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and radiance of her young beauty. He was appalled by the social disorganisation which had overtaken the country, and especially by the absolute contempt into which religion had fallen; and in the following session of Parliament he took occasion to point out this "conspiracy of Atheism" to the vigilance of Government. Though it was contrary to his political principles to call in the aid of the secular arm to suppress doctrines and opinions, yet, if ever it were raised, he said, it should be against those enemies of their kind, who would take from man the noblest prerogative of his nature-that of being a religious animal. "Already, under the systematic attacks of these men, I see many of the props of good government beginning to fail. I see propagated principles which will not leave to religion even a toleration, and make virtue herself less than a name."

The dispute between England and her American colonies was daily assuming a graver character, and the Whig statesmen perceived that an amicable settlement of it was essential to the honour and security of the mother-country. The rift, at first so inconsiderable, was rapidly broadening, and threatened to open into a chasm which it would be impossible to close up or bridge over. In December 1773, when the English tea-ships arrived at Boston, the townsmen boarded them at night, and threw their cargoes into the sea. The news of this decisive act reached England in January. The Government unhappily determined at once on a policy of repression, while the Opposition urged the adoption of a policy of conciliation. Burkein vain poured forth his most vehement eloquence in support of moderate measures. It had been said that the tax upon tea imposed by the English Government, which was the fons et origo mali, not in itself,

but in the principle underlying it—the principle of taxation without representation-was trifling:

"Could anything," said Burke, "be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see you go out of the plain highroad of finance, and give up your most certain revenues and your dearest interest, merely for the sake of insulting your colonies? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea would 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 probably 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."

Referring to a speech made by Lord Carmarthenhis maiden speech-Burke continued :

"A noble lord, who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire of ingenuous youth; and when he has modelled the ideas of a lively imagination by further experience, he will be an ornament to his country in either House. He has said that the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says that if they are not free in their present state, England is not free; because Manchester and other considerable places are not represented. So then, because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are our children,' but when children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinder our Government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right—is it therefore that the colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true

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filial resemblance the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?"

In the session of 1775 Burke introduced a series of thirteen resolutions, founded on a bill drawn by Chatham,* and embodying a proposal for a pacific settlement of the points in dispute between England and America. The House rejected them by a majority of 270 against 78 (March 22, 1775). Burke's speech in explanation and support was one of his finest bursts of argumentative eloquence, and I do not know that in any other of his orations the great qualities of his genius are more abundantly shown :—

"My proposition," he said, "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 discord, fomented on principle in all parts of the empire. Not peace to depend on the judicial 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. peace, sought in the spirit of peace.”

Again:

It is

"I look on force not only as an odious but as a feeble instrument for preserving a people so numerous, so active, so growing, so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connection with us. First, the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of

* "A provisional Bill for settling the troubles in America," introduced into the House of Lords, February 1.

subduing again. A nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be governed."

He added:

"Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and the colonies. No contrivance can weaken the effect of this distance in weakening government. Seas roll and months pass between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation on a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance who carry your bolts in their talons to the uttermost verge of the sea. But then a power steps in, which limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, 'So far shalt thou go, and no farther!' Who are you that should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature? Nothing more happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire. From all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. The question is, not whether the spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories, all its imperfections on its head. We are strongly urged to determine something concerning it."

In a splendid passage he adverted to the remarkable growth of the American colonies, in an allusion to the aged Earl Bathurst,* father of the then Lord Chancellor :

"We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory

*This was the Allen, Lord Bathurst, to whom Pope addressed his "Epistle on the Use of Riches."

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might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et quæ sit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him. one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in a vision that, when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing counsels) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him, Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements, in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If the state of his country had thus been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it?"

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In another speech on American affairs, discussing the alleged right of taxation, which the Ministerial orators

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