one shrewd grasping and unscrupulous hand he took away what he generously bestowed with the other. His personal advantages and interests were the last to claim his attention, and for the most part were entirely neglected. Perhaps no higher and more inspiring tribute was ever paid to the unsullied character of Burke, | certainly none truer, than that contained in a letter of Earl Fitzwilliam to Dr. Laurence in 1797, shortly after the great statesman had passed away. Fitzwilliam's remarks were inspired by an examination which he made of the letters of his uncle, Lord Rockingham. "This correspondence," he writes, "as far as it goes, is curious in most of its parts, as it forms a history of the principal measures which occurred between 1776 and 1782; and makes out the motives for the conduct and the principles upon which the great body of the opposition acted on those occasions—every line and letter of it come in proof of the immaculate virtue of the writer-not an iota of this his inmost thoughts, and most private sentiments, that can cast a suspicion upon the purity of his principles, both in a moral and a political point of view. His honour, his fidelity to his engagements and attachments, are conspicuous in the highest degree: his consideration for the character, credit, and reputation of his friends appears always uppermost in his thoughts; for them and for the public, whose welfare he considered as involved in theirs, he thought, he planned, he advised,personal considerations never appear to have a place in his mind his purity and disinterestedness are beyond all parallel, and all praise."

One of the most important traits of Burke's character was his hatred of oppression. "I am," he said, "no lover of oppression, nor believer in malignant fables." This characteristic amplified in his own words will go far in making understandable his conduct in the affairs of

state. "My endeavours in the Irish business, in which I was, indeed, very active and very earnest, both in public and in private, were wholly guided by an uniform principle, which is interwoven in my nature, and which has hitherto regulated, and I hope will continue to regulate, my conduct, I mean an utter abhorrence of all kinds of public injustice and oppression; the worst species of which are those, which being converted into maxims of state, and blending themselves with law and jurisprudence, corrupt the very fountains of all equity, and subvert all the purposes of government."

Even in a brief survey of his character, some mention must be made of his love of the country-or more specifically of farming. Such love might be anticipated from one who in youth found pleasure in translating Theocritus, the Georgics of Virgil, and in expressing his love of nature in lines like these:

Oh! would some kinder genius me convey

To those fair banks where Greece's waters stray,
Where the tall firs o'ershade his crystal floods,
Or hide me in the thickest gloom of woods;
To bear me hence, far from the city's noise,
And give me all I ask, the country's joys.

In 1750 he spoke of agriculture as "my favourite study, and my favourite pursuit, if Providence had blessed me with a few paternal acres." Eighteen years later he purchased near Beaconsfield six hundred acres. "It is a place exceedingly pleasant," he wrote, "and I propose, God willing, to become a farmer in good earnest." Farming in good earnest he followed for the rest of his life, though only as an avocation, yet still more earnest than all but a very few in his time followed it as a vocation. With the possible exception of Arthur Young

probably no one learned the details of the work better and more scientifically, and certainly no one was more enthusiastic in the occupation. On his estate, heavy financial burden though it was, he obtained until his death that rest and relaxation, without which his labors in Parliament would have been impossible.

Such in short are some of the numerous virtues and characteristics of Edmund Burke. It is difficult to comprehend such a complexity of virtue, persistently and consistently operative for thirty years in the intricate, not to say chaotic, affairs of Empire; but only so far as we do understand it, shall we understand aright the statesmanship of this eminent man in the "great, just, and honourable causes" in which he fought: the freedom of the House of Commons from the designs of George the Third and his friends, the freedom of the American colonies and Ireland from an oppressive English government, the freedom of India from corrupt officials, the freedom of the French monarchy from the Revolutionists and of the French people from themselves, and the freedom of Irish Catholicism from intolerance and religious bigotry.

Burke's motives for being in politics cannot, perhaps, be better expressed than in his own words: "My principles make it my first, indeed almost my only earnest wish, to see every part of this empire, and every denomination of men in it, happy and contented, and united on one common bottom of equality and justice." "I do not desire to sit in Parliament for any other end than that of promoting the common happiness of all those who are, in any degree, subjected to our legislative authority; and of binding together, in one common tie of civil interest and constitutional freedom, every denomination of men amongst us. When God has given any men hands, and any other men shall be found

impious or mistaken enough to say that they shall not work, my voice shall not be with those men."

To the obtaining and promoting of this happiness of his fellow men he held his best powers and genius not too dear. The responsibility of his position rested heavily upon him, and he could undertake his work at all only in the confidence which profound study, years of experience and observation, and fixed principles gave him. He was not in the words of Milton, "unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek," neither was he impervious to new principles. If we were able to count the cost of Burke's principles in years of patient toil and reflection, we should better understand his contempt for those who would make the firstlings of their heart the firstlings of their hand, and seek to carry into practice with enthusiasm every half-fledged, half-formed idea the moment it appears on the threshold of their mind, stopping not to weigh it in the scales of experience or to determine its bearing on the vast and complicated institution of government with its delicate equipoise of all the forces of society. None of Burke's opponents erred more than those who set him down for an enthusiast because of the vehemence with which he championed a cause, for as he himself said, "vehement passion does not always indicate infirm judgment." In this respect

Burke's son correctly estimated his father's character: "My father's opinions are never hastily adopted; and even those ideas which have often appeared to me only the effects of momentary heat, or casual impression, I have afterwards found beyond the possibility of doubt to be the result of systematic meditation, perhaps of years; or else if adopted on the spur of the occasion, yet formed upon the conclusions of long and philosophical experience and supported by no trifling depth of thought."

Morely has well said that a passionate enthusiasm for order is the key to Burke's character. It is also the most important element in his policy and theory of government. With him the state was a part of the divine plan of which order is an essential feature. "He who gave our nature to be perfected by our virtue, willed also the necessary means of its perfection. He willed therefore the state." His will is the "law of laws" and the "sovereign of sovereigns." "We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great immutable, preëxistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir. This great law does not arise from our conventions or compacts; on the contrary, it gives to our conventions and compacts all the force and sanction they can have;—it does not arise from our vain institutions. Every good gift is of God; all power is of God; -and He, who has given the power, and from whom alone it originates, will never suffer the exercise of it to be practised upon any less solid foundation than the power itself. If then all dominion of man over man is the effect of the Divine disposition, it is bound by the eternal laws of Him that gave it, with which no human authority can dispense."

Confronted with this creed, and remembering Burke's conviction that when all religion is "destroyed nothing can be saved or is worth saving," we begin to comprehend the dignity, fearful earnestness, reverence, and serene confidence in the face of reverses with which Burke held his trust and discharged his duties. His work in politics was a sacred obligation; government an institution of divine authority administered by human