A complete edition of Burke's works has been published in sixteen volumes. His political, and not his philosophical writings, are now chiefly read. His 'Disquisition on the Sublime and Beautiful' is incorrect in theory and in many of its illustrations, though containing some just remarks and elegant criticism. His mighty understanding, as Sir James Mackintosh observed, was best employed in the middle region,

there the orator spent exclusively his few remaining orator, a philosopher, and practical statesman; and years. In 1795 he was rewarded with a handsome his knowledge, his industry, and perseverance, were pension from the civil list. It was in contemplation as remarkable as his genius. The protracted and to elevate him to the peerage, but the death of his brilliant career of this great man was terminated on only son (who was his colleague in the representa- the 9th of July 1797, and he was interred in the tion of Malton) rendered him indifferent, if not church at Beaconsfield.* averse, to such a distinction. The force and energy of his mind, and the creative richness of his imagination, continued with him to the last. His Letter to a Noble Lord on his Pension (1796), his Letters on a Regicide Peace (1796 and 1797), and his Observations on the Conduct of the Minority (1797), bear no trace of decaying vigour, though written after the age of sixty-seven. The keen interest with which he regarded passing events, particularly the great political drama then in action in France, is still manifest in these works, with general observations and reflections that strike from their profundity and their universal application. He possessed,' says Coleridge, and had sedulously sharpened that eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation to the laws which determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually to principles-he was a scientific statesman.' This reference to principles in the writings and speeches of Burke (and his speeches were all carefully prepared for the press), renders them still popular and valuable, when the circumstances and events to which they relate have long passed away, and been succeeded by others not less important; while their grander passages, their imagery and profusion of illustration, make them interesting to the orator and literary student. His imagination, it is admitted, was not always guided by correct taste; some of his images are low, and even border on disgust. His language and his conceptions are often hyperbolical; or it may be said, his mind, like the soil of the East, which he loved to paint, threw up a rank and luxuriant vegetation, in which unsightly weeds were mingled with the choicest flowers and the most precious fruit. He was at once a poet, an

* One of the happiest of his homely similes is contained in his reply to Pitt, on the subject of the commercial treaty with France in 1787. Pitt, he contended, had contemplated the subject with a narrowness peculiar to limited minds- as an affair of two little counting-houses, and not of two great the sign of the fleur-de-lis and the sign of the old red lion, for which should obtain the best custom.' In replying to the argument, that the Americans were our children, and should not have revolted against their parent, he said, They are our children, it is true, but when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a stone. When those children of ours wish to assimilate with their parent, and to respect the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom? His account of the ill-assorted administration of Lord Chatham is no less ludicrous than correct. He made an administration so chequered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented, and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement, here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; king's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name?" "Sir, you have the advantage of me;" "Mr Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons." I venture to say it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle bed.'

nations. He seems to consider it as a contention between

Beaconsfield.

between the details of business and the generalities of men as well as of books, of passions as well as of speculation.' In this department, his knowledge principles, was called into action, and his imagination found room for its lights and shadows among the varied realities and shifting scenes of life. A generous political opponent, and not less eloquent (though less original and less powerful) writer, has thus sketched the character of Burke:

'It is pretended,' says Robert Hall, that the moment we quit a state of nature, as we have given up the control of our actions in return for the superior advantages of law and government, we can never appeal again to any original principles, but must rest content with the advantages that are secured by the terms of the society. These are the views which distinguish the political writings of Mr Burke, an author whose splendid and unequal powers have given a vogue and fashion to certain tenets which, from any other pen, would have appeared abject and contemptible. In the field of reason the encounter would not be difficult, but who can withstand the fascination and magic of his eloquence? The excursions of his genius are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation

*A plain mural tablet has been erected in the church to the memory of Burke. The orator's residence was about a mile from the town of Beaconsfield. The house was afterwards partly destroyed by fire, and is now, we believe, wholly re

moved.

and every walk of art. His eulogium on the queen of France is a master-piece of pathetic composition; 80 select are its images, so fraught with tenderness, and so rich with colours "dipt in heaven," that he who can read it without rapture may have merit as a reasoner, but must resign all pretensions to taste and sensibility. His imagination is, in truth, only too prolific: a world of itself, where he dwells in the midst of chimerical alarms-is the dupe of his own enchantments, and starts, like Prospero, at the spectres of his own creation. His intellectual views in general, however, are wide and variegated, rather than distinct; and the light he has let in on the British constitution, in particular, resembles the coloured effulgence of a painted medium, a kind of mimic twilight, solemn and soothing to the senses, but better fitted for ornament than use.**

Sir James Mackintosh considered that Burke's best style was before the Indian business and the French Revolution had inflamed him. It was more chaste and simple; but his writings and speeches at this period can hardly be said to equal his later productions in vigour, fancy, or originality. The excitement of the times seemed to give a new development to his mental energies. The early speeches have most constitutional and practical value -the late ones most genius. The former are a solid and durable structure, and the latter its Corinthian

columns.'

[From the Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775.] Mr Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over the great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et qua sit poterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, lord-chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him-Young man, there is America which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by

*Hall's Works, 2d edition, vol. iv. p. 89.

succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day!

*

*

You cannot station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow; a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with the habits of their life; would soon forget a government by which they were disowned; would become hordes of English Tartars, and, pouring down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and all the slaves that adhere to them. Such would, and in no long time must be, the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing be the happy result of an endeavour to keep as a lair of Providence-increase and multiply.' Such would of wild beasts that earth which God, by an express charter, has given to the children of men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we could, and we have carefully attended every settlement with government.

Adhering, sir, as I do to this policy, as well as for the reasons I have just given, I think this new project of hedging in population to be neither prudent nor practicable.

To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task, I freely confess it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind; a disposition even to continue the restraint after the offence; looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is often more than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and immediate power of the colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor understanding a little preposterous to make them unserviceable, in order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than the old, and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But remember, when you have completed your system of impoverishment, that nature still proceeds in her ordinary course; and that discontent will increase with misery; and that there are critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity, may be strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma supersunt.

The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would betray you. An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.

*

*

[Mr Burke's Account of his Son.]

directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine. But to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling and master principles which, in the opinion of such men as I have mentioned, have no substantial existence, are in truth everything, and all in all. Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds go ill together. If we are conscious of our situation, and glow with zeal to fill our places as becomes our station and ourselves, we ought to My hold of the colonies is in the close affection auspicate all our public proceedings on America, with which grows from common names, from kindred blood, the old warning of the church, sursum corda! We from similar privileges, and equal protection. These ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as trust to which the order of Providence has called us. links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea | By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our of their civil rights associated with your government; ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glothey will cling and grapple to you; and no force rious empire; and have made the most extensive, and under heaven will be of power to tear them from their the only honourable conquests; not by destroying, allegiance. But let it be once understood that your but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happigovernment may be one thing and their privileges ness of the human race. Let us get an American another; that these two things may exist without any revenue, as we have got an American empire. English mutual relation, the cement is gone-the cohesion is privileges have made it all that it is; English priviloosened and everything hastens to decay and dis- leges alone will make it all it can be. In full confisolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep dence of this unalterable truth, I now (quod felix the sovereign authority of this country as the sanc-faustumquesit) lay the first stone of the temple of tuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our peace.* common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends you will have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that of succession, I should have been, according to my grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, they may have it from Prussia; but until you become a sort of founder of a family; I should have left a lost to all feeling of your true interest and your son, who, in all the points in which personal merit natural dignity, freedom they can have from none can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, but you. This is the commodity of price, of which in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in you have the monopoly. This is the true act of navi- every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomgation, which binds you to the commerce of the colo- plishment, would not have shown himself inferior nies, and through them secures to you the commerce to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he of the world. Deny them this participation of free-wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that protraces in his line. His Grace very soon would have dom, and you break that sole bond which originally vision which belonged more to mine than to me. He made, and must still preserve, the unity of the empire. Do not entertain so weak an imagination, as metrised every disproportion. It would not have been would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symthat your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your coquets and your clear- reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting ances, are what form the great securities of your in himself a salient living spring of generous and commerce. Do not dream that your letters of office, and your instructions, and your suspending clauses, manly action. Every day he lived, he would have reare the things that hold together the great contexture purchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times of this mysterious whole. These things do not make more, if ten times more he had received. He was your government. Dead instruments, passive tools made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatas they are, it is the spirit of the English communion ever but in the performance of some duty. At this that gives all their life and efficacy to them. It is exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not the spirit of the English constitution which, infused easily supplied. through the mighty mass, pervades, feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part of the empire, even down to the minutest member.

resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to
But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to
dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and
far better. The storm has gone over me, and I lie
(whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a
like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane
I am stripped of all my
has scattered about me.
honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate
on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most
unfeignedly recognise the divine justice, and in some
degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself
before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel
the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The
patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the con-
vulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted

Is it not the same virtue which does everything for us here in England? Do you imagine, then, that it is the land-tax act which raises your revenue? that it is the annual vote in the committee of supply which gives you your army? or that it is the mutiny bill which inspires it with bravery and discipline! No! Surely no! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber. All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us; a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material; and who, therefore, far from being qualified to being strong in numbers.

* At the conclusion of this speech, Mr Burke moved that

the right of parliamentary representation should be extended

to the American colonies, but his motion was negatived by 270 to 78. Indeed his most brilliant orations made little inpression on the House of Commons, the ministerial party be