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. 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." "I am not here going into the distinctions of rights," he cries, "not attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions. I hate the very sound of them. This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of man: does it suit his nature in general? does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?" He could not bear to think of having legislative or political arrangements shaped or vindicated by a delusive geometrical accuracy of deduction, instead of being entrusted to "the natural operation of things, which, left to themselves, generally fall into their proper order.”

Apart from his incessant assertion of the principle that man acts from adequate motives relative to his interests, and not on metaphysical speculations, Burke sows, as he marches along in his stately argument, many a germ of the modern philosophy of civilization. He was told that America was worth fighting for. "Certainly it is," he answered, “if fighting a people be the best way of gaining them." Every step that has been taken in the direction of progress, not merely in empire, but in education, in punishment, in the treatment of the insane, has shown the deep wisdom, so unfamiliar in that age of ferocious penalties and brutal methods, of this truth— that "the natural effect of fidelity, clemency, kindness in governors, is peace, good-will, order, and esteem in the governed. Is there a single instance to the contrary? Then there is that sure key to wise politics: Nobody shall persuade me, when a whole people are concerned, that acts of lenity are not means of conciliation." And that still more famous sentence, "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people."

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Goodrich, Select British Eloquence, pp. 237-240.

The variety and extent of his powers in debate was greater than that of any other orator in ancient or modern times. No one ever poured forth such a flood of thought-so many original combinations of inventive genius; so much knowledge of man and the working of political systems; so many just remarks on the relation of government to the manners, the spirit, and even the prejudices of a people; so many wise maxims as to a change in constitutions and laws; so many beautiful effusions of lofty and generous sentiment; such exuberant stores of illustration, ornament, and apt illusion; all intermingled with the liveliest sallies of wit or the boldest flights of a sublime imagination. In actual debate, as a contemporary informs us, he passed more rapidly from one exercise of his own powers to another, than in his printed productions. During the same evening, sometimes in the space of a few moments, he would be pathetic and humorous, acrimonious and conciliating, now giving vent to his indignant feelings in lofty declamation, and again, almost in the same breath, convulsing his audience by the most laughable exhibitions of ridicule or burlesque. In respect to the versatility of Mr. Burke as an orator, Dr. Parr says, "Who among men of eloquence and learning was ever more profoundly versed in every branch of science? Who is there that can transfer so happily the results of laborious pursuits to the most familiar and popular topics? Who is there that possesses so extensive, yet so accurate, an acquaintance with every transaction recent or remote ? Who is there that can deviate from his subject for the purposes of delight with such engaging ease, and insensibly conduct his hearers or readers from the severity of reasoning to the festivity of wit? Who is there that can melt them, if the occasion requires, with such resistless power to grief or pity? Who is there that combines the charm of inimitable grace and urbanity with such magnificent and boundless expansion?”

A prominent feature in the character of Mr. Burke, which prepared him for the wide exercise of his powers, was intellectual independence. He leaned on no other man's understanding, however great. In the true sense of the term, he

never borrowed an idea or an image.

Like food in a healthy

system, everything from without was perfectly assimilated; it entered by a new combination into the very structure of his thoughts, as when the blood, freshly formed, goes out to the extremities under the strong palpitations of the heart. On most subjects, at the present day, this is all we can expect of originality; the thoughts and feelings which a man expresses must be truly his own.

In the structure of his mind he had a strong resemblance to Bacon, nor was he greatly his inferior in the leading attributes of his intellect. In imagination he went far beyond him. He united more perfectly than any other man the discordant qualities of the philosopher and the poet, and this union was equally the source of some of his greatest excellencies and faults as an orator.

The first thing that strikes us in a survey of his understanding is its remarkable comprehensiveness. He had an amplitude of mind, a power and compass of intellectual vision, beyond that of most men that ever lived. He looked on a subject like a man standing upon an eminence, taking a large and rounded view of it on every side, contemplating each of its parts under a vast variety of relations, and those relations often extremely complex or remote. To this wide grasp of original thought he added every variety of information gathered from abroad. There was no subject on which he had not read, no system relating to the interests of man as a social being which he had not thoroughly explored. All these treasures of acquired knowledge he brought home to amplify and adorn the products of his own genius, as the ancient Romans collected everything that was beautiful in the spoils of conquered nations, to give new splendour to the seat of empire.

To this largeness of view he added a surprising subtlety of intellect. So quick and delicate were his perceptions that he saw his way clearly through the most complicated relations, following out the finest thread of thought without once letting go his hold, or becoming lost or perplexed in the intricacies of the subject. This subtlety, however, did not usually take the form of mere logical acuteness in the detection of fallacies. He was not remarkable for his dexterity as a disputant. He

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loved rather to build up than to pull down; he dwelt not so much on the differences of things as on some hidden agreement between them when apparently most dissimilar. The association of resemblance was one of the most active principles of his nature. While it filled his mind with all the imagery of the poet, it gave an impulse and direction to his researches as a philosopher. It led him, as his favorite employment, to trace out analogies, correspondencies, or contrasts (which last, as Brown remarks, are the necessary result of a quick sense of resemblance); thus filling up his original comprehensive mind with a beautiful series of associated thoughts, showing often the identity of things which appeared the most unlike, and binding together in one system what might seem the most unconnected or contradictory phenomena. To this he added another principle of association, still more characteristic of the philosopher, that of cause and effect. Why?" "Whence?" By what means? "For what end?" "With what results?" these questions from childhood were continually pressing upon his mind. To answer them in respect to man in all his multiplied relations as the creature of society, to trace out the working of political institutions, to establish the principles of wise legislation, to lay open the sources of national security and advancement, was the great object of his life; and he here found the widest scope for that extraordinary subtlety of intellect of which we are now speaking. In the two principles just mentioned, we see the origin of Mr. Burke's inexhaustible richness of invention. We see, also, how it was that in his mode of viewing a subject there was never anything ordinary or commonplace. If the topic was a trite one, the manner of presenting it was peculiarly his own. As in the kaleidoscope the same object takes a thousand new shapes and colours under a change of light, so in his mind the most hackneyed theme was transformed and illuminated by the radiance of his genius, or placed in new relations which gave it all the freshness of original thought.

This amplitude and subtlety of intellect, in connection with his peculiar habits of association, prepared the way for another characteristic of Mr. Burke, his remarkable power of gener

alization. Without this he might have been one of the greatest of poets, but not a philosopher or a scientific statesman. "To generalize,” says Sir James Mackintosh, "is to philosophize ; and comprehension of mind, joined to the habit of careful and patient observation, forms the true genius of philosophy.” But it was not in his case a mere "habit," it was a kind of instinct of his nature, which led him to gather all the results of his thinking, as by an elective affinity, around their appropriate centres; and, knowing that truths are valuable just in proportion as they have a wider reach, to rise from particulars to generals, and so to shape his statements as to give them the weight and authority of universal propositions. His philosophy, however, was not that of abstract truth; it was confined to things in the concrete, and chiefly to man, society, and government. He was no metaphysician; he had, in fact, a dislike, amounting to weakness, of all abstract reasonings in politics, affirming, on one occasion, as to certain statements touching the rights of man, that just "in proportion as they were metaphysically true, they were morally and politically false !" He was, as he himself said, "a philosopher in action; "his generalizations embraced the great facts of human society and political institutions as affected by all the interests and passions, the prejudices and frailties, of a being like man. The impression he made was owing, in a great degree, to the remoteness of the ideas which he brought together, the startling novelty and yet justness of his combinations, the heightening power of contrast, and the striking manner in which he connected truths of imperishable value with the individual case before him. It is here that we find the true character and office of Mr. Burke. He was the man of principles; one of the greatest teachers of "civil prudence" that the world has ever seen. A collection of maxims might be made from his writings infinitely superior to those of Rochefoucauld; equally true to nature, and adapted, at the same time, not to produce selfishness and distrust, but to call into action all that is generous, and noble, and elevated in the heart of man. His high moral sentiment and strong sense of religion added greatly to the force of these maxims; and, as a result of these fine generalizations, Mr. Burke has this peculi