then at the head of the Treasury Department. It was indeed in a situation of little rank and no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity of my talents and pretensions. But a situation near enough to make me to see, as well as others, what was going on; and I did see in that noble person such sound principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear and sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude, as have bound me, as well as others much better than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward. "

When the appointment was made, the Duke of Newcastle, on hearing of it, shuffled off to Rockingham with a warning to be on his guard against the adventurer, who, he said, was a wild Irishman, a concealed Papist, a Jesuit, a Jacobite, and, worst of all, an O'Bourke ! Rockingham smilingly put aside these ridiculous calumnies, and at his instance Burke was brought into Parliament as member for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire. The times were out of joint; for the ill-advised measures of the Grenville Administration, and the obstinacy of the king in wrong-doing, had brought the American colonies to the brink of rebellion. It was in a debate upon American affairs (January 14th, 1766), that Burke first addressed that House which he was afterwards so frequently to astonish and delight, and sometimes, be it said, to weary, by the copiousness of his splendid oratory. The fire, force, and freedom with which he spoke, attracted the attention and called forth the commendation of the elder Pitt, who, though shattered in health, wrapped up in flannels, and leaning on his crutch, delivered one of those noble orations that exercised such an influence over his contemporaries. "He had himself," he said, "intended to enter at length into the details, but he had been anticipated with so much ingenuity and elo

Severa

quence that there was little left for him to say.” times in the course of the session Burke joined in the debates, and each time with such success as to convince the Whig party of the value of their new recruit. Sir John Hawkins, author of a "History of Music," now chiefly remembered through Dr. Callcott's popular "catch," took occasion, at the Literary Club, to express his surprise at Burke's rapidly increasing reputation. "Sir," said Dr. Johnson, "there is no wonder at all. We who know Mr. Burke know that he will be one of the first men in the country." And, writing to his friend Langton, he said: "We have less of Burke's company since he has been engaged in public business, in which he has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his first appearance ever gained before. He made two speeches in the House for repealing the Stamp Act, which were publicly commended by Mr. Pitt, and have filled the town with wonder. . . . Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon to attain civil greatness."

Coldly supported, if indeed not secretly opposed, by the sovereign, and baffled by the intrigues of the party which arrogated to themselves the title of "the king's friends," the Rockingham ministry fell in July, 1766, and was succeeded by a government, of which Pitt (with the title of Earl of Chatham), was the virtual head. Burke went on a visit to Ireland, and did not return to England until the opening of Parliament in November. Chatham then offered him a seat at the Board of Trade; but he appears to have felt himself bound to the exPremier, and refused the great Minister's offer. Perhaps he felt that he enjoyed more power and independence in the House of Commons as the recognised leader of the

"Rockingham Whigs," than he could have done as a subordinate official. But I do not see that any justification can be alleged for the hostility with which he and his party embarrassed the measures of Lord Chatham, and played into the hands of the Opposition.

At

In the new Parliament, which met in May, 1768, Burke again took his seat as member for Wendover. the same time he purchased, for a sum of £20,000, part of which was advanced by the Marquis of Rockingham, the agreeable residence and small estate of the Gregories, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire. After a painful interregnum, caused by his bodily infirmities, which had temporarily enfeebled his intellectual powers, Chatham resigned office in October, 1768, and was succeeded by the Duke of Grafton, with the support of the Duke of Bedford's party. The new Cabinet plunged Parliament into a contest with the country on the question of Wilkes's election for Middlesex. Burke united with George Grenville in resisting the illegal and unconstitutional votes by which Wilkes was expelled from the House, and the electors of Middlesex deprived of their legal rights. On other points he was generally opposed to Grenville, who was a reactionist of the sternest type, and in a remarkable pamphlet he exposed the fallacies, and replied to the attacks of Grenville's diatribe, "On the Present State of the Nation." Such was the cogency of Burke's argument, and such the strength and eloquence of his language, that many began to suspect him as the author of those celebrated "Letters of Junius," which had just begun to make their appearance. But neither the style of these "Letters," nor the spirit, is the style or spirit of Burke. They fall infinitely below the standard of his genius and his public virtue.

He would never have stooped to their coarse personalities; he would never have condescended to their misrepresentations. He was no midnight murderer, to stab a reputation with a secret dagger. I am not called upon to discuss in these pages the vexed question of the authorship of the "Letters," but it has sometimes occurred to us that, in all probability, and in spite of some vapouring expressions in his private correspondence with his printer, the writer may have been some less distinguished person than is supposed. Certainly the evidence adduced to connect them with Sir Philip Francis is not without a flaw. At all events, their renown is wholly out of proportion to their real merits. They are conspicuously deficient in political sagacity and knowledge; their strength lies in their deliberate and envenomed attacks upon individuals, and much of their former influence and present reputation is due to the mystery with which they were artfully surrounded.

Having to some extent recovered his physical and mental faculties, Chatham reappeared on the political stage in 1770. He found the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford in office, with Lord North as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He found the country convulsed with anger at the persecution of Wilkes, pushed on by the Court and the House of Commons. He found the American colonies in stern revolt against the measures of taxation projected by the Government. Wherever he looked, he saw the horizon black with clouds. His first care was to attempt the reconciliation of the two sections of the Opposition, the Grenville and the Rockingham, which had so long been at open feud, in order that a combined attack might be made upon the Government. He declared that a new ministry must be formed upon

Whig principles, with the Rockinghams, and Cavendishes, and other old Whig families to be represented in its combination. Earl Temple adopted the same opinion, and, in an interview which he had with Burke, urged that the past should be forgotten. "We have done each other," he said, "a thousand acts of unkindness; let us make amends by a thousand acts of friendship." Rockingham and Burke did not at first show any great willingness to accept these overtures; but the two parties in the House of Commons adopted to some extent a common plan of action, and were rapidly beginning to understand and draw nearer each other, when the death of Chatham convulsed the political world. A new order of things dated from that calamity; new combinations sprang into existence; old traditions were broken up by new prejudices and animosities; and for the next twelve years the political history of England was a history of disaster and intrigue, selfishness, incapacity, and ignorance.

But we are proceeding too rapidly.

In the session of 1770, Burke spoke frequently. On the 1st of May he introduced eight resolutions in condemnation of the folly and indecency with which Ministers had mismanaged the contention between the mother-country and the colonies. A few days later he supported George Grenville's bill for the regulation of controverted elections. It was about this time that he published his famous pamphlet, "On the Cause of the Present Discontents," which has been justly described as unequalled for the variety and depth of its political knowledge, and the ornate yet vigorous beauty of its style. It has, not inaptly, been characterised as a text-book of Whig principles." A philosophical moder