The
difficulty
of keeping exposition from
being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to commu-
nicate knowledge on any subject.
being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to commu-
nicate knowledge on any subject.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v05 - Bro to Cai
along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is wight, the spur is bright,
The flashing pebbles flee.
Fled past on right and left how fast
Each forest, grove, and bower!
On right and left fled past how fast
Each city, town, and tower!
“Dost fear? dost fear? The moon shines clear,
Dost fear to ride with me?
Hurrah! hurrah! the dead can ride! »
( William, let them be! -
« See there, see there! What yonder swings
And creaks 'mid whistling rain? ”
1
## p. 2775 (#343) ###########################################
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
2775
«Gibbet and steel, th' accursed wheel,
A murderer in his chain.
« Hollo! thou felon, follow here:
To bridal bed we ride;
And thou shalt prance a fetter dance
Before me and my bride. ”
And hurry! hurry! clash, clash, clash!
The wasted form descends;
And feet as wind through hazel bush
The wild career attends.
Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee.
How fled what moonshine faintly showed!
How fled what darkness hid!
How fled the earth beneath their feet,
The heaven above their head!
«Dost fear ? dost fear ? the moon shines clear
And well the dead can ride;
Dost, faithful Helen, fear for them ? ” —
“O leave in peace the dead! )
«Barb! barb! methinks I hear the cock;
The sand will soon be run;
Barb! barb! I smell the morning air;
The race is well-nigh done. ”
Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee.
« Hurrah! hurrah! well ride the dead;
The bride, the bride is come;
And soon we reach the bridal bed,
For, Helen, here's my home. ”
Reluctant on its rusty hinge
Revolved an iron door,
And by the pale moon's setting beam
Were seen a church and tower.
## p. 2776 (#344) ###########################################
2776
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
With many a shriek and cry whiz round
The birds of midnight, scared;
And rustling like autumnal leaves
Unhallowed ghosts were heard.
O'er many a tomb and tombstone pale
He spurred the fiery horse,
Till sudden at an open grave
He checked the wondrous course.
The falling gauntlet quits the rein,
Down drops the casque of steel,
The cuirass leaves his shrinking side,
The spur his gory heel.
The eyes desert the naked skull,
The mold'ring flesh the bone,
Till Helen's lily arms entwine
A ghastly skeleton.
The furious barb snorts fire and foam,
And with a fearful bound,
Dissolves at once in empty air,
And leaves her on the ground.
Half seen by fits, by fits half heard,
Pale spectres flit along,
Wheel round the maid in dismal dance,
And howl the funeral song:-
«E'en when the heart's with anguish cleft,
Revere the doom of heaven.
Her soul is from her body reft;
Her spirit be forgiven! ”
THE WIVES OF WEINSBERG
W""
HICH way to Weinsberg ? neighbor, say!
'Tis sure a famous city:
It must have cradled, in its day,
Full many a maid of noble clay,
And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.
King Conrad once, historians say,
Fell out with this good city;
## p. 2777 (#345) ###########################################
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
2777
So down he came, one luckless day,
Horse, foot, dragoons, - in stern array,-
And cannon, — more's the pity!
Around the walls the artillery roared,
And bursting bombs their fury poured.
But naught the little town could scare;
Then, red with indignation,
He bade the herald straight repair
Up to the gates, and thunder there
The following proclamation :---
“Rascals! when I your town do take,
No living thing shall save its neck! »
Now, when the herald's trumpet sent
These tidings through the city,
To every house a death knell went;
Such murder-cries the hot air rent
Might move the stones to pity.
Then bread grew dear, but good advice
Could not be had for any price.
Then, “Woe is me! ” “O misery! )
What shrieks of lamentation !
And “Kyrie Eleison! ” cried
The pastors, and the flock replied,
“Lord! save us from starvation!
«Oh, woe is me, poor Corydon -
My neck, – my neck! I'm gone, - I'm gone!
Yet oft, when counsel, deed, and prayer
Had all proved unavailing,
When hope hung trembling on a hair,
How oft has woman's wit been there! -
A refuge never failing;
For woman's wit and Papal fraud,
Of olden time, were famed abroad.
A youthful dame, praised be her name! -
Last night had seen her plighted,
Whether in waking hour or dream,
Conceived a rare and novel scheme,
Which all the town delighted;
Which you, if you think otherwise,
Have leave to laugh at and despise.
At midnight hour, when culverin
And gun and bomb were sleeping,
## p. 2778 (#346) ###########################################
2778
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
Before the camp with mournful mien,
The loveliest embassy were seen,
All kneeling low and weeping.
So sweetly, plaintively they prayed,
But no reply save this was made :-
« The women have free leave to go,
Each with her choicest treasure;
But let the knaves their husbands know
That unto them the King will show
The weight of his displeasure. ”
With these sad terms the lovely train
Stole weeping from the camp again.
But when the morning gilt the sky.
What happened? Give attention:
The city gates wide open fly,
And all the wives come trudging by,
Each bearing — need I mention ?
Her own dear husband on her back,
All snugly seated in a sack!
Full many a sprig of court, the joke
Not relishing, protested,
And urged the King; but Conrad spoke:-
"A monarch's word must not be broke!
And here the matter rested.
“Bravo! ” he cried, “Ha, ha! Bravo!
Our lady guessed it would be so. ”
He pardoned all, and gave a ball
That night at royal quarters.
The fiddles squeaked, the trumpets blew,
And up and down the dancers flew,
Court sprigs with city daughters.
The mayor's wife — () rarest sight!
Danced with the shoemaker that night!
Ah, where is Weinsberg, sir, I pray?
'Tis sure a famous city:
It must have cradled in its day
Full many a maid of noble clay,
And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.
Translated by C. T. Brooks: Reprinted from (Representative German Poems)
by the courtesy of Mrs. Charles T. Brooks.
## p. 2778 (#347) ###########################################
## p. 2778 (#348) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE,
## p. 2778 (#349) ###########################################
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## p. 2778 (#350) ###########################################
EDMU URTE.
## p. 2779 (#351) ###########################################
2779
EDMUND BURKE
(1729-1797)
BY E. L. GODKIN
ES
DMUND BURKE, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729, was the son
of a successful attorney, who gave him as good an educa-
tion as the times and the country afforded. He went to
school to an excellent Quaker, and graduated at Trinity College in
1748. He appears to have then gone to London in 1750 to keep
terms,” as it was called, at the Middle Temple, with the view of
being admitted to the bar, in obedience to his father's desire and
ambition. But the desultory habit of mind, the preference for lit-
erature and philosophical speculation to connected study, which had
marked his career in college, followed him and prevented any seri-
ous application to the law. His father's patience was after a while
exhausted, and he withdrew Burke's allowance and left him to his
own resources.
This was in 1755, but in 1756 he married, and made his first
appearance in the literary world by the publication of a book.
About these years from 1750 to 1759 little is known. He published
two works, one a treatise on the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful, and the other a Vindication of Natural Society,' a
satire on Bolingbroke. Stray allusions and anecdotes about other
men in the diaries and correspondence of the time show that he
frequented the literary coffee-houses, and was gradually making an
impression on the authors and wits whom he met there. Besides the
two books we have mentioned, he produced some smaller things,
such as an Essay on the Drama,' and part of an Abridgment of
the History of England. But although these helped to secure him
admission to the literary set, they did not raise him out of the rank
of obscure literary adventurers, who from the Revolution of 1688,
and especially after the union with Scotland, began to swarm to
London from all parts of the three kingdoms. The first recognition
of him as a serious writer was his employment by Dodsley the book-
seller, at a salary of $100 a year, to edit the Annual Register, which
Dodsley founded in 1769. Considered as a biographical episode, this
may fairly be treated as a business man's certificate that Burke was
industrious and accurate. As his income from his father was with-
drawn or reduced in 1755, there remain four years during which his
way of supporting himself is unknown. His published works were
## p. 2780 (#352) ###########################################
2780
EDMUND BURKE
reasons.
certainly not “pot-boilers. ” He was probably to some extent de-
pendent on his wife's father, Dr. Nugent, an Irish physician who
when Burke made his acquaintance lived in Bath, but after his
daughter's marriage settled in London, and seems to have frequented
and have been acceptable in the same coffee-houses as Burke, and
for the same
But Burke was not a man to remain long
dependent on any one. These nine years were evidently not spent
fruitlessly. They had made him known and brought him to the
threshold of public life.
In 1759, political discussion as we understand it—that is, those
explorations of the foundations of political society and analyses of
social relations which now form our daily intellectual food — was
hardly known. The interest in religion as the chief human concern
was rapidly declining. The interest in human society as an organism
to be studied, and if need be, taken to pieces and put together again,
was only just beginning. Montesquieu's great work, The Spirit of
the Laws,' which demanded for expediency and convenience in legis-
lation the place which modern Europe had long assigned to authority,
had only appeared in 1748. Swift's satires had made serious breaches
in the wall of convention by which the State, in spite of the convul-
sions of the seventeenth century, was still surrounded. But the
writer whose speculations excited most attention in England was
Bolingbroke. The charm of his style and the variety of his interests
made him the chief intellectual topic of the London world in Burke's
early youth. To write like Bolingbroke was a legitimate ambition for
a young man. It is not surprising that Burke felt it, and that his
earliest political effort was a satire on Boling broke. It attracted the
attention of a politician, Gerard Hamilton, and he quickly picked up
Burke as his secretary, treated him badly, and was abandoned by
him in disgust at the end of six years.
The peculiar condition of the English governmental machine made
possible for men of Burke's kind at this period what would not be
possible now. The population had vanished from a good many old
boroughs, although their representation in Parliament remained, and
the selection of the members fell to the lords of the soil.
About one
hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons were in this
way chosen by great landed proprietors, and it is to be said to their
credit that they used their power freely to introduce unknown young
men of talent into public life. Moreover in many cases, if not in
most, small boroughs, however well peopled, were expected to elect
the proprietor's nominee. Burke after leaving Hamilton's service
was for a short time private secretary to Lord Rockingham, when
the latter succeeded Grenville in the Ministry in 1766; but when he
went out, Burke obtained a seat in Parliament in 1765 in the manner
## p. 2781 (#353) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2781
we have described, for the borough of Wendover, from Lord Verney,
who owned it. He made his first successful speech the same year,
and was complimented by Pitt. He was already recognized as a man
of enormous information, as any one who edited the Annual Register
had to be.
A man of such powers and tastes in that day naturally became a
pamphleteer. Outside of Parliament there was no other mode of dis-
cussing public affairs. The periodical press for purposes of discussion
did not exist. During and after the Great Rebellion, the pamphlet
had made its appearance as the chief instrument of controversy.
Defoe used it freely after the Restoration. Swift made a great hit
with it, and probably achieved the first sensational sale with his
pamphlet on The Conduct of the Allies. Bolingbroke's Patriot
King' was a work of the same class. As a rule the pamphlet ex-
posed or refuted somebody, even if it also freely expounded. It was
inevitable that Burke should early begin to wield this most powerful
of existing weapons. His antagonist was ready for him in the per-
son of George Grenville, the minister who had made way for Burke's
friend and patron Lord Rockingham. Grenville showed, as easily
as any party newspaper in our own day, that Rockingham and his
friends had ruined the country by mismanagement of the war and of
the finances. Burke refuted him with a mastery of facts and figures,
and a familiarity with the operations of trade and commerce, and a
power of exposition and illustration, and a comprehension of the
fundamental conditions of national economy, which at once made him
famous and a necessary man for the Whigs in the great struggle
with the Crown on which they were entering.
The nature of this struggle cannot be better described in brief
space than by saying that the King, from his accession to the throne
down to the close of the American War, was engaged in a persistent
effort to govern through ministers chosen and dismissed, as the Ger-
man ministers are now, by himself; while the subservience of Parlia-
ment was secured by the profuse use of pensions and places. To
this attempt, and all the abuses which inevitably grew out of it, the
- Whigs with Burke as their intellectual head offered a determined
resistance, and the conflict was one extraordinarily well calculated to
bring his peculiar powers into play.
The leading events in this long struggle were the attempt of the
House of Commons to disqualify Wilkes for a seat in the House, to
punish reporting their debates as a breach of privilege, and the
prosecution of the war against the American colonies. It may be
said to have begun at the accession of the King, and to have lasted
until the resignation of Lord North after the surrender of Cornwallis,
or from 1770 to 1783.
## p. 2782 (#354) ###########################################
2782
EDMUND BURKE
Burke's contributions to it were his pamphlet, (Thoughts on the
Cause of the Present Discontents,' and several speeches in Parlia-
ment: the first, like the pamphlet, on the general situation, and
others on minor incidents in the struggle. This pamphlet has not
only survived the controversy, but has become one of the most
famous papers in the political literature of the Anglo-Saxon race. It
is a century since every conspicuous figure in the drama passed
away; it is seventy years since every trace of the controversy dis-
appeared from English political life; most if not all of the principles
for which Burke contended have become commonplaces of English
constitutional practice; the discontents of that day have vanished as
completely as those of 1630: but Burke's pamphlet still holds a high
place in every course of English literature, and is still read and
pondered by every student of constitutional history and by every
speculator on government and political morals.
In 1774 Parliament was dissolved for the second time since Burke
entered it; and there a misfortune overtook him which illustrated in
a striking way the practical working of the British Constitution at
that period. Lord Verney, to whom he had owed his seat for the
borough of Wendover at two elections, had fallen into pecuniary
embarrassment and could no longer return him, because compelled
to sell his four boroughs. This left Burke high and dry, and he was
beginning to tremble for his political future, when he was returned
for the great commercial city of Bristol by a popular constituency.
The six years during which he sat for Bristol were the most splen-
did portion of his career. Other portions perhaps contributed as
much if not more to his literary or oratorical reputation; but this
brought out in very bold relief the great traits of character which
will always endear his memory to the lovers of national liberty, and
place him high among the framers of great political ideals. In the
first place, he propounded boldly to the Bristol electors the theory
that he was to be their representative but not their delegate; that
his parliamentary action must be governed by his own reason and
not by their wishes. In the next, he resolutely sacrificed his seat by
opposing his constituents in supporting the removal of the restric-
tions on Irish trade, of which English merchants reaped the benefit.
He would not be a party to what he considered the oppression of
his native country, no matter what might be the effect on his politi-
cal prospects; and in 1780 he was not re-elected.
But the greatest achievement of this period of his history was his
share in the controversy over the American War, which was really
not more a conflict with the colonies over taxation, than a resolute
and obstinate carrying out of the King's principles of government.
The colonies were, for the time being, simply resisting pretensions
## p. 2783 (#355) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2783
a
to which the kingdom at home submitted. Burke's speeches on
(American Taxation (1774), on Conciliation with America (1775),
and his "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777) on the same sub-
ject, taken as a sequel to the Thoughts on the Present Discontents,'
form a body of literature which it is not too much to pronounce not
only a history of the dispute with the colcnies, but a veritable politi-
cal manual. He does not confine himself to a minute description of
the arguments used in supporting the attempt to coerce America; he
furnishes as he goes along principles of legislation applicable almost
to any condition of society; illustrations which light up as by a sin-
gle flash problems of apparently inscrutable darkness; explanations
of great political failures; and receipts innumerable for political hap-
piness and success. A single sentence often disposes of half a dozen
fallacies firmly imbedded in governmental tradition. His own de-
scription of the rhetorical art of Charles Townshend was eminently
applicable to himself:— "He knew, better by far than any man I
ever was acquainted with, how to bring together within a short time
all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that
side of the question which he supported. ”
This observation suggests the great advantage he derives as
political instructor from the facts that all his political speeches and
writings are polemical.
The difficulty of keeping exposition from
being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to commu-
nicate knowledge on any subject. But Burke in every one of his
political theses had an antagonist, who was literally as he says him-
self, a helper: who did the work of an opposing counsel at the bar,
in bringing out into prominence all the weak points of Burke's case
and all the strong ones of his own; who set in array all the fallacies
to be exposed, all the idols to be overthrown, all the doubts to be
cleared up. Moreover he was not, like the man who usually figures
in controversial dialogues, a sham opponent, but a creature of flesh
and blood like Grenville, or the Sheriffs of Bristol, or the King's
friends, or the Irish Protestant party, who met Burke with an ardor
not inferior to his own. We consequently have, in all his papers
and speeches, the very best of which he was capable in thought and
expression, for he had not only to watch the city but to meet the
enemy in the gate.
After the close of the American War, the remainder of Burke's
career was filled with two great subjects, to which he devoted him-
self with an ardor which occasionally degenerated into fanaticism.
One was the government of India by the East India Company, and
the other was the French Revolution. Although the East India
Company had been long in existence, and had towards the middle
of the eighteenth century been rapidly extending its power and
## p. 2784 (#356) ###########################################
2784
EDMUND BURKE
influence, comparatively little had been known by the English public
of the nature of its operations. Attention had been drawn away
from it by the events in America and the long contest with the
King in England. By the close of the American War, however, the
“Nabobs, as they were called, -or returned English adventurers, —
began to make a deep impression on English society by the appar-
ent size of their fortunes and the lavishness of their expenditure.
Burke calculated that in his time they had brought home about
$200,000,000, with which they bought estates and seats in Parliament
and became a very conspicuous element in English public and pri-
vate life. At the same time, information as to the mode in which
their money was made and their government carried on was scanty
and hard to acquire. The press had no foreign correspondence;
India was six months away, and all the Europeans in it were either
servants of the Company, or remained in it on the Company's suf-
ferance. The Whigs finally determined to attempt a grand inquisi-
tion into its affairs, and a bill was brought in by Fox, withdrawing
the government of India from the Company and vesting it in a com-
mission named in the bill. This was preceded by eleven reports
from a Committee of Inquiry. But the bill failed utterly, and
brought down the Whig ministry, which did not get into office again
in Burke's time. This was followed in 1985, on Burke's instigation,
by the impeachment of the most conspicuous of the Company's offi-
cers, Warren Hastings. Burke was appointed one of the managers
on behalf of the Commons.
No episode in his career is so familiar to the public as his con-
duct of this trial, owing to Warren Hastings having been the subject
of one of the most popular of Macaulay's Essays. None brought out
more clearly Burke's great dialectical powers, or so well displayed
his mastery of details and his power of orderly exposition. The
trial lasted eight years, and was adjourned over from one Parlia-
mentary session to another. These delays were fatal to its success.
The public interest in it died out long before the close, as usual ir.
protracted legal prosecutions; the feeling spread that the defendant
could not be very guilty when it took so long to prove his crime.
Although Burke toiled over the case with extraordinary industry and
persistence, and an enthusiasm which never flagged, Hastings was
finally acquitted.
But the labors of the prosecution were not wholly vain. It awoke
in England an attention to the government of India which never
died out, and led to a considerable curtailing of the power of the
East India Company, and necessarily of its severity, in dealing with
Indian States. The impeachment was preceded by eleven reports
on the affairs of India by the Committee of the House of Commons,
## p. 2785 (#357) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2785
and the articles of impeachment were nearly as voluminous. Prob-
ably no question which has ever come before Parliament has received
so thorough an examination. Hardly less important was the report
of the Committee of the Commons (which consisted of the managers
of the impeachment) on the Lords' journals. This was an elaborate
examination of the rules of evidence which govern proceedings in
the trial of impeachments, or of persons guilty of malfeasance in
office. This has long been a bone of contention between lawyers
and statesmen. The Peers in the course of the trial had taken the
opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on
the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to
the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently un-
answerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the
State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of
evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules
administered in the ordinary law courts, and formed for the most
part for the guidance of the unskilled and often uneducated men
who compose juries. As a manual for the instruction of legislative
committees of inquiry it is therefore still very valuable, if it be not
a final authority.
Burke, during and after the Warren Hastings trial, fell into con-
siderable neglect and unpopularity. His zeal in the prosecution had
grown as the public interest in it declined, until it approached the
point of fanaticism. He took office in the coalition which succeeded
the Fox Whigs, and when the French Revolution broke out it found
him somewhat broken in nerves, irritated by his failures, and in less
cordial relations with some of his old friends and colleagues. He at
once arrayed himself fiercely against the Revolution, and broke finally
with what might be called the Liberty of all parties and creeds, and
stood forth to the world as the foremost champion of authority, pre-
scription, and precedent. Probably none of his writings are so famil-
iar to the general public as those which this crisis produced, such as
the “Thoughts on the French Revolution) and the Letters on
Regicide Peace. They are and will always remain, apart from the
splendor of the rhetoric, extremely interesting as the last words
spoken by a really great man on behalf of the old order. Old
Europe made through him the best possible defense of itself. He
told, as no one else could have told it, the story of what customs,
precedent, prescription, and established usage had done for its civ-
ilization; and he told it nevertheless as who was the friend
of rational progress, and had taken no small part in promoting it.
Only one other writer who followed him came near equaling him as
a defender of the past, and that was Joseph de Maistre; but he
approached the subject mainly from the religious side. To him the
old régime was the order of Providence. To Burke it was the best
VII-175
a
one
## p. 2786 (#358) ###########################################
2786
EDMUND BURKE
scheme of things that humanity could devise for the advancement
and preservation of civilization. In the papers we have mentioned,
which were the great literary sensations of Burke's day, everything
that could be said for the system of political ethics under which
Europe had lived for a thousand years was said with a vigor, in-
cisiveness, and wealth of illustration which must make them for all
time and in all countries the arsenal of those who love the ancient
ways and dread innovation.
The failure of the proceedings against Warren Hastings, and the
strong sympathy with the French Revolution - at least in its begin-
ning – displayed by the Whigs and by most of those with whom
Burke had acted in politics, had an unfortunate effect on his temper.
He broke off his friendship with Fox and others of his oldest associ-
ates and greatest admirers. He became hopeless and out of conceit
with the world around him. One might have set down some of this
at least to the effect of advancing years and declining health, if such
onslaughts on revolutionary ideas as his Reflections on the French
Revolution and his Letters on a Regicide Peace) did not reveal
the continued possession of all the literary qualities which had made
the success of his earlier works. Their faults are literally the faults
of youth: the brilliancy of the rhetoric, the heat of the invective,
the violence of the partisanship, the reluctance to admit the exist-
ence of any grievances in France to justify the popular onslaught on
the monarchy, the noblesse, and the Church. His one explanation of
the crisis and its attendant horrors was the instigation of the spirit
of evil. The effect on contemporary opinion was very great, and
did much to stimulate the conservative reaction in England which
carried on the Napoleonic wars and lasted down to the passage of
the Reform Bill in 1832.
There were, however, other causes for the cloud which came
over Burke's later years. In spite of his great services to his party
and his towering eminence as an orator and writer, he never ob-
tained a seat in the Cabinet. The Paymastership of the Forces, at a
salary of $20,000 a year, was the highest reward, either in honor or
money, which his party ever bestowed on him. It is true that in
those days the Whigs were very particular in reserving high places
for men of rank and family. In fact, their government was, from
the Revolution of 1688 on, a thorough oligarchy, divided among a
few great houses. That they should not have broken through this
rule in Burke's case, and admitted to the Cabinet a man to whom
they owed so much as they did to him, excited wonder in his own
day, and has down to our own time been one of the historical
mysteries on which the students of that period love to expend
their ingenuity. It is difficult to reconcile this exclusion and neg-
lect of Burke with the unbounded admiration lavished on him by the
## p. 2787 (#359) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2787
aristocratic leaders of the party. It is difficult too to account for
Burke's quiet acquiescence in what seems to be their ingratitude.
There had before his time been no similar instance of party indif-
ference to such claims as he could well make, on such honors and
rewards as the party had to bestow.
The most probable explanation of the affair is the one offered by
his latest and ablest biographer, Mr. John Morley. Burke had entered
public life without property,– probably the most serious mistake, if
in his case it can be called a mistake, which an English politician
can commit. It is a wise and salutary rule of English public life
that a
man who seeks a political career shall qualify for it by
pecuniary independence. It would be hardly fair in Burke's case
to say that he had sought a political career. The greatness of his
talents literally forced it on him. He became a statesman and
great Parliamentary orator, so to speak, in spite of himself. But he
must have early discovered the great barrier to complete success
created by his poverty. He may be said to have passed his life in
pecuniary embarrassment. This alone might not have shut him out
from the Whig official Paradise, for the same thing might have been
said of Pitt and Fox: but they had connections; they belonged by
birth and association to the Whig class. Burke's relatives were no
help or credit to him. In fact, they excited distrust of him. They
offended the fastidious aristocrats with whom he associated, and com-
bined with his impecuniousness to make him seem unsuitable for a
great place. These aristocrats were very good to him. They lent
him money freely, and settled a pension on him, and covered him
with social adulation; but they were never willing to put him beside
themselves in the government. His latter years therefore had an air
of tragedy. He was unpopular with most of those who in his earlier
years had adored him, and was the hero of those whom in earlier
years he had despised.
l
His only son, of whose capacity he had
formed a strange misconception, died young, and he passed his own
closing hours, as far as we can judge, with a sense of failure. But
he left one of the great names in English history. / There is no trace
of him in the statute book, but he has, it is safe to say, exercised a
profound influence in all succeeding legislation, both in England and
America. He has inspired or suggested nearly all the juridical
changes which distinguish the England of to-day from the England
of the last century, and is probably the only British politician whose
speeches and pamphlets, made for immediate results, have given him
immortality.
E. L. Godkin
## p. 2788 (#360) ###########################################
2788
EDMUND BURKE
FROM THE SPEECH ON (CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA
S'R:
IR. -It is not a pleasant consideration; but nothing in the
world can read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the
conduct of the Ministry in this business, upon the mischief
of not having large and liberal ideas in the management of great
affairs. Never have the servants of the State looked at the whole
of your complicated interests in one connected view. They have
taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one pre-
tense and some at another, just as they pressed, without any
sort of regard to their relations or dependencies. They never
had any kind of system, right or wrong; but only invented oc-
casionally some 'miserable tale for the day, in order meanly
to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted.
And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of mean-
ness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of
an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found
and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such
management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so
paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignifi-
cant an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken
the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.
Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the
precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great.
You were distressed in the affairs of the East India Company;
and you well know what sort of things are involved in the com-
prehensive energy of that significant appellation. I am not called
upon to enlarge to you on that danger; which you thought proper
yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the world with all the
parade of indiscreet declamation. The monopoly of the most lucra-
tive trades and the possession of imperial revenues had brought
you to the verge of beggary and ruin.
Such was your repre-
sentation — such, in some measure, was your case.
The vent of
ten millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by the
operation of an injudicious tax and rotting in the warehouses of
the company, would have prevented all this distress, and all that
series of desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged
to take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that
vent which no other part of the world can furnish but America,
where tea is next to a necessary of life and where the demand
## p. 2789 (#361) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2789
.
grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India Com-
mittees have done us at least so much good as to let us know
that without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India
revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with
this country.
It is through the American trade of tea that your
East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with
their burden. They are ponderous indeed, and they must have
that great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head.
It is the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit of the
West and of the East. This folly has thrown open folding-doors
to contraband, and will be the means of giving the profits of the
trade of your colonies to every nation but yourselves. Never did
a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble. It
must be given up. For on what principles does it stand? This
famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a de-
scription of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive
(but too comprehensive! ) vocabulary of finance-a preambulary
tar. It is indeed a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of
disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but
benefit to the imposers or satisfaction to the subject.
Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America
than to see you go out of the plain high-road of finance, and
give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests,
merely for the sake of insulting your colonies ? No man ever
doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of
threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or will
bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated; and
two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of
the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs
were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon
for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings
have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune ? No! but the payment of
half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would
have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble of
which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the
Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.
It is then, sir, upon the principle of this measure, and noth-
ing else, that we at issue. It is a principle of political
expediency. Your Act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise
a revenue in America; your Act of 1769, which takes away that
revenue, contradicts the Act of 1767, and by something much
are
## p. 2790 (#362) ###########################################
2790
EDMUND BURKE
a
stronger than words asserts that it is not expedient.
It is a
reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn Parliamentary
declaration of the expediency of any object for which at the same
time you make no sort of provision. And pray, sir, let not this
circumstance escape you,- it is very material: that the preamble of
this Act which we wish to repeal is not declaratory of a right,
as some gentlemen seem to argue it; it is only a recital of the
cxpedicncy of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to
have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by
ways and means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to
be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore at
this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,
a quiddity, a thing that wants not only a substance, but even
name; for a thing which is neither abstract right nor profitable
enjoyment.
They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know
not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incum-
brance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with your
interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the
thing you contend for to be reason; show it to be common-sense;
show it to be the means of attaining some useful end: and then
I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what
dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity, is more
than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said
well - indeed, in most of his general observations I agree with
him -- he says that this subject does not stand as it did for-
merly. Oh, certainly not! Every hour you continue on this
ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on you; and therefore
my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you
The disgrace and the necessity of yielding, both of them,
grow upon you every hour of your delay.
To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so
distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that
would ennoble the flights of the highest genius and obtain par.
don for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a
good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more
firm. I derived at length some confidence from what in other
circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious,
even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of
what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that
you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had
can.
## p. 2791 (#363) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2791
nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand,
being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or
adventitious, I was very sure that if my proposition were futile
or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed,
there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or
delude you.
You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it
just as it deserves.
The proposition is Peace. Not Peace through the medium of
War; not Peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate
and endless negotiations; not Peace to arise out of universal dis-
cord, fomented from principle in all parts of the empire; not
Peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing
questions, or the precise marking of the shadowy boundaries of a
complex government. It is simple Peace, sought in its natural
course and in its ordinary haunts. It is Peace sought in the
spirit of Peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose
by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the
former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother coun-
try, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from
a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in
the same act and by the bond of the very same interest which
reconciles them to British government.
My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the
parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world
endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at
the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of
no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity
of heart is an healing and cementing principle. My plan, there-
fore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable,
may disappoint some people when they hear it. It has nothing
to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is
nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the
splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table
by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill
your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the
interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the peace
amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of
finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by
bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer,
and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers
of algebra to equalize and settle.
## p. 2792 (#364) ###########################################
2792
EDMUND BURKE
The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however,
one great advantage from the proposition and registry of that
noble lord's project. The idea of conciliation is admissible.
First, the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble
lord, has admitted -- notwithstanding the menacing front of our
address, notwithstanding our heavy bills of pains and penalties
— that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of
free grace and bounty.
The House has gone further: it has declared conciliation ad-
missible, previous to any submission on the part of America. It
has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted
that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the right of
taxation were not wholly unfounded. That right, thus exerted,
is allowed to have something reprehensible in it — something un-
wise, or something grievous: since in the midst of our heat and
resentment we of ourselves have proposed a capital alteration,
and in order to get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable
have instituted a mode that is altogether new; one that is in-
deed wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of
Parliament.
The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my pur-
pose. The means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his
ideas into execution, I think indeed are very indifferently suited
to the end; and this I shall endeavor to show you before I sit
down. But for the present I take my ground on the admitted
principle. I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation;
and where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does
in a manner always imply concession on the one part or on the
other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming
that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and ac-
knowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion,
by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may
offer peace with honor and safety. Such an offer from such a
power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions
of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is
disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior, and he loses
forever that time and those chances which, as they happen to
all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.
The capital leading questions on which you must this day
decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and
secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of
## p. 2793 (#365) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2793
these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty
of observing to you) some ground. But I am sensible that a
good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, sir, to enable us to
determine both on the one and the other of these great questions
with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to
consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances
of the object which we have before us. Because after all our
struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America
according to that nature and to those circumstances, and not
according to our own imaginations nor according to abstract ideas
of right; by no means according to mere general theories of gov-
ernment, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situa-
tion, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor,
with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of
these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am
able to state them.
FROM THE SPEECH ON (THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS)
THAT
HAT you may judge what chance any honorable and useful
end of government has for a provision that comes in for
the leavings of these gluttonous demands, I must take it
on myself to bring before you the real condition of that abused,
insulted, racked, and ruined country, though in truth my mind
revolts from it; though you will hear it with horror: and I con-
fess I tremble when I think on these awful and confounding
dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with a few
words as to the cause.
The great fortunes made in India in the beginnings of con-
quest naturally excited an emulation in all the parts, and through
the whole succession, of the company's service. But in the com-
pany it gave rise to other sentiments. They did not find the
new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to them. On
the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolument was gen-
erally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began also to fear
that the fortune of war might take away what the fortune of
war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by repeated
injunctions and menaces; and that the servants might not be
bribed into them by the native princes, they were strictly for-
bidden to take any money whatsoever from their hands.
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is wight, the spur is bright,
The flashing pebbles flee.
Fled past on right and left how fast
Each forest, grove, and bower!
On right and left fled past how fast
Each city, town, and tower!
“Dost fear? dost fear? The moon shines clear,
Dost fear to ride with me?
Hurrah! hurrah! the dead can ride! »
( William, let them be! -
« See there, see there! What yonder swings
And creaks 'mid whistling rain? ”
1
## p. 2775 (#343) ###########################################
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
2775
«Gibbet and steel, th' accursed wheel,
A murderer in his chain.
« Hollo! thou felon, follow here:
To bridal bed we ride;
And thou shalt prance a fetter dance
Before me and my bride. ”
And hurry! hurry! clash, clash, clash!
The wasted form descends;
And feet as wind through hazel bush
The wild career attends.
Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee.
How fled what moonshine faintly showed!
How fled what darkness hid!
How fled the earth beneath their feet,
The heaven above their head!
«Dost fear ? dost fear ? the moon shines clear
And well the dead can ride;
Dost, faithful Helen, fear for them ? ” —
“O leave in peace the dead! )
«Barb! barb! methinks I hear the cock;
The sand will soon be run;
Barb! barb! I smell the morning air;
The race is well-nigh done. ”
Tramp! tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash! splash! along the sea;
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee.
« Hurrah! hurrah! well ride the dead;
The bride, the bride is come;
And soon we reach the bridal bed,
For, Helen, here's my home. ”
Reluctant on its rusty hinge
Revolved an iron door,
And by the pale moon's setting beam
Were seen a church and tower.
## p. 2776 (#344) ###########################################
2776
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
With many a shriek and cry whiz round
The birds of midnight, scared;
And rustling like autumnal leaves
Unhallowed ghosts were heard.
O'er many a tomb and tombstone pale
He spurred the fiery horse,
Till sudden at an open grave
He checked the wondrous course.
The falling gauntlet quits the rein,
Down drops the casque of steel,
The cuirass leaves his shrinking side,
The spur his gory heel.
The eyes desert the naked skull,
The mold'ring flesh the bone,
Till Helen's lily arms entwine
A ghastly skeleton.
The furious barb snorts fire and foam,
And with a fearful bound,
Dissolves at once in empty air,
And leaves her on the ground.
Half seen by fits, by fits half heard,
Pale spectres flit along,
Wheel round the maid in dismal dance,
And howl the funeral song:-
«E'en when the heart's with anguish cleft,
Revere the doom of heaven.
Her soul is from her body reft;
Her spirit be forgiven! ”
THE WIVES OF WEINSBERG
W""
HICH way to Weinsberg ? neighbor, say!
'Tis sure a famous city:
It must have cradled, in its day,
Full many a maid of noble clay,
And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.
King Conrad once, historians say,
Fell out with this good city;
## p. 2777 (#345) ###########################################
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
2777
So down he came, one luckless day,
Horse, foot, dragoons, - in stern array,-
And cannon, — more's the pity!
Around the walls the artillery roared,
And bursting bombs their fury poured.
But naught the little town could scare;
Then, red with indignation,
He bade the herald straight repair
Up to the gates, and thunder there
The following proclamation :---
“Rascals! when I your town do take,
No living thing shall save its neck! »
Now, when the herald's trumpet sent
These tidings through the city,
To every house a death knell went;
Such murder-cries the hot air rent
Might move the stones to pity.
Then bread grew dear, but good advice
Could not be had for any price.
Then, “Woe is me! ” “O misery! )
What shrieks of lamentation !
And “Kyrie Eleison! ” cried
The pastors, and the flock replied,
“Lord! save us from starvation!
«Oh, woe is me, poor Corydon -
My neck, – my neck! I'm gone, - I'm gone!
Yet oft, when counsel, deed, and prayer
Had all proved unavailing,
When hope hung trembling on a hair,
How oft has woman's wit been there! -
A refuge never failing;
For woman's wit and Papal fraud,
Of olden time, were famed abroad.
A youthful dame, praised be her name! -
Last night had seen her plighted,
Whether in waking hour or dream,
Conceived a rare and novel scheme,
Which all the town delighted;
Which you, if you think otherwise,
Have leave to laugh at and despise.
At midnight hour, when culverin
And gun and bomb were sleeping,
## p. 2778 (#346) ###########################################
2778
GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER
Before the camp with mournful mien,
The loveliest embassy were seen,
All kneeling low and weeping.
So sweetly, plaintively they prayed,
But no reply save this was made :-
« The women have free leave to go,
Each with her choicest treasure;
But let the knaves their husbands know
That unto them the King will show
The weight of his displeasure. ”
With these sad terms the lovely train
Stole weeping from the camp again.
But when the morning gilt the sky.
What happened? Give attention:
The city gates wide open fly,
And all the wives come trudging by,
Each bearing — need I mention ?
Her own dear husband on her back,
All snugly seated in a sack!
Full many a sprig of court, the joke
Not relishing, protested,
And urged the King; but Conrad spoke:-
"A monarch's word must not be broke!
And here the matter rested.
“Bravo! ” he cried, “Ha, ha! Bravo!
Our lady guessed it would be so. ”
He pardoned all, and gave a ball
That night at royal quarters.
The fiddles squeaked, the trumpets blew,
And up and down the dancers flew,
Court sprigs with city daughters.
The mayor's wife — () rarest sight!
Danced with the shoemaker that night!
Ah, where is Weinsberg, sir, I pray?
'Tis sure a famous city:
It must have cradled in its day
Full many a maid of noble clay,
And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.
Translated by C. T. Brooks: Reprinted from (Representative German Poems)
by the courtesy of Mrs. Charles T. Brooks.
## p. 2778 (#347) ###########################################
## p. 2778 (#348) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE,
## p. 2778 (#349) ###########################################
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## p. 2778 (#350) ###########################################
EDMU URTE.
## p. 2779 (#351) ###########################################
2779
EDMUND BURKE
(1729-1797)
BY E. L. GODKIN
ES
DMUND BURKE, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729, was the son
of a successful attorney, who gave him as good an educa-
tion as the times and the country afforded. He went to
school to an excellent Quaker, and graduated at Trinity College in
1748. He appears to have then gone to London in 1750 to keep
terms,” as it was called, at the Middle Temple, with the view of
being admitted to the bar, in obedience to his father's desire and
ambition. But the desultory habit of mind, the preference for lit-
erature and philosophical speculation to connected study, which had
marked his career in college, followed him and prevented any seri-
ous application to the law. His father's patience was after a while
exhausted, and he withdrew Burke's allowance and left him to his
own resources.
This was in 1755, but in 1756 he married, and made his first
appearance in the literary world by the publication of a book.
About these years from 1750 to 1759 little is known. He published
two works, one a treatise on the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful, and the other a Vindication of Natural Society,' a
satire on Bolingbroke. Stray allusions and anecdotes about other
men in the diaries and correspondence of the time show that he
frequented the literary coffee-houses, and was gradually making an
impression on the authors and wits whom he met there. Besides the
two books we have mentioned, he produced some smaller things,
such as an Essay on the Drama,' and part of an Abridgment of
the History of England. But although these helped to secure him
admission to the literary set, they did not raise him out of the rank
of obscure literary adventurers, who from the Revolution of 1688,
and especially after the union with Scotland, began to swarm to
London from all parts of the three kingdoms. The first recognition
of him as a serious writer was his employment by Dodsley the book-
seller, at a salary of $100 a year, to edit the Annual Register, which
Dodsley founded in 1769. Considered as a biographical episode, this
may fairly be treated as a business man's certificate that Burke was
industrious and accurate. As his income from his father was with-
drawn or reduced in 1755, there remain four years during which his
way of supporting himself is unknown. His published works were
## p. 2780 (#352) ###########################################
2780
EDMUND BURKE
reasons.
certainly not “pot-boilers. ” He was probably to some extent de-
pendent on his wife's father, Dr. Nugent, an Irish physician who
when Burke made his acquaintance lived in Bath, but after his
daughter's marriage settled in London, and seems to have frequented
and have been acceptable in the same coffee-houses as Burke, and
for the same
But Burke was not a man to remain long
dependent on any one. These nine years were evidently not spent
fruitlessly. They had made him known and brought him to the
threshold of public life.
In 1759, political discussion as we understand it—that is, those
explorations of the foundations of political society and analyses of
social relations which now form our daily intellectual food — was
hardly known. The interest in religion as the chief human concern
was rapidly declining. The interest in human society as an organism
to be studied, and if need be, taken to pieces and put together again,
was only just beginning. Montesquieu's great work, The Spirit of
the Laws,' which demanded for expediency and convenience in legis-
lation the place which modern Europe had long assigned to authority,
had only appeared in 1748. Swift's satires had made serious breaches
in the wall of convention by which the State, in spite of the convul-
sions of the seventeenth century, was still surrounded. But the
writer whose speculations excited most attention in England was
Bolingbroke. The charm of his style and the variety of his interests
made him the chief intellectual topic of the London world in Burke's
early youth. To write like Bolingbroke was a legitimate ambition for
a young man. It is not surprising that Burke felt it, and that his
earliest political effort was a satire on Boling broke. It attracted the
attention of a politician, Gerard Hamilton, and he quickly picked up
Burke as his secretary, treated him badly, and was abandoned by
him in disgust at the end of six years.
The peculiar condition of the English governmental machine made
possible for men of Burke's kind at this period what would not be
possible now. The population had vanished from a good many old
boroughs, although their representation in Parliament remained, and
the selection of the members fell to the lords of the soil.
About one
hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons were in this
way chosen by great landed proprietors, and it is to be said to their
credit that they used their power freely to introduce unknown young
men of talent into public life. Moreover in many cases, if not in
most, small boroughs, however well peopled, were expected to elect
the proprietor's nominee. Burke after leaving Hamilton's service
was for a short time private secretary to Lord Rockingham, when
the latter succeeded Grenville in the Ministry in 1766; but when he
went out, Burke obtained a seat in Parliament in 1765 in the manner
## p. 2781 (#353) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2781
we have described, for the borough of Wendover, from Lord Verney,
who owned it. He made his first successful speech the same year,
and was complimented by Pitt. He was already recognized as a man
of enormous information, as any one who edited the Annual Register
had to be.
A man of such powers and tastes in that day naturally became a
pamphleteer. Outside of Parliament there was no other mode of dis-
cussing public affairs. The periodical press for purposes of discussion
did not exist. During and after the Great Rebellion, the pamphlet
had made its appearance as the chief instrument of controversy.
Defoe used it freely after the Restoration. Swift made a great hit
with it, and probably achieved the first sensational sale with his
pamphlet on The Conduct of the Allies. Bolingbroke's Patriot
King' was a work of the same class. As a rule the pamphlet ex-
posed or refuted somebody, even if it also freely expounded. It was
inevitable that Burke should early begin to wield this most powerful
of existing weapons. His antagonist was ready for him in the per-
son of George Grenville, the minister who had made way for Burke's
friend and patron Lord Rockingham. Grenville showed, as easily
as any party newspaper in our own day, that Rockingham and his
friends had ruined the country by mismanagement of the war and of
the finances. Burke refuted him with a mastery of facts and figures,
and a familiarity with the operations of trade and commerce, and a
power of exposition and illustration, and a comprehension of the
fundamental conditions of national economy, which at once made him
famous and a necessary man for the Whigs in the great struggle
with the Crown on which they were entering.
The nature of this struggle cannot be better described in brief
space than by saying that the King, from his accession to the throne
down to the close of the American War, was engaged in a persistent
effort to govern through ministers chosen and dismissed, as the Ger-
man ministers are now, by himself; while the subservience of Parlia-
ment was secured by the profuse use of pensions and places. To
this attempt, and all the abuses which inevitably grew out of it, the
- Whigs with Burke as their intellectual head offered a determined
resistance, and the conflict was one extraordinarily well calculated to
bring his peculiar powers into play.
The leading events in this long struggle were the attempt of the
House of Commons to disqualify Wilkes for a seat in the House, to
punish reporting their debates as a breach of privilege, and the
prosecution of the war against the American colonies. It may be
said to have begun at the accession of the King, and to have lasted
until the resignation of Lord North after the surrender of Cornwallis,
or from 1770 to 1783.
## p. 2782 (#354) ###########################################
2782
EDMUND BURKE
Burke's contributions to it were his pamphlet, (Thoughts on the
Cause of the Present Discontents,' and several speeches in Parlia-
ment: the first, like the pamphlet, on the general situation, and
others on minor incidents in the struggle. This pamphlet has not
only survived the controversy, but has become one of the most
famous papers in the political literature of the Anglo-Saxon race. It
is a century since every conspicuous figure in the drama passed
away; it is seventy years since every trace of the controversy dis-
appeared from English political life; most if not all of the principles
for which Burke contended have become commonplaces of English
constitutional practice; the discontents of that day have vanished as
completely as those of 1630: but Burke's pamphlet still holds a high
place in every course of English literature, and is still read and
pondered by every student of constitutional history and by every
speculator on government and political morals.
In 1774 Parliament was dissolved for the second time since Burke
entered it; and there a misfortune overtook him which illustrated in
a striking way the practical working of the British Constitution at
that period. Lord Verney, to whom he had owed his seat for the
borough of Wendover at two elections, had fallen into pecuniary
embarrassment and could no longer return him, because compelled
to sell his four boroughs. This left Burke high and dry, and he was
beginning to tremble for his political future, when he was returned
for the great commercial city of Bristol by a popular constituency.
The six years during which he sat for Bristol were the most splen-
did portion of his career. Other portions perhaps contributed as
much if not more to his literary or oratorical reputation; but this
brought out in very bold relief the great traits of character which
will always endear his memory to the lovers of national liberty, and
place him high among the framers of great political ideals. In the
first place, he propounded boldly to the Bristol electors the theory
that he was to be their representative but not their delegate; that
his parliamentary action must be governed by his own reason and
not by their wishes. In the next, he resolutely sacrificed his seat by
opposing his constituents in supporting the removal of the restric-
tions on Irish trade, of which English merchants reaped the benefit.
He would not be a party to what he considered the oppression of
his native country, no matter what might be the effect on his politi-
cal prospects; and in 1780 he was not re-elected.
But the greatest achievement of this period of his history was his
share in the controversy over the American War, which was really
not more a conflict with the colonies over taxation, than a resolute
and obstinate carrying out of the King's principles of government.
The colonies were, for the time being, simply resisting pretensions
## p. 2783 (#355) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2783
a
to which the kingdom at home submitted. Burke's speeches on
(American Taxation (1774), on Conciliation with America (1775),
and his "Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777) on the same sub-
ject, taken as a sequel to the Thoughts on the Present Discontents,'
form a body of literature which it is not too much to pronounce not
only a history of the dispute with the colcnies, but a veritable politi-
cal manual. He does not confine himself to a minute description of
the arguments used in supporting the attempt to coerce America; he
furnishes as he goes along principles of legislation applicable almost
to any condition of society; illustrations which light up as by a sin-
gle flash problems of apparently inscrutable darkness; explanations
of great political failures; and receipts innumerable for political hap-
piness and success. A single sentence often disposes of half a dozen
fallacies firmly imbedded in governmental tradition. His own de-
scription of the rhetorical art of Charles Townshend was eminently
applicable to himself:— "He knew, better by far than any man I
ever was acquainted with, how to bring together within a short time
all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that
side of the question which he supported. ”
This observation suggests the great advantage he derives as
political instructor from the facts that all his political speeches and
writings are polemical.
The difficulty of keeping exposition from
being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to commu-
nicate knowledge on any subject. But Burke in every one of his
political theses had an antagonist, who was literally as he says him-
self, a helper: who did the work of an opposing counsel at the bar,
in bringing out into prominence all the weak points of Burke's case
and all the strong ones of his own; who set in array all the fallacies
to be exposed, all the idols to be overthrown, all the doubts to be
cleared up. Moreover he was not, like the man who usually figures
in controversial dialogues, a sham opponent, but a creature of flesh
and blood like Grenville, or the Sheriffs of Bristol, or the King's
friends, or the Irish Protestant party, who met Burke with an ardor
not inferior to his own. We consequently have, in all his papers
and speeches, the very best of which he was capable in thought and
expression, for he had not only to watch the city but to meet the
enemy in the gate.
After the close of the American War, the remainder of Burke's
career was filled with two great subjects, to which he devoted him-
self with an ardor which occasionally degenerated into fanaticism.
One was the government of India by the East India Company, and
the other was the French Revolution. Although the East India
Company had been long in existence, and had towards the middle
of the eighteenth century been rapidly extending its power and
## p. 2784 (#356) ###########################################
2784
EDMUND BURKE
influence, comparatively little had been known by the English public
of the nature of its operations. Attention had been drawn away
from it by the events in America and the long contest with the
King in England. By the close of the American War, however, the
“Nabobs, as they were called, -or returned English adventurers, —
began to make a deep impression on English society by the appar-
ent size of their fortunes and the lavishness of their expenditure.
Burke calculated that in his time they had brought home about
$200,000,000, with which they bought estates and seats in Parliament
and became a very conspicuous element in English public and pri-
vate life. At the same time, information as to the mode in which
their money was made and their government carried on was scanty
and hard to acquire. The press had no foreign correspondence;
India was six months away, and all the Europeans in it were either
servants of the Company, or remained in it on the Company's suf-
ferance. The Whigs finally determined to attempt a grand inquisi-
tion into its affairs, and a bill was brought in by Fox, withdrawing
the government of India from the Company and vesting it in a com-
mission named in the bill. This was preceded by eleven reports
from a Committee of Inquiry. But the bill failed utterly, and
brought down the Whig ministry, which did not get into office again
in Burke's time. This was followed in 1985, on Burke's instigation,
by the impeachment of the most conspicuous of the Company's offi-
cers, Warren Hastings. Burke was appointed one of the managers
on behalf of the Commons.
No episode in his career is so familiar to the public as his con-
duct of this trial, owing to Warren Hastings having been the subject
of one of the most popular of Macaulay's Essays. None brought out
more clearly Burke's great dialectical powers, or so well displayed
his mastery of details and his power of orderly exposition. The
trial lasted eight years, and was adjourned over from one Parlia-
mentary session to another. These delays were fatal to its success.
The public interest in it died out long before the close, as usual ir.
protracted legal prosecutions; the feeling spread that the defendant
could not be very guilty when it took so long to prove his crime.
Although Burke toiled over the case with extraordinary industry and
persistence, and an enthusiasm which never flagged, Hastings was
finally acquitted.
But the labors of the prosecution were not wholly vain. It awoke
in England an attention to the government of India which never
died out, and led to a considerable curtailing of the power of the
East India Company, and necessarily of its severity, in dealing with
Indian States. The impeachment was preceded by eleven reports
on the affairs of India by the Committee of the House of Commons,
## p. 2785 (#357) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2785
and the articles of impeachment were nearly as voluminous. Prob-
ably no question which has ever come before Parliament has received
so thorough an examination. Hardly less important was the report
of the Committee of the Commons (which consisted of the managers
of the impeachment) on the Lords' journals. This was an elaborate
examination of the rules of evidence which govern proceedings in
the trial of impeachments, or of persons guilty of malfeasance in
office. This has long been a bone of contention between lawyers
and statesmen. The Peers in the course of the trial had taken the
opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on
the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to
the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently un-
answerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the
State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of
evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules
administered in the ordinary law courts, and formed for the most
part for the guidance of the unskilled and often uneducated men
who compose juries. As a manual for the instruction of legislative
committees of inquiry it is therefore still very valuable, if it be not
a final authority.
Burke, during and after the Warren Hastings trial, fell into con-
siderable neglect and unpopularity. His zeal in the prosecution had
grown as the public interest in it declined, until it approached the
point of fanaticism. He took office in the coalition which succeeded
the Fox Whigs, and when the French Revolution broke out it found
him somewhat broken in nerves, irritated by his failures, and in less
cordial relations with some of his old friends and colleagues. He at
once arrayed himself fiercely against the Revolution, and broke finally
with what might be called the Liberty of all parties and creeds, and
stood forth to the world as the foremost champion of authority, pre-
scription, and precedent. Probably none of his writings are so famil-
iar to the general public as those which this crisis produced, such as
the “Thoughts on the French Revolution) and the Letters on
Regicide Peace. They are and will always remain, apart from the
splendor of the rhetoric, extremely interesting as the last words
spoken by a really great man on behalf of the old order. Old
Europe made through him the best possible defense of itself. He
told, as no one else could have told it, the story of what customs,
precedent, prescription, and established usage had done for its civ-
ilization; and he told it nevertheless as who was the friend
of rational progress, and had taken no small part in promoting it.
Only one other writer who followed him came near equaling him as
a defender of the past, and that was Joseph de Maistre; but he
approached the subject mainly from the religious side. To him the
old régime was the order of Providence. To Burke it was the best
VII-175
a
one
## p. 2786 (#358) ###########################################
2786
EDMUND BURKE
scheme of things that humanity could devise for the advancement
and preservation of civilization. In the papers we have mentioned,
which were the great literary sensations of Burke's day, everything
that could be said for the system of political ethics under which
Europe had lived for a thousand years was said with a vigor, in-
cisiveness, and wealth of illustration which must make them for all
time and in all countries the arsenal of those who love the ancient
ways and dread innovation.
The failure of the proceedings against Warren Hastings, and the
strong sympathy with the French Revolution - at least in its begin-
ning – displayed by the Whigs and by most of those with whom
Burke had acted in politics, had an unfortunate effect on his temper.
He broke off his friendship with Fox and others of his oldest associ-
ates and greatest admirers. He became hopeless and out of conceit
with the world around him. One might have set down some of this
at least to the effect of advancing years and declining health, if such
onslaughts on revolutionary ideas as his Reflections on the French
Revolution and his Letters on a Regicide Peace) did not reveal
the continued possession of all the literary qualities which had made
the success of his earlier works. Their faults are literally the faults
of youth: the brilliancy of the rhetoric, the heat of the invective,
the violence of the partisanship, the reluctance to admit the exist-
ence of any grievances in France to justify the popular onslaught on
the monarchy, the noblesse, and the Church. His one explanation of
the crisis and its attendant horrors was the instigation of the spirit
of evil. The effect on contemporary opinion was very great, and
did much to stimulate the conservative reaction in England which
carried on the Napoleonic wars and lasted down to the passage of
the Reform Bill in 1832.
There were, however, other causes for the cloud which came
over Burke's later years. In spite of his great services to his party
and his towering eminence as an orator and writer, he never ob-
tained a seat in the Cabinet. The Paymastership of the Forces, at a
salary of $20,000 a year, was the highest reward, either in honor or
money, which his party ever bestowed on him. It is true that in
those days the Whigs were very particular in reserving high places
for men of rank and family. In fact, their government was, from
the Revolution of 1688 on, a thorough oligarchy, divided among a
few great houses. That they should not have broken through this
rule in Burke's case, and admitted to the Cabinet a man to whom
they owed so much as they did to him, excited wonder in his own
day, and has down to our own time been one of the historical
mysteries on which the students of that period love to expend
their ingenuity. It is difficult to reconcile this exclusion and neg-
lect of Burke with the unbounded admiration lavished on him by the
## p. 2787 (#359) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2787
aristocratic leaders of the party. It is difficult too to account for
Burke's quiet acquiescence in what seems to be their ingratitude.
There had before his time been no similar instance of party indif-
ference to such claims as he could well make, on such honors and
rewards as the party had to bestow.
The most probable explanation of the affair is the one offered by
his latest and ablest biographer, Mr. John Morley. Burke had entered
public life without property,– probably the most serious mistake, if
in his case it can be called a mistake, which an English politician
can commit. It is a wise and salutary rule of English public life
that a
man who seeks a political career shall qualify for it by
pecuniary independence. It would be hardly fair in Burke's case
to say that he had sought a political career. The greatness of his
talents literally forced it on him. He became a statesman and
great Parliamentary orator, so to speak, in spite of himself. But he
must have early discovered the great barrier to complete success
created by his poverty. He may be said to have passed his life in
pecuniary embarrassment. This alone might not have shut him out
from the Whig official Paradise, for the same thing might have been
said of Pitt and Fox: but they had connections; they belonged by
birth and association to the Whig class. Burke's relatives were no
help or credit to him. In fact, they excited distrust of him. They
offended the fastidious aristocrats with whom he associated, and com-
bined with his impecuniousness to make him seem unsuitable for a
great place. These aristocrats were very good to him. They lent
him money freely, and settled a pension on him, and covered him
with social adulation; but they were never willing to put him beside
themselves in the government. His latter years therefore had an air
of tragedy. He was unpopular with most of those who in his earlier
years had adored him, and was the hero of those whom in earlier
years he had despised.
l
His only son, of whose capacity he had
formed a strange misconception, died young, and he passed his own
closing hours, as far as we can judge, with a sense of failure. But
he left one of the great names in English history. / There is no trace
of him in the statute book, but he has, it is safe to say, exercised a
profound influence in all succeeding legislation, both in England and
America. He has inspired or suggested nearly all the juridical
changes which distinguish the England of to-day from the England
of the last century, and is probably the only British politician whose
speeches and pamphlets, made for immediate results, have given him
immortality.
E. L. Godkin
## p. 2788 (#360) ###########################################
2788
EDMUND BURKE
FROM THE SPEECH ON (CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA
S'R:
IR. -It is not a pleasant consideration; but nothing in the
world can read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the
conduct of the Ministry in this business, upon the mischief
of not having large and liberal ideas in the management of great
affairs. Never have the servants of the State looked at the whole
of your complicated interests in one connected view. They have
taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one pre-
tense and some at another, just as they pressed, without any
sort of regard to their relations or dependencies. They never
had any kind of system, right or wrong; but only invented oc-
casionally some 'miserable tale for the day, in order meanly
to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted.
And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of mean-
ness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of
an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found
and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such
management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so
paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignifi-
cant an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken
the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.
Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the
precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great.
You were distressed in the affairs of the East India Company;
and you well know what sort of things are involved in the com-
prehensive energy of that significant appellation. I am not called
upon to enlarge to you on that danger; which you thought proper
yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the world with all the
parade of indiscreet declamation. The monopoly of the most lucra-
tive trades and the possession of imperial revenues had brought
you to the verge of beggary and ruin.
Such was your repre-
sentation — such, in some measure, was your case.
The vent of
ten millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by the
operation of an injudicious tax and rotting in the warehouses of
the company, would have prevented all this distress, and all that
series of desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged
to take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that
vent which no other part of the world can furnish but America,
where tea is next to a necessary of life and where the demand
## p. 2789 (#361) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2789
.
grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India Com-
mittees have done us at least so much good as to let us know
that without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India
revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with
this country.
It is through the American trade of tea that your
East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with
their burden. They are ponderous indeed, and they must have
that great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head.
It is the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit of the
West and of the East. This folly has thrown open folding-doors
to contraband, and will be the means of giving the profits of the
trade of your colonies to every nation but yourselves. Never did
a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble. It
must be given up. For on what principles does it stand? This
famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a de-
scription of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive
(but too comprehensive! ) vocabulary of finance-a preambulary
tar. It is indeed a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of
disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but
benefit to the imposers or satisfaction to the subject.
Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America
than to see you go out of the plain high-road of finance, and
give up your most certain revenues and your clearest interests,
merely for the sake of insulting your colonies ? No man ever
doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of
threepence. But no commodity will bear threepence, or will
bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated; and
two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of
the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs
were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon
for the payment of twenty shillings. Would twenty shillings
have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune ? No! but the payment of
half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would
have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble of
which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the
Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.
It is then, sir, upon the principle of this measure, and noth-
ing else, that we at issue. It is a principle of political
expediency. Your Act of 1767 asserts that it is expedient to raise
a revenue in America; your Act of 1769, which takes away that
revenue, contradicts the Act of 1767, and by something much
are
## p. 2790 (#362) ###########################################
2790
EDMUND BURKE
a
stronger than words asserts that it is not expedient.
It is a
reflection upon your wisdom to persist in a solemn Parliamentary
declaration of the expediency of any object for which at the same
time you make no sort of provision. And pray, sir, let not this
circumstance escape you,- it is very material: that the preamble of
this Act which we wish to repeal is not declaratory of a right,
as some gentlemen seem to argue it; it is only a recital of the
cxpedicncy of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to
have been asserted; an exercise you are now contending for by
ways and means which you confess, though they were obeyed, to
be utterly insufficient for their purpose. You are therefore at
this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom,
a quiddity, a thing that wants not only a substance, but even
name; for a thing which is neither abstract right nor profitable
enjoyment.
They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know
not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible incum-
brance to you; for it has of late been ever at war with your
interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the
thing you contend for to be reason; show it to be common-sense;
show it to be the means of attaining some useful end: and then
I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what
dignity is derived from the perseverance in absurdity, is more
than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said
well - indeed, in most of his general observations I agree with
him -- he says that this subject does not stand as it did for-
merly. Oh, certainly not! Every hour you continue on this
ill-chosen ground, your difficulties thicken on you; and therefore
my conclusion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you
The disgrace and the necessity of yielding, both of them,
grow upon you every hour of your delay.
To restore order and repose to an empire so great and so
distracted as ours, is, merely in the attempt, an undertaking that
would ennoble the flights of the highest genius and obtain par.
don for the efforts of the meanest understanding. Struggling a
good while with these thoughts, by degrees I felt myself more
firm. I derived at length some confidence from what in other
circumstances usually produces timidity. I grew less anxious,
even from the idea of my own insignificance. For, judging of
what you are by what you ought to be, I persuaded myself that
you would not reject a reasonable proposition because it had
can.
## p. 2791 (#363) ###########################################
EDMUND BURKE
2791
nothing but its reason to recommend it. On the other hand,
being totally destitute of all shadow of influence, natural or
adventitious, I was very sure that if my proposition were futile
or dangerous, if it were weakly conceived or improperly timed,
there was nothing exterior to it of power to awe, dazzle, or
delude you.
You will see it just as it is; and you will treat it
just as it deserves.
The proposition is Peace. Not Peace through the medium of
War; not Peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate
and endless negotiations; not Peace to arise out of universal dis-
cord, fomented from principle in all parts of the empire; not
Peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing
questions, or the precise marking of the shadowy boundaries of a
complex government. It is simple Peace, sought in its natural
course and in its ordinary haunts. It is Peace sought in the
spirit of Peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose
by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the
former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother coun-
try, to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from
a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in
the same act and by the bond of the very same interest which
reconciles them to British government.
My idea is nothing more. Refined policy ever has been the
parent of confusion, and ever will be so, as long as the world
endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at
the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of
no mean force in the government of mankind. Genuine simplicity
of heart is an healing and cementing principle. My plan, there-
fore, being formed upon the most simple grounds imaginable,
may disappoint some people when they hear it. It has nothing
to recommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. There is
nothing at all new and captivating in it. It has nothing of the
splendor of the project which has been lately laid upon your table
by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. It does not propose to fill
your lobby with squabbling colony agents, who will require the
interposition of your mace at every instant to keep the peace
amongst them. It does not institute a magnificent auction of
finance, where captivated provinces come to general ransom by
bidding against each other, until you knock down the hammer,
and determine a proportion of payments beyond all the powers
of algebra to equalize and settle.
## p. 2792 (#364) ###########################################
2792
EDMUND BURKE
The plan which I shall presume to suggest derives, however,
one great advantage from the proposition and registry of that
noble lord's project. The idea of conciliation is admissible.
First, the House, in accepting the resolution moved by the noble
lord, has admitted -- notwithstanding the menacing front of our
address, notwithstanding our heavy bills of pains and penalties
— that we do not think ourselves precluded from all ideas of
free grace and bounty.
The House has gone further: it has declared conciliation ad-
missible, previous to any submission on the part of America. It
has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, and has admitted
that the complaints of our former mode of exerting the right of
taxation were not wholly unfounded. That right, thus exerted,
is allowed to have something reprehensible in it — something un-
wise, or something grievous: since in the midst of our heat and
resentment we of ourselves have proposed a capital alteration,
and in order to get rid of what seemed so very exceptionable
have instituted a mode that is altogether new; one that is in-
deed wholly alien from all the ancient methods and forms of
Parliament.
The principle of this proceeding is large enough for my pur-
pose. The means proposed by the noble lord for carrying his
ideas into execution, I think indeed are very indifferently suited
to the end; and this I shall endeavor to show you before I sit
down. But for the present I take my ground on the admitted
principle. I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation;
and where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does
in a manner always imply concession on the one part or on the
other. In this state of things I make no difficulty in affirming
that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and ac-
knowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion,
by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may
offer peace with honor and safety. Such an offer from such a
power will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions
of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is
disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior, and he loses
forever that time and those chances which, as they happen to
all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.
The capital leading questions on which you must this day
decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and
secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of
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EDMUND BURKE
2793
these questions we have gained (as I have just taken the liberty
of observing to you) some ground. But I am sensible that a
good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, sir, to enable us to
determine both on the one and the other of these great questions
with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to
consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances
of the object which we have before us. Because after all our
struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America
according to that nature and to those circumstances, and not
according to our own imaginations nor according to abstract ideas
of right; by no means according to mere general theories of gov-
ernment, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situa-
tion, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor,
with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of
these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am
able to state them.
FROM THE SPEECH ON (THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS)
THAT
HAT you may judge what chance any honorable and useful
end of government has for a provision that comes in for
the leavings of these gluttonous demands, I must take it
on myself to bring before you the real condition of that abused,
insulted, racked, and ruined country, though in truth my mind
revolts from it; though you will hear it with horror: and I con-
fess I tremble when I think on these awful and confounding
dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with a few
words as to the cause.
The great fortunes made in India in the beginnings of con-
quest naturally excited an emulation in all the parts, and through
the whole succession, of the company's service. But in the com-
pany it gave rise to other sentiments. They did not find the
new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to them. On
the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolument was gen-
erally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began also to fear
that the fortune of war might take away what the fortune of
war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by repeated
injunctions and menaces; and that the servants might not be
bribed into them by the native princes, they were strictly for-
bidden to take any money whatsoever from their hands.
