described as inherent in the mother-country, Burke said :

"I do not examine whether the giving away a man's money be a power excepted and reserved out of the general trust of Government, and how far all forms of policy are entitled to an exercise of that right by the charter of nature. Or whether, on the contrary, the right of taxation is necessarily involved in the general principle of legislation, and inseparable from the ordinary supreme power. These are deep questions when great names militate against each other; when reason is perplexed; and an appeal to authorities only thickens the confusion. For high and reverend authorities lift up their heads on both sides, and there is no sure footing in the middle. This point is

'The great Serbonian bog,

'Twixt Dalmiata and Mount Casius old,

Where armies whole have sunk.'

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that bog, though in such respectable company. The question with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy. It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do, but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a politic art the worse for being a generous one? Is no concession proper but that which is made from your want of right to keep what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace and dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an odious claim, because you have your evidence-room full of titles, and your magazines stuffed with arms to enforce them?

"What signify all these titles and all these arms : Of what avail are they when the reason of the thing tells me that the assertion of my title is the loss of my suit; and that I could do nothing but wound myself by the use of my own weapons? Such is steadfastly my opinion of the absolute necessity of keeping up the concord of this empire by a union of spirit, though in a diversity of operations, that if I were sure the colonists had,

at their leaving this country, sealed a regular compact of servitude; that they had solemnly abjured all the rights of citizens; that they had made a vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them and their posterity to all generations, yet I should hold myself obliged to conform to the temper I found universally prevalent in my own day, and to govern two millions of men impatient of servitude on the principles of freedom. I am not determining a point of law; I am restoring tranquillity; and the general character and situation of a people must determine what sort of government is fitted for them."

In spite of the eloquence and arguments of Burke and Chatham, Lord North's disastrous government persevered in its efforts to subdue the rebellion of the colonists, until France and Spain leagued with the United States to crush and humiliate their great adversary and rival. History records with what courage, with how much hopeless persistency England faced this formidable coalition; and how, while the incapacity of her commanders and the blind policy of her Ministers overwhelmed her with disgrace in the West, the honour of her arms was retrieved, and the valour of her sons vindicated, by her triumphs in the East, where the bold, audacious, yet wary genius of Warren Hastings laid firm and sure the foundations of her Indian Empire. The surrender of Lord Cornwallis's army at York Town to the American forces under Washington (October 19, 1772), was "the beginning of the end." England was exhausted and over-weighted; and only the naval victories of Rodney saved her from a shameful peace. As it was, bleeding at every pore, she found herself compelled, in November, 1772, to sign the Treaties of Paris and Versailles, by which she recognised the Independence of America.

The result, I imagine, was as painful to Burke as to

any of his political opponents. Like Chatham, he had never advocated the separation of the colonies, but their conciliation; and it was only when he saw, as he thought, the liberties of his own country in danger that he came to look upon their independence as a necessity. As Mr. Morley puts it*:

"All his reflections upon the subject of America, notwithstanding his conviction that her independence was the necessary price of the maintenance of free government in England, must have been tinged with bitterness. Great as America might become, and as he honestly wished her to become, her greatness would bring no renown or laud to the mother-country or its incomparable constitution. Though above the narrow vices incident to patriotism in weaker and less loftily moral souls, it could not have been more grievous to him to look back upon the circumstances under which England and her sons parted company, than it was mortifying to look forward to a glory for America, which, if statesmen had been prescient and nations just, might have been added to the abundant glories of England. Burke, we may be sure, had none of that speculative fortitude which enabled Adam Smith to anticipate with compo sure the possible removal of the seat of empire to that part of the empire which in a century [from 1776] would probably contribute most to the general defence. He was intellectually capable of foreseeing much which he was not morally capable of allowing himself fully to realise, and certainly not of constraining himself to dwell upon."

The intellectual activity of Burke was almost as wonderful as is that of our greatest living statesman. He seemed to make every subject his own, and to have something to say upon it better than any specialist could

* John Morley," Edmund Burke: a Historical Study," pp. 162

163.

say. His mind was ever open to new impressions, and of each rising movement he became, as if by some natural and unconscious act, the brain and heart. In 1780, he surprised the House by the breadth and solidity of his views upon commercial reform, of which he may be said to have been the Parliamentary pioneer. He declared his object to be "the reduction of that corrupt influence which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality and all disorder; which loads us more than millions of debt; which takes away vigour from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution." It is sometimes unwise, or at least dangerous, for a man to be in advance of his contemporaries. Burke had been

returned for Bristol in 1774, but when his constituents found him protesting against the corruption on which so many of them fattened, advocating toleration for Roman Catholics, and denouncing the restrictions which English jealousy had unfairly imposed upon Irish commerce, they would have no more of him; his enlightened and liberal policy offended them; and he was glad to take shelter in his former seat for the little borough of Malton, which, during the remainder of his political career, he continued to represent.

When, in the spring of 1782, it became evident that the American war could no longer be prosecuted, Lord North resigned (March 20); and the king was reluctantly compelled to recall to his councils the Marquis of Rockingham. Through Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, he endeavoured at first to make such conditions as would preserve unimpaired his personal power; but Rockingham insisted upon a change of measures as well as of men; and that the measures, of which he would require

the king's acceptance, should be those he had advocated while in Opposition. The king, he said, must agree to the recognition of the Independence of the American colonies. Peace and Retrenchment, he said, would form the cardinal principles of his policy; and among the bills which the Cabinet would introduce and press forward would be one for the exclusion of contractors from the House of Commons; another, disqualifying revenue officers from voting at elections; and a third, Burke's great scheme for the better security of the independence of Parliament, and the economical reformation of the civil and other establishments. After some

vapouring talk about abdication, the king sent for the Earl of Shelbourne, the leader of the Chatham Whigs, and afterwards for Earl Gower, the leader of the Bedford section; but finding each to be pledged to the union of the party, he was forced to accept Rockingham on his own terms. Charles James Fox took the seals of Secretary of State and the leadership of the Commons. Dunning, an admirable debater, received the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, and was created Baron Ashburton. The Chancellorship of the Exchequer devolved upon Lord John Cavendish. Shelbourne was made Secretary of State for Home, Irish, and Colonial affairs. To Burke was given the Paymastership of the Forces, but without a seat in the Cabinet.

There is no doubt that Burke resented this exclusion, and felt indignant at the aristocratic superciliousness of the Whig nobles, who "almost avowedly regarded power as an heirloom in certain houses.' But Rockingham probably felt that in the Cabinet he would be dangerous to its amenity; he was impetuous, apt to be dominated too completely by a pre-conceived opinion, hasty in his conclu