in consideration, and to a variety of other situations and circumstances in the conduct

of life.

From his speeches and writings might be formed a collection of moral and political maxims of the strictest truth and highest importance, but which are not introduced in an abstract form: they are made to bear immediately upon the case. On the principles of national revenue he displays an enlarged view of the subject, which shews a mind capable of writing a treatise on the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Nor could Smith himself, whose penetrating, investigating, and generalizing mind, the details and principles of finance so much and so long occupied, have displayed more complete knowledge and philosophical views than this speech of Burke, who attended to revenue, among a multiplicity of momentous objects at the same time so minute is his acquaintance wth offices, that he appears fit to have composed a court-calendar without copying from the red-book. His introduction is, perhaps, one of the most masterly that ever served

to usher in a piece of eloquence. In that part in which he speaks of the difficulties he must encounter in conducting a plan of reform, a reform bearing on private interest and lessening private emolument, he is peculiarly excellent. What he says applied precisely to that individual case, and would apply in general to any situation in which it was proposed to sacrifice individual gain from donative to general good in the retrenchment of unnecessary expence. 'I feel,' says he, that I engage in a business in itself most ungracious. I know that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to unkindness; and that (on some person or other) every reform must operate as a sort of punishment: indeed the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity; what is worse, there are very few of those virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more deeply, and finish much more sharply, in

the work of retrenchment, than frugality
and providence. I do not, therefore, wonder
that gentlemen have kept away from such
a task, as well from good nature, as from
prudence. Private feeling might, indeed,
be overborne by legislative reason; and a
man of long-sighted and strong nerved hu-
manity might bring himself, not so much
to consider from whom he takes a super-
fluous enjoyment, as for whom, in the end,
he may preserve the absolute necessaries of
life. He lays down certain rules of political
œconomy, which he applies to the various
cases he details, and to the establishments
which he would retrench: considering va-
rious establishments as wasteful, because
employed in a manner neither tending to
reproduction or to security of what is by
other means produced; and hurtful, as the
means of corruption. His principle is, that
whatever establishments are either more
expensive than gainful, or afford the means
of corruption more than advantage to ju-
dicial and political administration, ought to
be abolished.

This general principle he

applies to certain jurisdictions, public estates, offices, and modes of disbursement.

On jurisdictions, he proves by accurate documents, and conclusive arguments, that the inferior jurisdictions of the Sovereign, attended with considerable expence, do not, answer any purpose which might not be better effected without the expence of those establishments, in the supreme character of Sovereign. On this part, together with the most authentic detail, the basis of the ablest and serious reasoning, there is mixed a great degree of pleasantry and humour. Speaking of the characters with which the Sovereign is invested in different parts of South-Britain, he says, the monarchy is divided into five several distinct principalities, besides the supreme: as in the itinerant exhibitions of the stage, they are obliged to throw a variety of parts on their chief performer; so our Sovereign condescends himself to act, not only the principal but the subordinate parts. Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England; but you

have some comfort in coming again under his Majesty, though shorn of his beams, and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north, and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster. Turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a few miles on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the King surprises you again as Count Palatine of Lancaster. You find him once more in his incognito, and he is Duke of Cornwall. So that quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper splendour, and behold your amiable Sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native character of Majesty.' He proposes, that as these jurisdictions are expensive, without producing public advantage, and are the means of corrupt influence, they should be abolished. He applies the same principles to the Crown demesnes and the annexed offices; but dwells most particularly on the household. Many have ridiculed the minuteness of his detail