke, I say ditto to Mr Burke !" he exclaimed ; and rushed from the liustingH, in a general roar of laughtcu* and applause. Burke's definition of the duties of a member oi' Par- liament, with which he closed his speecli, shows bow little be shared in the extravagances of his time, or our own. It is as applicable to this hour, as it was to the moment when it was first hailed by every lover of le- gitimate freedom. " To Ix; a good member of Par- liament, is, let me tell you, no easy task ; especially at this time, when ther«j is so strong a disposition to run into the ju'rilous extremes of servile compliance or loild 94 LIFE OF BURKE. popularity. To unite circumspection with vigour is absolutely necessary, but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial city, that city is, however, but a part of a rich commercial nation, the interests of which are various, multiform, and in- tricate. We are members for that great nation, which itself, however, is but a part of a great empire, extend- ed by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the east and the west. All these wide-spread in- terests must be considered, must be compared, must be reconciled, if possible. We are members for a free country, and surely we all know, that the machine of a free country is no simple thing ; but, as intricate and as delicate as it is valuable. We are members in a great and ancient monarchy. And we vayx^t preserve religiously the true legal rights of the sovereign, which form the key-stone that binds together the noble and well-constructed arch of our empire and our Consti- tution. A history of public questions might be a work worthy of some great benefactor of his country. It would show the perpetual facility with which the public mind may be fruitlessly disturbed ; the guilty dexterity with wliich party imposture may inflame popular passion ; and the utter absurdity with which nations may be impregnated, at the moment when they are giving themselves credit for supreme wisdom ; the whole forming a great legacy of political common sense — an extract from the follies of the fathers, for an antidote to the crimes of posterity. POrULAR DELUSIONS. 95 Within the latter half of the eighteenth century, the visitations of this periodic frenzy had thickened. Fre- deric and the Seven Years' War roused every talker in England into angry elocution, and the man was pro- nounced an enemy to his country who could douht the virtues of the Kins" of Prussia ! This absurdity had its day. The public fevercooledaway, and men were asto- nished at their own extravagance. The Middlesex elec- tions next discovered the organ of political frenzyin the public brain. The nation was instantly in a paroxysm. Every man was an orator, and every orator exclaim- ed, that all past hazards were nothing- to the inevitable ruin of the hour; for what was life without liberty, and what was liberty without Wilkes to save it ? En- gland saw this day pass too, and the patriot shelter himself in an opulent sinecure, and laugh at the dupes whose clamour had been its purchase. The Ameri- can question gave the next summons. The whole host of obscure politicians were instantly awakened in their retreats, and poured forth, brandishing their blunted weapons for the colonies. Every factious clamour from beyond the Atlantic was answered from our shores with either a shout of applause, or a groan of sympathy. Thousands and tens of thousands inflamed themselves into the conception, that the hourly fate oi England was hung in the balance of America. Thou- sands :ui(l lens of thovisands imbued themsolves with American politics, \\\\U\ the E.nglish comidcxioii bad vanished from tlu-ir features, and they actually saw no- thing in open revolt but ;i repulsion of lyraimy. 96 LIFE OF BURKE. We can now see, and we should see it with a natu- ral alarm at the power of political illusion, the mingled frenzy and folly of the in6uence which this crisis usurped even over the higher minds of England. We may well shrink at the strength of the whirlpool; when we see it sweeping Burke and Chatham round, through e very- circle hut the last; and those most muscular minds of the empire, harely making their escape from being absorbed and sunk in the common gulf of national perversion. Roman Catholic Emancipation was the next fit of the public folly. Its cry rang through the empire, until the whole tribe of loose politics, lurking discontents, and incurable bitternesses against all government; the whole fretful accumulation of imaginary wrongs, ima- ginary rights, and imaginary panaceas for all the dif- ficulties of mankind, were marshalled at the sound of that voice of evil. Other and more disciplined forces soon joined that levy. The priesthood sounded the trumpet from their altars. The armed banditti of Irish faction, long trained by mid-day insults of all au- thority, and midnight usurpation of all power, moved at the head of the insurrection, and Parliament was stormed. The great body of the English nation must be exonerated, in this instance, from the principle of the act, if they shall yet be compelled to share deeply in the misfortune of its consequences. But the battle was not now fought upon the old ground. The empire was excluded from the contest, and reserved only to be delivered over in fetters to the conqueror. The battle was fought not in Parliament, but in the Cabi- SPEECH ON AMERICAN AFFAIRS. 97 net. The only weapons of English allegiance and wis- dom, must be petition and remonstrance. The wea- pons of Popish ambition were arrogant appeals to fo- reign Powers, and sullen menaces of national separa- tion. The walls of the Cabinet, impreg'nable to Con- stitutional entreaty, broke down before the assaults of unconstitutional violence. Evil days are coming", evil days have come. Who talks now of the majesty of public deliberation ? Who tiiinks now of the dignity of halls, which once echoed the noblest aspirations of human wisdom, philoso- phy and courage ? Or who thinks of their old sacred- ness, without thinking of the Capitol taken by assault, and the Goth and the Gaul, the ferocious sons of the forest and the swamp, playing" their savage gambols amid its altars, plucking the Roman Senator from his curule chair, and rending' the ivory sceptre from his hand ? Burke's speech on American affairs, on the 22d of March 1775, was long recorded as one of his most re- markable displays of ability. In tlic general inofli- ciency of Opposition to concoct i-vcii ;iiiy plausible grievance, the task fell upon Burke, and he cm[)l<)yed himself in framing^ the memorjiblc " Thirteen Arti- cles," which were to be the purchase of national tran- (juillity. The project belonged to party, and it was, of course, extravag^