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ation permeates every page, and while a severe invective is delivered against Court influences and intrigues, not less severe is the censure bestowed on the revolutionary schemes of democratic agitators. A felicitous defence of party ties, as essential to the security of a constitutional system, is counterbalanced by an ingenious, though certainly not a successful, argument against Parliamentary reform. Burke once said that he pitched his Whiggism low, that he might not be tempted to deviate from it; and in this celebrated essay, unquestionably it never rises very high. It is the Whiggism of the practical statesman rather than of a philosophical theorist; of a statesman who recognised the disorders of the time, and was prepared to apply the necessary remedies, but felt no inclination to deal with hypothetical maladies. He had not as yet adopted those strong unmonarchical opinions, which in some of his later writings are so disagreeably prominent, colouring the whole of his political system. Nor had he yet fallen into the vice of his later style, that extravagance of imagery and luxuriance of verbiage which embarrass and oppress it. Thoughts luminous and deep are embodied in language refined and elevated, are impressed upon the reader by terse and apposite illustration. We venture to quote a few isolated sentences, marked by a curiosa felicitas of expression :

"We have not relegated Religion to obscure municipalities or rustic villages. No! we will have her to exalt her mitred

front in Courts and Parliaments."

"A great deal of the furniture of ancient tyranny is worn to rags; the rest is entirely out of fashion."

"No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition."

"The king is the representative of the people; so are the lords; so are the judges; they are all trustees for the people, as well as the commons, because no power is given for the sole sake of the holder; and although government is certainly an institution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, all originate from the people."

"It is no inconsiderable part of wisdom to know how much of an evil ought to be tolerated; lest by attempting a degree of purity impracticable in degenerate times and manners, instead of cutting off the subsisting ill practices, new conceptions might be produced for the concealment and security of the old."

Burke's pamphlet was answered from the Tory standpoint by Dr. Johnson, and from the Republican by Mrs. Macaulay; but while their compositions are forgotten, Burke's is still read and admired. As Lord Brougham says "It is the best weighed and most deliberately pronounced, the calmest of all his productions, and the most fully considered."

In the session of 1770-71, Burke delivered one of bis finest speeches in denunciation of the power then possessed by the Attorney-General of filing ex-officio informations; a power which had been employed against Almon, the bookseller, for publishing the "Letters of Junius to the King." In this speech runs a fine reference to Junius, which seems to us a fair example of Burke's earlier and chaster style :

"How comes this Junius to have broke through the cobwebs of the law, and to range uncontrolled, unpunished, through the land? The myrmidons of the court have been long, and are still pursuing him in vain. They will not spend their time upon me or upon you, when the mighty boar of the forest that has broke through all their toils is before them. But what will all their efforts avail? No sooner has he wounded one, than he

strikes down another dead at his feet. For my own part, when I saw his attack upon the king, I own my blood ran cold. I thought he had ventured too far, and that there was an end to his triumphs; not that he had not asserted many bold truths. Yes, sir, there are in that composition many bold truths by which a wise prince might profit. It was the rancour and venom with which I was struck. But while I expected from this daring flight his final ruin and fall, behold him rising still higher, and coming down souse upon both Houses of Parliament. Yes, he made you his quarry; and you still bleed from the effects of his talons. You crouched, and still crouch beneath his rage. Nor has he dreaded the terror of your brow, sir,* for he has attacked even you; and I believe you have no reason to triumph in the encounter. Not content with carrying our royal eagle away in his pounces, and dashing him against a rock, he has laid you prostrate, and king, lords, and commons thus become but the sport of his fury. Were he a member of this House, what might not be expected from his knowledge, his firmness, and his integrity? He would be easily known by his contempt of all danger, by his penetration, and by his vigour. Nothing would escape his vigilance and activity. But ministers could conceal nothing from his sagacity, nor could promises nor threats induce him to conceal anything from the public."

At this time Burke was the acknowledged leader of his party. He had not yet exhausted the attention of the House by his excursive prolixity and endless "refining ;" and in all the political questions which came before Parliament, he displayed the vast scope of his intellectual powers, the breadth of his sympathies, and the soundness of his judgment. As yet the French Revolution had not thrown him off his balance; he was fully master of himself and his resources, totus in se. The State of New

* An allusion to the heavy black eyebrows of the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton.

York recognised the generosity and vigour of his defence of colonial liberties by appointing him its agent (1771). He was on the side of freedom as against privilege when the House of Commons unwisely attempted to prohibit the publication of reports of its proceedings, and summoned to its bar the printers of the principal London newspapers.* In this warfare Colonel Onslow was foremost; he had been ridiculed as "little Cockney George," and his amour propre grievously wounded. To his motion for summoning the printers, a member moved an amendment to the effect that they should bring with them their "compositors, pressmen, correctors, blackers, and devils;" and Burke supported it, remarking, "It would be as irregular for the printer to come to your bar without them, as it would be for you, sir, to come to the House without your mace, or a Marshal of the King's Bench without his tipstaff, or a First Lord of the Treasury without his majority." When Colonel Onslow boasted of the part he had played as specially befitting one who was descended from three Speakers, Burke retorted:"I have not the advantage of a parliamentary genealogy. I was not born, like the honourable gentleman, with 'Order' running through my veins. But as that gentleman boasts of his father, his son will never boast of him. The parliamentary line is cut off." It is needless to say that the House was beaten in the struggle, and did not retire from it without some loss of dignity.

We again find Burke on the side of moderation and enlightenment when, in 1772, a proposal was submitted for the relief of Dissenting ministers from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-Nine Articles. This he fervidly

*The three papers attacked were the Gazetteer, the Middlesex Chronicle, and the London Evening Post.

supported, while at the same time opposing the concession of a similar relief to clergymen of the Established Church, because their subscription was the condition under which they held their benefices. In 1773, when advocating a further measure of relief, he defined in beautiful language what he conceived to be the true position and duty of the Church of England.

"At the same time," he said, "that I would cut up the very roots of Atheism, I would respect all conscience-all conscience that is really such, and which perhaps its very tenderness proves to be sincere. I wish to see the Established Church of England great and powerful; I wish to see her foundations laid low and deep, that she may crush the giant powers of rebellious darkness; I would have her head raised up to that heaven to which she conducts me. I would have her open wide her hospitable gates by a noble and liberal comprehension, but I would have no breaches in her wall; I would have her cherish all those who are within, and pity all those who are without; I would have her a common blessing to the world, an example, if not an instructor, to those who have not the happiness to belong to her; I would have her give a lesson of peace to mankind, that a vexed and wandering generation might be taught to seek for repose and toleration in the maternal bosom of Christian charity, and not in the harlot lap of infidelity and indifference. Nothing has driven people more into that house of seduction than the mutual hatred of Christian congregations. Long may we enjoy our Church under a learned and edifying Episcopacy."

In the debates upon the affairs of British India, which occupied the House in the Session of 1773, Burke gave astonishing proof of the variety and extent of his information, and the statesman-like breadth and solidity of his views. During the recess he paid a visit to Paris, and saw the young queen, Marie Antoinette, in all the grace

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