teenth century, the visitations of this periodic frenzy thickened. Frederic and the Seven Years' War roused every talker in England into angry elocution, and the man was pronounced an enemy to his country who could doubt the cause of Prussia. This absurdity had its day. The public fever cooled away, and men were astonished at their own extravagance. The Middlesex elections next discovered the organ of political frenzy in the public brain. The nation was instantly in a paroxysm. Every man was an orator, and every orator exclaimed, that all past hazards were nothing to the inevitable ruin of the hour; what was life without liberty, and what was liberty without the power of election. England saw this day pass too, and the chief miner lay aside the match which he had been so long waving at the mouth of the mine, shelter himself in an opulent sinecure, and laugh at the dupes whose clamour had been its purchase. The American question next roused the multitude. The whole host of obscure politicians were instantly awakened in their retreats, and poured forth, brandishing their rusty and uncouth weapons for the colonies. Every factious clamour from beyond the Atlantic was echoed from our shores with either a shout of applause or a groan of sympathy. Thousands and tens of thousands inflamed themselves into the concep tion that the hourly fate of England was hung in the balance of America. Thousands and tens of thousands imbued themselves with American politics until the English complexion had vanished from their features, and they actually saw nothing in sullen ingratitude, but generous resistance, and in a rash, unjustifiable, and godless determination to throw off all the ties of duty, kindred, and sworn allegiance, but a heroic and English repulsion of tyranny. We see, and we should see it with a natural alarm at the power of political illusion, the extent to which this fantastic folly usurped over the higher minds of England. We may well shrink at the strength of the whirlpool when we see it sweeping Burke and Chatham round, through every circle but the last, and those most muscular minds of the empire, barely making their escape from being ab

VOL. XXXIIJ, NO. CC VII.

sorbed and sunk in the common gulf of national perversion. Catholic Emancipation was the next crisis of the public folly. Its cry rang through the empire, until the whole tribe of loose politics, the general living discontents, the incurable bitternesses against all government, the alienations from all rule, the whole fretful accumulation of imaginary wrongs, imaginary rights, and imaginary panaceas for all the common difficulties of mankind, were marshalled at the sound of that voice of evil. Other and more disciplined forces soon joined to swell that levy. The priesthood sounded the trumpet from their altars. The armed banditti of Irish faction, long trained by mid-day insults to all authority, and midnight usurpation of all power, moved at the head of the insurrection, and Parliament was stormed. The great body of the English nation must be exonerated, in this instance, from the guilt of the act, if they shall yet be compelled to share deeply in the misfortune of its consequences. But the battle was not now fought upon the old ground. The nation was excluded from the contest, and reserved only to be delivered over in fetters to the conqueror. The battle was fought not in Parliament, but in the Cabinet. The weapons of English allegiance, virtue, and wisdom, were petition and remoustrance. The weapons of Popish ambition were open and hourly murder, pitiless conflagration, notorious bands of blood, the curses of a furious superstition, the triumphings of unpunished insurrection, insolent appeals to foreign Powers, and the traitorous menaces of national separation. The walls of the Cabinet, impregnable to the weapons of Con stitutional entreaty, broke down instantly before the assaults of unconstitutional force. For this emer gency there was but one resource; and it is in no tendency to undue homage, that we pronounce that resource to be RELIGION. If that Cabi net had but remembered that there was a Providence above them, they would never have shrunk from the fullest trial of the strength of England against the guilty fury of Popish faction, with all its allies of treason, rapine, and infidelity. Manfully, candidly, and wisely, they would havo 2 R

resisted the madness of the hour, and their resistance would have been triumphant; they would have been at this moment in possession of power, if to the champions of the cause of God, the gratifications of human power are worth considering; they would have saved England from calamities, now growing on her from moment to moment, and which seem to deepen only into the bloody vista of civil war; and with the whole vast and high-minded population of the British Empire rejoicing in their authority, and supporting them with its irresistible strength, they would have wielded the affairs of England and the world until they were gathered in glory to their graves.

This illusion will pass away, like all that went before. But it will not pass away with the impunity of the past follies. It has been tinged with crime, a dash of blood and treason has been flung on the national character, which will not be bleached away by the common operation of time. There is a stain on the floor of that Cabinet which will tell, to the remotest age, the spot where the dagger was driven into the side of the Constitution. Evil days are coming, evil days have come. Who talks now of the majesty of public deliberation? Who thinks now of the dignity of halls, which once echoed to the noblest aspirations of human wisdom, philosophy, and courage? Or who thinks of their old sacredness without thinking of the Capitol taken by assault, and the Goth and the Gaul, the ferocious sons of the forest and

the swamp, playing their savage gambols, plucking the Roman Senator by the beard, from his curule chair, rending the ivory sceptre from his hand?

course, failure. Rash conciliation naturally inflames the malady which it proposes to cure; America proceeded in her rebellion, only the more fortified by the knowledge that she had active partisans, and inactive repugnants, in the mother country. The topic is now unimportant, but the speech has still a high value as an example of eloquence, and as a depository of that moral wisdom, which embalms the most temporary and decaying subjects of the great orator. We shall give a few of the detached and characteristic sentences. **** “I have no very exalted opinion of paper government, nor of any politics in which the plan is to be wholly separated from the execution. **** Public calamity is a mighty leveller; and there are occasions when any, even the slightest, chance of doing good must be laid hold on, even by the most inconsiderable person. **** The proposition 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 juridical determination of perplexing questions; or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace, sought in the spirit of peace. **** Refined policy ever has been the parent of confusion, and ever will be, so long as the world endures. Plain good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is of no mean force in governing mankind. Genuine simplicity of heart is a healing and cementing principle. **** Great and acknowledged force is not impaired in either effect or opinion by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honour and with safety. Such an offer, from such a power, will be attributed to magnanimity. But the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior, and he loses for ever that time and those chances, which, as they happen

Burke's speech on American affairs, on the 22d of March, 1775, is recorded as one of his most remarkable displays of ability. In the general resistance of the Ministry to all proposals of treating with the Colonies, and the general inefficiency of Opposition to concoct even any plausible measure, the task fell upon Burke, and he employed himself in framing the memorable" Thirteen Articles," which were to be the purchase of national tranquillity. The project belonged to party; it was of course extravagant; and the result was, of

to all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power. I look on force, not only as an odious, but a feeble instrument, for preserving a people so numerous, so growing, and so spirited as this, in a profitable and subordinate connexion. First, the use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment, but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again. A nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered. My next objection is its uncertainty. Terror is not always the effect of force, and an armament is not a victory. If you do not succeed, you are without resource. For, conciliation failing, force remains; but force failing, no further hope of conciliation is left. Power and authority are sometimes bought by kindness; but they can never be begged as alms, by an impoverished and defeated violence. A further objection to force is, that you impair the object by your very endeavours to preserve it. The thing you fought for is not the thing which you recover; but depreciated, sunk, wasted, and consumed in the contest."

tached to Liberty, than those to the Northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible."

His remark on the state of society in the Southern Provinces of America, unquestionably true as it is, may give some insight into the grounds of their present dispute with the Northern, and of that original and native difference which must end in national struggle. "In Virginia and the Carolinas, they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom to them is not only an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, Liberty looks among them, like something more noble and liberal. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and the people of the Southern Colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, at

His eloquent observation on the general taste for legal studies which predominated in America, is true to fact and nature. "When great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." * *"Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and the colonies. No contrivance can prevent 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 of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You have indeed winged Ministers of vengeance, who carry your bolts in their pounces to the uttermost verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, which limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious elements, and says, So far shalt thou go, and no further! Who are you that should fret and rage, and bite the chains of nature?"

*

•

His anticipation of the results that must yet follow from the extension of the colonies, through the western lauds of America, is probably not far from its fulfilment, though the sea-shore States have abandoned their allegiance. "You cannot station garrisons in every part of those deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to another.

Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the Apalachian mountains. Thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast rich level meadow, a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with their habits of life; would soon forget a government by which they were disowned; would become hordes of English Tartars, and pouring down upon your frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and of all the slaves that adhered to them. Such would, and in no long time must be, the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing of Providence, increase and multiply."

Towards the close of this great performance, he lays down the principle, (so adverse to that of the enthusiasts for new constitutions,) that in all things, even in freedom, we must consider the price, and settle with ourselves how far we may be satisfied with what is attainable.

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Although there are some among us who think our constitution wants many improvements to make it a complete system of liberty, perhaps none who are of that opinion would think it right to aim at such improvement by disturbing his country, and risking every thing that is dear to him. In every arduous enterprise we consider what we are to lose, as well as what we are to gain; and the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it more. These are the cords of a man. Man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest, and not on metaphysical speculations. Aristotle, the great master of reasoning, cautions us, and with great weight and propriety, against this species of delusive geometrical accuracy in moral arguments, as the most fallacious of all sophistry."

trophe to old Lord Bathurst on the progress of the Colonies to maturity within his lifetime, and the nervous description of the early vigour of their commercial and maritime pursuits. These are probably familiar to the lovers of English eloquence. But every portion of the speech abounds with noble illustrations, and lavish command of classic language. In allusion to the undoubted fact, that the true way to secure a revenue is to begin, not by fiscal regulations, but by making the people masters of their own wealth, he suddenly starts from the simplest form of the statement, into various and luminous figures. "What, says the financier, is peace to us, without money. Your plan gives us no revenue. Yes, but it does, for it secures to the subject the power of refusal, the first of all revenues. Experience is a cheat, and fact a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine of revenue ever discovered by the skill or the fortune of man. It does not indeed vote you any paltry, or limited sum. But it gives the strong-box itself, the fund, the bank, from which only revenues can arise among a people sensible of freedom. Posita luditur arca. Most may be taken where most is accumulated. And what is the soil or climate where experience has not uniformly proved, that the voluntary flow of heaped up plenty, bursting from the weight of its own luxuriance, has ever run with a more copious stream of revenue, than could be squeezed from the dry husks of oppressed indigence by the straining of all the pofitical machinery in the world?"

During this anxious period, while all the elements of public life were darkening, and the tempest which began in America threatened to make its round of the whole European horizon, Burke found leisure and buoyancy of spirit for the full enjoyment of society. He was still the universal favourite. Even Johnson, adverse as he was to him in politics, and accustomed to treat all adversaries, on all occasions, with rough contempt or angry sarcasm, smoothed down his mane, and drew in his talons in the presence of Burke. On one occasion, when Goldsmith, in his

In these fragments, the object has been exclusively to extract the maxims of political truth. The passages of oratorical beauty have been passed by; among the rest, that bold apos

vague style, talked of the impossibility of living in intimacy with a person having a different opinion on any prominent topic, Johnson rebuked him us usual. “Why, no, Sir. You must only shun the subject on which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke. I love his knowledge, his genins, his diffusion and affluence of conversation. But I would not talk to him of the Rockingham party."

In his reserve upon this topic, Johnson probably meant to exhibit more kindness than met the ear, for the Rockingham party had become the tender point of Burke's public feelings. That party had been originally driven to take refuge under its nominal leader, by the mere temptation of high Whig title, hereditary rank, and large fortune. But the Marquis had been found inefficient or unlucky, and his parliamentary weight diminished day by day. Burke still fought, kept actual ruin at a distance, and signalized himself by all the vigour, zeal, and enterprise of an invincible debater. But nothing could resist the force of circumstances; the party must change its leader, or give up its arms. In this emergency, the Marquis proposed a total secession from Parliament. To this proposal Burke, with due submission, gave way, but accompanied his acquiescence with a letter, in which, in stating his reasons for retreat, he so strikingly stated the reasons for the contrary, that the Marquis changed his opinion at once; and the field was retained for a new trial of fortune. Burke's impression, doubtless, was, that nothing is capable of being gained, though every thing may be lost, by giving up the contest; that nothing is sooner forgot ten than the public man who is no longer before the public eye; and that, whatever the nation may discover in vigorous resistance, it will never discover courage in flight, or wisdom in despair.

His opinion on this point was touched on in a subsequent conversation with his friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. "Mr Burke, I do not mean to flatter," said Sir Joshua, "but when posterity reads one of your speeches in Parliament, it will be difficult to believe that you took so much pains, knowing with cer

tainty that it could produce no effect-that not one vote would be gained by it."

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Waiving your compliment to me," was the reply, " I shall say, in general, that it is very well worth while for a man to take pains to speak well in Parliament. A man who has vanity speaks to display his talents. And if a man speaks well, he gradually establishes a certain reputation and consequence in the general opinion, which sooner or later will have its political reward. Besides, though not one vote is gained, a good speech has its effect. Though an act which has been ably opposed passes into a law, yet in its progress it is modelled, it is softened in such a manner, that we see plainly the Minister has been told, that the members attached to him are so sensible of its injustice or absurdity from what they have heard, that it must be altered."

He again observed,-" There are many members who generally go with the Minister, who will not go all lengths. There are many honest, well-meaning country gentlemen, who are in Parliament only to keep up the consequence of their families. Upon most of those a good speech will have influence."

"What," asked Sir Joshua, "would be the result, if a Minister, secure of a majority, were to resolve that there should be no speaking on his side ?" Burke answered," he must soon go out. The plan has been tried already, but it was found it would not do."

In the midst of the more important matters of debate, his natural good humour often relieved the gravity of the House. His half-vexed, half-sportive remark on the speech of David Hartley, the member for Hull, an honest man, but a dreary orator, was long remembered. Burke had come, intending to speak to a motion on American affairs to be brought forward by the member for Hull. But that gentleman's style rapidly thinned the benches. At length, when the House was almost a desert, he called for the reading of the Riot Act, to support some of his arguments. Burke's impatience could be restrained no longer, and under the double vexation of seeing the motion ruined, and his own speech likely to be thrown away for