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conscious feeling of gratitude to the genius of Burke. The dogma of the school is very simple, being in fact comprised in a single proposition- Whatever is, is wrong. Resting on this truth, of which the depth is proved by its simplicity, they fairly infer that every change, and à fortiori every revolution, is a national benefit. All power is corruption, and every institution having the misfortune to be old, is therefore, as were the aged in some Scythian nations, to be discarded without the benefit of clergy. talk of the wisdom of any generation, saving the present, is worse than drivelling folly; it is the disguise of crafty and self-interested politicians, whose Gospel is their maw. These opinions, not of the genuine English growth, are well represented abroad by a coalition, formed of materials apparently discordant, but in practice most harmonious-by the disappointed worshippers of military despotism in France-by the remnant of the primitive and genuine jacobins-by the ultra-liberal of the new school in all countries. All these, combining in their hatred and their abuse of Burke, labour in full chorus to hunt down his credit as an author, an orator, a statesman. To confute and to ridicule his reasoning, to degrade his personal motives, and to reduce the value of his authority-these are the favourite labours of their

common vocation.

We cannot but admire their policy in the selection of their victim. Of all statesmen he, without doubt, is justly the most odious to the domestic and to the foreign disciples of this faith, who was disqualified by his deep and varied instruction, still more than by the native penetration of his genius, for the preference of novelty to knowledge, of metaphysical maxims to experience; who was attached by the noblest reason as by the warmest affection to the ancient institutions of his country-and the proofs of whose transcendent ability to defend these can only perish with their existence. Yet even such natural haters might hate on without overstepping the limits of fair hostility or rather of truth, which they unquestionably do when they represent Burke as a prejudiced aristocrat, and hold him up to the aversion of mankind as the natural enemy of all political freedom, and all political improvement. There is no rashness in asserting that very few liberals of the present day have more fairly earned the title, honourable as it is in the rational sense of the term, than Burke has done by the unbroken tenour of his speeches, his writings, his life. Nay, we advance a step farther, and we should not hesitate to maintain, that the records of parliament present the name of no statesman since the Revolution of 1688, to whom Englishmen are more distinctly indebted for the practical extension of their freedom, and for the lasting improvement of their constitution; or for whom, in a wider sense, all men who value the principle of genuine freedom,

freedom, are bound to cherish and to express a more cordial gratitude.

We are induced to attempt some proof of this assertion, not merely by the desire of aiding, in our vocation, to vindicate the memory of a great man from injustice and from calumny:-we feel the more powerful motive of pointing out one of the most striking evidences in English history, that an aversion to consider revolution in the abstract as an infallible guide to liberty, and an honest preference of the existing order of society, are not incompatible with the love and the pursuit of genuine freedom; that they may not only co-exist with, but be in themselves the best proof of, the most active and the most liberal feelings in favour of the advancement of nations in knowledge and in liberty itself. We shall be enabled, in pursuing our purpose, to survey, without any pretension of writing another Memoir of Mr. Burke, some of the prominent transactions of his life-a life, of which it is, in our humble opinion, the most remarkable characteristic, that every stage is marked by some signal triumph, some lasting advantage obtained by him for the very principles of which he is eternally reviled as the most deliberate, systematic, and fatal enemy. Nor can we better introduce our own observations than by quoting those of Mr. Prior on Mr. Burke's own admirable defence of his Life contained in the Letter to a Noble Lord.'

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The striking passages are nearly as numerous as the sentences. collection of flashes of indignant genius, roused by a sense of injury and aggression to throw out its consuming fires with no common force on the heads of the aggressors. I perceive in it, says the Author of the Pursuits of Literature, sights more than youthful poets when they dreamed, the philosophy of Plato and the wit of Lucian.

The pathetic lamentation for the loss of his son, the glowing tribute to the memory of his old friend, in whose heart he had a place to the last beat, Lord Keppel, uncle to the duke of Bedford, show a different but not less striking style of powers. The notice of his own services to the country is less a formal recapitulation, which the occasion in some degree called for, than a manly and modest allusion. It is forcible and comprehensive, and what perhaps (the assertion is not made without deliberation) no other English statesman of the period can say. My merits were in having had an active, though not always an ostentatious, share in every one act, without exception, of constitutional utility in my time.'

At the very outset of his parliamentary career, Burke may be traced, through the imperfect records of that day, as the ardent and the successful opponent of the doctrine on general warrants; which, at the risk of the public peace, was supported by the ministers of the time. He justly states the final defeat of that doctrine to be one of the brightest merits of the short administration in 1765; and it would now be idle to labour in proving

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that its success would have in effect annulled the securities of our personal and political liberty. If that principle had once been fairly admitted into the sanctuary of the constitution-how many years of political contention must have been passed-what national evils might have been suffered-in the struggle to dislodge it!

Again, as early as the year 1766, and in every question touching America, from the commencement to the close of the disastrous struggle, Burke is the prominent and the consistent advocate of the rights of the colonists. He labours to prevent the war which he had predicted. He not only enforces the policy, but devises the expedients of conciliation. Failing in this object, he endeavours to mitigate the cruelties of the warfare---plusquam civilia bella. His exertions are never relaxed, until peace had extinguished their motive and their use. If not equal to Lord Chatham in the fire, the condensed energy of his eloquence,-yet is he far superior in the patient examination of the subject, in depth of research, in the nature of his views at once comprehensive and practical. In the very last effort of his vehement declamation, Lord Chatham proclaimed the ruin of England to be the certain consequence of conceding our claim of supremacy. Let the admirers of national freedom be reminded, that Burke was not deterred by his aversion to innovations in government, by his decided, and at times perhaps extravagant passion for established systems, from opposing throughout the obstinate and fruitless assertion of that claim. If the same counsel had prevailed in the more recent and somewhat parallel case of Spain, it would have advanced her interests without injuring her honour.

We are tempted to cite a passage from Burke's Observations on a Publication called the Present State of the Nation,' not only by the intrinsic merit of the sentiments, but because they cast the strongest light on the motives of his conduct, in the very different, or rather opposite cases of the American colonies and Republican France. It should be noted, that these 'Observations' were published in 1769.

Thus the two very difficult points, superiority in the presiding state, and freedom in the subordinate, were on the whole sufficiently, that is practically reconciled; without agitating those vexatious questions, which, in truth, rather belong to metaphysics than politics, and which can never be moved without shaking the foundations of the best governments that have ever been constituted by human wisdom.'

Is it a strained construction to infer from this and from many similar passages, that even thus early Burke, when contending for the rights of English subjects, claimed on his own behalf a fair distinction, very intelligible to common understandings, although

in all likelihood the thorough-paced admirer of the French revolution will never admit it? To the plain, the definite and practicable objects, professed and accomplished by the English revolution of 1688, he cordially assented; to the American colonists, when contending against a practical grievance, he allowed the justice of their resistance; but it is evident that, long before he can be suspected of uttering such opinions for any base or temporary purpose, he denounced upon principle the vague theories of metaphysical statesmen. These he could not admit to be mere harmless generalities when transferred from books to action; and he well knew them to be the convenient disguise of selfish and profligate ambition.

Again, in 1771, Burke was the leader in accomplishing one of the greatest services on record, not only to the fair influence of the people, but to the strength and the stability of the English constitution itself. Chiefly by his exertions in the contest between the House of Commons and the magistrates of the city, the government were compelled tacitly to concede the privilege, against which they had long and zealously contended, of publishing the debates and proceedings in parliament. We dare not attempt, in our confined limits, to sketch the consequences of this victory. Of their importance in the narrowest view, he alone can judge, who may have laboured to glean some notion of the political eloquence of those days, from the scanty fragments, the mysterious initials, the disjecta membra of the reports then tolerated. That Mr. Burke should have been mainly instrumental in effecting this revolution was strictly and peculiarly just; for the merits of his own conduct, and the character of his eloquence while he was leader of his party, are, unless as occasionally recorded by himself, most obscurely and slightly represented. Without enlarging on the obvious benefits still flowing from this privilege, when considered in a higher point of view, we may confidently assert, that neither the parliament nor the constitution of England-nor consequently England herself-could have survived the open and the insidious attacks of enemies foreign and domestic that awaited her, unless public opinion had gained this new principle of force. The conduct of statesmen themselves has been purified by this inevitable test; and the people of England, on the other hand, more enlightened on the real condition of the country, more firmly satisfied of the grounds on which they bestow or withdraw their confidence, are less exposed to the influence of faction, or to the oppression of power.

The order of time leads us next to remark the early, the continued, the disinterested exertions of Burke in favour of Ireland, the country of his birth, the constant and the last object of

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his labour and his care. Those who are not ignorant of the less liberal views of Mr. Fox, and of some of his greatest contemporaries on this subject, are bound to record that he always supported her interests at the sacrifice of his own; and that on the subject of her trade more especially, all the principles, by which the intercourse between the two countries has in the sequel been regulated and improved, were traced by his sagacity. His exertions in regard to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, what ever may be the natural differences of opinion on the great ques tion yet pending, cannot surely be perverted into proofs of his indifference to the civil rights of mankind. From them at least no evidence of an aristocratical or abstract love of oppression can be extorted. Long before the first relaxation of the penal laws in 1778, Mr. Burke had examined every branch of the sub ject, and had explained to the more leading statesmen of Ireland his feelings and his opinions. It is not possible to deny that before that period the whole system was odious and unwise, and incapable of producing any other results than those of hatred and turbulence on the one side, of insolence and of fear on the other. Of the first bill of relief, to which Sir George Savile's name was given, Mr. Burke was known to be the author; and after the greater bill of relief in 1792, he continued, to the moment of his death, to urge the policy of granting to the Roman Catholics the political privileges from which they still continued to be excluded. The man who acted thus, whatever else he might be, was not a bigoted advocate of the existing order of things: this Apostle of Institutions could consent without alarm to the removal of political restraints, when the case in his opinion justified such a concession.

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But to leave Ireland-if the claims of Mr. Burke to be ranked with the most successful friends of English liberty, had rested on the single foundation of his reforms in the public offices, and the public expenditure of the country, the most sincere alarmist on the influence of the crown must surely hesitate to reject them. For he must be sensible that it cannot be deemed the same enterprize, requiring the same spirit, or opposed by the same difficulties, to have attacked the very citadel of royal influence in the year 1780, which it would be considered in the year 1826. He must feel some respect for the hand, which inflicted the first serious wound on the system of sinecures; which deprived the crown of so many sources of influence and means of corruption; which so largely exaited the character, by increasing the independence, of parliament. We have observed that a very narrow and unfair estimate of the national service accomplished by these reforms, is too frequently admitted. It is supposed to consist in fixing a limit to the pension

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