interest to make them happy." Had his hearers been less corrupt, had they been but a little less blinded by their personal interests in respect to the public welfare, these speeches must have had their desired effect. Burke labored unceasingly to root out this corruption and to reform English politics. In his "Speech on Economic Reform," in 1780, he gives us a clear insight into the evils existing at that time in the relations between the Court and the House of Commons.

master

In return for all this disinterested service, and in recognition of his marvelous executive ability, we might well expect to see him filling one of the highest positions the government had to bestow. And yet he was never admitted into the Cabinet, nor did he ever hold any office above the rather subordinate one of paynot even when his own friends and the party which owed everything to his efforts and ability came into power. There have been many attempts to explain this omission by his poverty, by his Irish birth and family connections, and by his sympathies with the Roman Catholics at a time when they were scarcely tolerated; but none of these causes seem adequate to account for such flagrant neglect, and, in truth, the matter has never been explained.

The Rockingham ministry had been dissolved in 1766, to be succeeded in turn by the ministries of Chatham and Grafton, and then by that of Lord North, who remained in power from 1770 to 1782, and who was largely responsible for the stringent measures against America. With the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Lord North's power came to an end, and Burke's friend, Lord Rockingham, once more became prime minister. He lived for only two months, and was succeeded in office by Lord Shelburne, who represented the Whig party and all the principles for which

Burke had so strenuously fought. To be sure, Shelburne was personally objectionable to Burke; but that does not excuse the latter from withdrawing his allegiance, and, least of all, for lending his support to Lord North—the man who, during his twelve years' previous ministry, had been responsible for many of the evils which Burke had done so much to reform. Lord North remained in power only eight months, and with him Burke withdrew from his office of paymaster, never to return.

He now devoted himself to a consideration of the English misrule in India. a question in which he had for some time manifested an active interest. The result of his study was given to the world in "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts," and the "Impeachment of Warren Hastings." The trial of Warren Hastings, Governor General of India, for crimes and misdemeanors, dragged on for six weary years, and in the end he was acquitted; but Burke's eloquent exposure and denunciation of the evils in India were not delivered in vain; for although the man he accused was not condemned, the system he opposed received its deathblow. "If I were to call for a reward," Burke said, "it would be for the services in which for fourteen years I showed the most industry and had the least success. I mean the affairs in India. They are those on which I value myself the most—most for the importance; most for the labor; most for the judgment; most for the constancy and perseverance in the pursuit."

We have now to consider the last period of Burke's lifethat of the French Revolution. Burke was essentially conservative. "What he valued was the deep-seated order of systems that worked by the accepted uses, opinions, beliefs, prejudices of a community." He watched with an ever-growing distrust the rise of those forces in France which were to destroy this order,

and in the "Reflections on the Revolution in France," which appeared in November, 1790, he gave voice to his feelings in almost frenzied tones. For the first time in his life he did not study thoroughly the subject he had in hand. He saw but one side of the question; he wished to see no other. The dangers of the new system blinded him to the disorders of the old, and he had nothing but scorn and invective to hurl against the revolutionists; not one word of sympathy for their wrongs or of excuse for their actions. The influence of this work was tremendous. "With a long resounding blast on his golden trumpet, Burke had unfurled a new flag, and half the nation hurried to rally to it— that half which had scouted his views on America, which had mocked his ideas on religious toleration, and which a moment before had hated and reviled him beyond all men living for his fierce tenacity in the impeachment of Warren Hastings."

Burke's attitude brought him much honor, but still more humiliation. The crowned heads of Europe applauded him, but his friends one by one dropped away. The climax came when he renounced the friendship of his lifelong companion, Charles Fox, because the latter could not follow him in his bitter denunciation of the French. year he wrote an "Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs," in which he tried to defend his views on the French Revolution, and to vindicate himself against the charge of having renounced his most avowed principles. From this time on he devoted himself to the French situation, and he went so far as to urge the English to interfere and wage war with France.

This was in 1791. In August of the same

In 1794 Burke retired altogether from Parliament. The king and the Tories, well pleased at his attitude toward the French, were making arrangements to elevate him to the peerage when,

in August, 1794, he was completely prostrated by the sudden death of his son Richard, to whom he was deeply attached.

The question of the peerage was dropped, but the king, in return for his long years of service, granted him a pension. As this pension had not been sanctioned by Parliament, the Duke of Bedford assailed it on the plea of corruption. In his "Letter to a Noble Lord," Burke repudiated this charge and showed how well he had earned this slight reward for long political services.

In 1795 he wrote his "Letters on a Regicide Peace," which, like all his writings of this period, are marked by his undying horror and hatred of the spirit of the French Revolution. After the death of his son he had little interest left in life, and he followed him to the grave on July 9, 1797.

And now we must consider what it was in Burke, that raised him from obscurity to a position whence he influenced the whole of Europe; what it was that ranked him among orators with Demosthenes and Cicero, among statesmen with Richelieu and Pitt, and among philosophical thinkers and eloquent writers with the greatest men of his time and of all time. The answer is ready at hand. To great breadth of intellect he added a strong will and a determination to gain a thorough knowledge of every subject within his range. He worked indefatigably, and his versatility was truly marvelous.

It was difficult to find a subject

in which he was not as much at home as though it had been his specialty. Add to these qualities a strong moral character, which led him to unwearied work in the cause of right and virtue, as he conceived it, and we have the elements of all true success.

He had no personal charms to recommend him; his gestures were awkward, his voice harsh, and his utterance displeasing.

We are even told that one of his listeners crept under a bench to escape a speech which, when published, he read till it was thumbed to rags. "I was not," Burke tells us himself, “swaddled and rocked and dandled into a legislator. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in life,―for in every step was I traversed and opposed,- and at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole system of its interests both abroad and at home; otherwise no rank, no toleration even, for me."

And so, inch by inch, he raised himself to the very pinnacle of fame. "No man of sense," said Dr. Johnson, "could meet Mr. Burke by accident under a gateway without being convinced that he was the first man in England."

The following characterization is taken from John Morley's excellent "Life of Burke": 66 'Opinion is slowly, but without reaction, settling down to the verdict that Burke is one of the abiding names in our history, not because he either saved Europe or destroyed the Whig party; but because he added to the permanent considerations of wise political thought, and to the maxims of wise practice in great affairs, and because he imprints himself upon us with a magnificence and elevation of expression, that places him among the highest masters of literature, in one of its highest and most commanding senses. His passion appears hopelessly fatal to success in the pursuit of Truth,