'it ought to have no more. It ought not to have force enough to support itself in the neglect or the abuse of them. If it has, they must be, as they are, abused and neglected. Men will 'throw themselves on their power for a justification of their want ' of order, vigilance, foresight, and all the virtues, and all the qualifications of a statesman. The minister may exist, but the government is gone.'*

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If there is any one eminent criterion which, above all the rest, distinguishes a wise government from an administration weak and improvident, it is this;-" well to know the best time and manner of yielding, what it is impossible to keep." There ' have been, Sir, and there are, many who choose to chicane with 'their situation, rather than be instructed by it. Those gentlemen argue against every desire of reformation, upon the principles of a criminal prosecution. It is enough for them to jus'tify their adherence to a pernicious system, that it is not of 'their contrivance; that it is an inheritance of absurdity, derived to them from their ancestors; that they can make out a long ' and unbroken pedigree of mismanagers that have gone before them. They are proud of the antiquity of their house; and they defend their errors, as if they were defending their inheritance afraid of derogating from their nobility; and carefully avoiding a sort of blot in their scutcheon, which they think 'would degrade them for ever.

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"It was thus that the unfortunate Charles the First defended himself on the practice of the Stuart who went before him, and ' of all the Tudors. His partizans might have gone to the Plantagenets. They might have found bad examples enough, both ' abroad and at home, that could have shewn an antient and il'lustrious descent. But there is a time, when men will not suffer 'bad things because their ancestors have suffered worse. There

' is a time, when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither 'draw reverence nor obtain protection. If the noble lord in the 'blue ribbon pleads, "not guilty," to the charges brought against 'the present system of public economy, it is not possible to give a 'fair verdict by which he will not stand acquitted. But pleading ' is not our present business. His plea or his traverse may be ' allowed as an answer to a charge, when a charge is made. But if he puts himself in the way to obstruct reformation, then the 'faults of his office instantly become his own. Instead of a public officer in an abusive department, whose province is an object ' to be regulated, he becomes a criminal who is to be punished. 'I do most seriously put it to Administration, to consider the 'wisdom of a timely reform. Early reformations are amicable

* Speeches, Vol. II. pp. 5, 6.

' arrangements with a friend in power; late reformations are terms imposed upon a conquered enemy: early reformations are made ' in cool blood; late reformations are made under a state of in'flammation. In that state of things, the people behold in govern'ment nothing that is respectable. They see the abuse, and they ' will see nothing else: they fall into the temper of a furious po'pulace provoked at the disorder of a house of ill fame; they never attempt to correct or regulate; they go to work by the shortest way to abate the nuisance, they pull down the ' house.

"This is my opinion with regard to the true interest of government. But as it is the interest of government that reformation 'should be early, it is the interest of the people that it should be temperate. It is their interest, because a temperate reform is permanent; and because it has a principle of growth. Whenever we improve, it is right to leave room for a further improvement. It is right to consider, to look about us, to examine the 'effect of what we have done. Then we can proceed with con'fidence, because we can proceed with intelligence.'

In my opinion, it is our duty, when we have the desires of the people before us, to pursue them, not in the spirit of literal ' obedience, which may militate with their very principle, much less to treat them with a peevish and contentious litigation, as if we were adverse parties in a suit. It would, Sir, be most 'dishonourable for a faithful representative of the Commons, to 'take advantage of any inartificial expression of the people's 'wishes, in order to frustrate their attainment of what they have 'an undoubted right to expect. We are under infinite obligations to our constituents, who have raised us to so distinguished a trust, and have imparted such a degree of sanctity to common characters. We ought to walk before them with purity, plainness, and integrity of heart; with filial love, and not with 'slavish fear, which is always a low and tricking thing."

"If we should be able, by dexterity, or power, or intrigue, to 'disappoint the expectations of our constituents, what will it avail us? We shall never be strong or artful enough to parry, or to put by, the irresistible demands of our situation. That 'situation calls upon us, and upon our constituents too, with a voice which will be heard If all the nation are not ' equally forward to press this duty upon us, yet be assured, that they will equally expect we should perform it. The respectful 'silence of those who wait upon your pleasure ought to be as 'powerful with you, as the call of those who require your service as their right. Some, without doors, affect to feel hurt for your dignity, because they suppose that menaces are held out to you.

VOL. XII.-N.S.

C

Justify their good opinion, by shewing that no menaces are necessary to stimulate you to your duty.-But, Sir, whilst we may sympathize with them, in one point, who sympathize with us in another, we ought to attend no less to those who approach us like men, and who, in the guise of petitioners, speak to us in 'the tone of a concealed authority. It is not wise to force them to speak out more plainly, what they plainly mean.—But the petitioners are violent. Be it so. Those who are least 'anxious about your conduct, are not those that love you 6 most. Moderate affection, and satiated enjoyment, are cold and respectful; but an ardent and injured passion is tempered up with wrath, and grief, and shame, and conscious worth, and 'the maddening sense of violated right. A jealous love lights his torch from the firebrands of the furies.-They who call upon you to belong wholly to the people, are those who wish you to return to your proper home; to the sphere of your duty, to the post of your honour, to the mansion-house of all genuine, serene, and solid satisfaction. We have furnished to the people ' of England (indeed we have) some real cause of jealousy. Let ' us leave that sort of company which, if it does not destroy our innocence, pollutes our honour; let us free ourselves at once 'from every thing that can increase their suspicions, and inflame 'their just resentment; let us cast away from us, with a generous scorn, all the love-tokens and symbols that we have been vain ' and light enough to accept;-all the bracelets, and snuff-boxes, and miniature-pictures, and hair devices, and all the other adulterous trinkets that are the pledges of our alienation, and the ' monuments of our shame. Let us return to our legitimate home, and all jars and all quarrels will be lost in embraces. Let the commons in parliament assembled be one and the same thing ' with the commons at large. The distinctions that are made to separate us are unnatural and wicked contrivances. Let us

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identify, let us incorporate ourselves with the people. Let us cut all the cables and snap the chains which tie us to an unfaith'ful shore, and enter the friendly harbour, that shoots far out into the main its moles and jettees to receive us." War with 'the world, and peace with our constituents." Be this our motto, and our principle. Then, indeed, we shall be truly great. Respecting ourselves, we shall be respected by the world. At pre'sent, all is troubled, and cloudy, and distracted, and full of anger and turbulence, both abroad and at home; but the air may be cleared by this storm, and light and fertility may follow it. Let 'us give a faithful pledge to the people, that we honour, indeed, 'the crown, but that we belong to them; that we are their auxiliaries, and not their task-masters; the fellow-labourers in the same vineyard, not lording over their rights, but helpers of

:

their joy that to tax them is a grievance to ourselves; but to cut off from our enjoyments to forward theirs, is the highest gra'tification we are capable of receiving.'

The whole of this admirable speech, which will be found in the first volume of the present edition of the works, we recommend to the special perusal and study of our readers. It abounds at once with splendid passages and homely truths. The reform proposed was of so sweeping a character that it even throws into the shade all that has been hitherto accomplished by a reforming government. Mr. Burke proposed to abolish the Board of Trade, the Board of Works, the Colonial Secretaryship, the expensive office of Surveyor General, with the two chief justices in eyre, the feudal services of the king's household, and the patent offices in the Exchequer; also, all subordinate treasuries; all 'jurisdictions which furnish more matter of expense, more temptation to oppression, or more means of corrupt influence, than advantage to political administration; all public estates which are 'more subservient to the purposes of vexing, over-awing, and in'fluencing those who hold under them, than of benefit to the revenue; and in a word, all offices which bring more charge than proportional advantage to the state." When the reason of old ⚫ establishments is gone, it is absurd,' he maintained, to preserve nothing but the burden of them. This is superstitiously to ' embalm a carcass not worth an ounce of the gums that are ' used to preserve it. It is to burn precious oils in the tomb; it is to offer meat and drink to the dead; not so much an 'honour to the deceased as a disgrace to the survivors.' (Vol. I. p. 239.)

The contrariety between sentiments and principles like these, and those to which Mr. Burke afterwards prostituted his eloquence, is so total and violent, that neither the lapse of years nor the progress of events could warrant or explain it, apart from the change of party connexion which, in the mean time, he had undergone. Our object, in giving these lengthened extracts, has not been, however, to expose the inconsistency or to lower the authority of this great man, but to reclaim him from himself;—to vindicate the fame of the political philosopher from the self-misrepresentations of the partisan ;-and, instead of attempting to prove that he underwent no revolution, to accomplish his restoration. Consistent in his political opinions, he was not; and upon this point we must differ entirely from the ingenious Author of this critical memoir, who fails in shewing anything more than that the character of Burke's mind remained the same under every change of his opinions. An anxiety to vindicate his integrity and pa

Speeches. Vol. II. pp. 21–23; 88-90. See also pp. 231, 2; 254, 5 of vol. I. of the present edition.

triotism could alone, we think, have led the writer to attempt the establishment of what is more than a paradox,-an incompatibility, -the sameness of opposites. In other respects, his critical estimate of Burke is extremely discriminating, acute, and we might say, profoundly just. The analysis of the great orator's intellectual character is a fine specimen of philosophical biography; and the brilliant composition, sparkling with illustrations, seems to have caught a glow and richness of tint from the object of the Writer's admiration. We must make room for the following remarks upon the splendid faults of Burke's oratory.

A man who, with a very philosophical mind, has somehow or other become an orator, must always find it hard to struggle against the bias of his nature, especially if nature has been fixed by long habit; his mind will be sure to indicate its tendencies, and often just when they ought to be repressed; he will be fond of tracing particular instances to general rules, and of ascending from the particular circumstances of the case before him to maxims of universal application; of doing this formally and explicitly, even where such a reference is already tacitly admitted; of entering into elaborate disquisition on the abstract excellence, beauty, and grandeur of such principles, and their mutual harmony. Such disquisitory matter as this has become his delight, and he cannot refrain from it. To give it up, would be to do violence to all the tendencies of his nature and all the habits of his life; he would sooner hazard his success as an orator, than sacrifice his tastes as a philosopher. He forgets, or remembers to no purpose, that others have no sympathy with these peculiar pleasures; that his intellect is, perhaps, the only one in the audience, which dwells with delight on such abstractions; and that where the great principles which he is so fond of explaining and illustrating, are viewed only in their practical relation to the matter in hand, and not as subjects of speculative interest, any elaborate statement of them must necessarily be tedious.

The speeches of Burke, considered merely as speeches, are full of splendid errors of this description. He can seldom confine himself to a simple business-like view of the subject under discussion, or to close, rapid, compressed argumentation on it. On the contrary, he makes boundless excursions into all the regions of moral and political philosophy; is perpetually tracing up particular instances and subordinate principles to profound and comprehensive maxims; amplifying and expanding the most meagre materials into brief, but comprehensive, dissertations of political science, and incrusting (so to speak) the nucleus of the most insignificant fact with the most exquisite crystallizations of truth; while the whole composition glitters and sparkles again with a rich profusion of moral reflections, equally beautiful and just. Indeed it may be said, that in adorning and illustrating a dry or common-place topic, in making even the most barren subject of disquisition suddenly and miraculously fertile, scarcely any author has even approached Burke. These very peculiarities, however, were often unfavourable to his success as an orator.

'But there was another quality of Burke's mind, almost as unfavour