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the season of war, when revolutions in the government and the social condition of great nations were the common topics, the daily resources of public debate: In his days, ' peace also had her victories,' not less remarkable, nor less animating. The questions of constitutional law from the great case of Wilkes, to the Regency in 1788; the novelty and splendour of the East Indian inquiries; and the still more forcible stimulus of party, called forth all the vigour of men, endowed with every faculty for succeeding in political pursuits. And the daily and visibly increasing importance of parliament itself, while it extended the range of subjects in debate, imparted to all which that range included a more general and a more fervid interest.

Among the causes of this increase, there can be no hesitation in classing the influence and the exertions of Burke, as more efficient than those of all his contemporaries. Lord Chatham had probably opened the way to it by the peculiar force of his character, by the original and impressive nature of his eloquence; and still more by the example, so rare before his career, of elevation to the highest power and honours of the state, founded solely on personal merit and parliamentary success. But the secure enjoyment of the right of publishing the debates and the proceedings, to which Burke was mainly instrumental, has, in its skilful and industrious application, contributed far more than any other influence whatever, to transform the House of Commons from the scene of the limited warfare of partizans -not only without interest, but absolutely unknown to the vast majority of the English people-resembling the discussions of a parish vestry, as Burke himself said of them-into the arena of more splendid and more important contentions. No political question, no interest of any class in the nation, could thenceforth be excluded. The whole nation may be considered, without a figure, to be the spectators of the contest; and the prizes are not only political power and honour, but rapid and universal fame.

In forming our judgment on the oratorical merits of Burke and his competitors, we must avoid the too common injustice of applying to them the rules and the habits of other times. To consider the House of Commons as an audience, of which the feelings and the taste can be judged by any fixed and invariable standard, is to take an incorrect view of its character. In the notion of reformers its decisions may not represent with sufficient accuracy the opinions of the people; but its proceedings cannot fail at all times to reflect with the truest precision the tone of national feeling, and the leading points of national interest. The questions, therefore, by which at any given period its attention is engrossed, will vary with the condition, the wants, and even the passions of the people; and the

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nature of the eloquence, by which its decisions are to be influenced, will naturally obey those variations. This will and must adapt itself to the character and the description of the particular interests and the prevailing questions, which occupy the attention and divide the opinion of the country.

A philosophical view of these periodical changes in the eloquence of parliament would scarcely be inferior to any work in instruction or in interest, and would illustrate not only the political history, but the taste and the manners of England. In these later times, when the practical business of parliament is increased beyond any precedent or any calculation-when the constitution is more settled, and the gradual recovery of the country from the effects of a long and costly war, has of necessity narrowed the questions of public interest, in so far as their character is concerned, to almost a single point-we cannot be surprized to observe, that the eloquence of parliament has assumed a more decided character of business; that dramatic effect should be less studied; that less favour should be shown to the flights of imagination and to rhetorical ornament; in other words, that we should look in vain for many of the characteristic qualities not only of Burke, but, comparatively speaking, of all the orators of his day; that the formal and laboured arrangement which then prevailed, the frequency of illustration, the indulgence in general topics, and in classical allusion, should have given way to the qualities by which the pressing details of public business are most easily advanced, and most rapidly concluded. But beside the changes in the times, there is another cause of this difference, which must not be excluded from any just estimate of Burke's oratorical character. It is true of excellence in the art of eloquence, as in all other arts, that it is contagious; and there was a competition in that day, which cannot be soon equalled, and perhaps was never surpassed in the history of parliament. The assembly, in which so many master-spirits laboured to gain the ascendancy, could not fail to witness the struggle with a disinterested pleasure, and to feel almost as keenly for the success of the several combatants as mere intellectual gladiators, as for the substantial results of the contest. Omitting numberless occasions of brilliant competition, we should say that the trial of Warren Hastings, by its duration, by the intense interest of the nation in its earlier proceedings, and calculated as it was, from the magnificent nature of the topics involved, to draw forth into public exhibition all the oratorical talent of the country, had greatly contributed to give to the parliamentary eloquence of that time the character by which it is distinguished from that of all preceding and subsequent periods. This

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impression would be naturally more powerful on Burke, than many of the actors in that great drama, from the eminence of his station in the trial, from his deep conviction of its justice, and not less from the natural force and ardour of his own imagination. The recorded effects of his eloquence on his audience, on his antagonists, nay, on the accused himself, almost justify the tales of the marvellous effects of the art in remoter ages. To apply the critical rules of the present day to the exertions of speakers on such subjects; to judge them by the standard of times so inferior in the motives of personal excitement, and perhaps in the interest of political success generally, is in a double point of view unfair and illogical.

That the discussions themselves in parliament were improved and exalted by Burke, there can be no difficulty in believing. The character of his eloquence is essentially original, and defies imitation. It leaves the impression, not uncommon in works of the highest cast of genius, of bordering on the defects and the vices, which lead to certain failure. Its effect was heightened by his great personal influence, by the unspotted integrity of his private life. In no orator of the times shall we find a more constant or more correct application of general principles, a more sustained tone of philosophy, or a knowledge on all the branches of human inquiry, so general and yet so practical. If, indeed, we were called upon to state some peculiar mark of distinction between his speeches and those of his most successful contemporaries, we should be inclined to say, that he always appears to have in view some higher object of attainment than the immediate success of the exertion; that he is possessed by some abstract notion of excellence, of which the too ardent pursuit frequently leaves him for the moment defeated by his more astute and less excursive adversaries. This justified the good-humoured sarcasm of his friend Goldsmith;

'Too deep for his hearers, he went on refining,

And thought of convincing, when they thought of dining.' But this, at the same time, marked him as an orator in the loftiest sense of the term-the heir to immortality.' We shall not pretend to institute a comparison between Burke and his great competitors, not only because we cannot pretend to any novelty on the subject, but because there are not in truth materials to form an accurate and fair judgment. It is sometimes forgotten, that for ten of the most vigorous and most active years of his political career, when he was the undisputed leader of the most considerable body of the opposition, we have, with the exception of his own occasional reports, nothing but most meagre, scanty and partial records on which to ground any opinion. If, however, the recorded effect

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of his speeches, the panegyrics of adverse as of friendly parties, are to be taken as evidence of his excellence in discussion, we should be inclined to deny the justice of the common opinion which denies to Burke the more limited merit of a debater. For, in reference to the parliament of England, the continued and permanent success of any speaker is conclusive evidence of his possession of this talent; and that without the aid of rank, of connexions, or of wealth, Burke so long maintained the station of leader of a great party in the House of Commons, is a simple fact that appears to us to remove all doubt on the question. The false notion which prevails is principally, we cannot doubt, to be ascribed to the reports of his orations, which Burke himself has bequeathed to posterity, and to which all men unite in referring as the most finished models of English eloquence. For admirable as these are, and remarkably free from the ordinary coldness and formality of reported speeches, they unquestionably have, and from their very nature must have, more of the air of studied compositions, of disquisitions in short, than belongs of right to the winged words' of the busy senate. To conclude, however, from their elaborate and artificial structure, that this was the only manner of the orator, the only test of his capacity, would not be less unfair, than to decide that a general, deeply versed in the science of war, was thereby rendered incapable of success in a real contest. But whatever may be the true estimate of Burke's merit as a debater, or even as an orator in the more extended sense, we claim for him a merit in its nature more exalted, in its effects more permanent. By his reforms he raised the character, and increased the constitutional influence of parliament; by his eloquence he enlarged the sphere, and improved the quality of its discussions; and in his example he has left to Englishmen the most impressive instance on record, of surpassing fame, honour, and influence, strictly and solely acquired by parliamentary exertion and public service-this last too almost entirely un-official.

To our imperfect notice of some of the benefits, not less durable than numerous, which Burke achieved for the civil liberties, the national welfare of his country, we cannot neglect to add -and to rank in the highest degree-the marked and still living influence of his writings, an influence derived not only from the personal character, and the earnest and impressive language of the writer, but from the gradual and conclusive testimony of events. If we supposed their value to be confined to the refutation of the doctrines, and the exposure of the tendency of the French Revolution, we should underrate the matter most unjustly. Great and useful as may be this merit, the works of Burke would pos-. sess, if entirely stripped of it, undoubted claims to the gratitude

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of Englishmen. The honesty of his alarms at the danger of the contagion of French doctrines, and of jacobinical anarchy, has been, and will continue to be, questioned; but it can scarcely be disputed that, in pursuing his purpose of denouncing the influence of revolutionary France, he did profoundly examine the true principles of the British constitution, and explain its genuine excellence with a force of argument and a wealth of illustration of which our preceding political literature had exhibited no example. He made it an object of affection and of reverence on the higher grounds of reason and of philosophy; and by displaying in the strongest light the value of the possession, he rendered the possible loss of it a more active and more general cause of apprehension. It might be true, however paradoxical, that in exposing the crimes and the excesses of another nation in the pursuit of the very advantages which Englishmen actually enjoyed, he had conferred no benefit on Englishmen; but to have diffused a more perfect understanding of our own system, in its details as in its general principles, more enlarged yet more practical views of its real spiritabove all to have confirmed the national feeling of its superiority over specious theories and metaphysical dreams-this was a national service not limited to that crisis of revolutionary phrenzy, but splendid in the highest degree, and lasting as the existence of the English Constitution itself. Henceforth it was as easy to disprove the existence of that constitution, as its value; and in the merit of having rooted this principle of national faith and personal devotion more firmly in the hearts of his countrymen, Burke stands alone and far above all competition.

It is now a truism to assert, that to this unshaken attachment to her established institutions, rather than to the resources of finance, of armies and of navies, England was mainly indebted for her success, and therefore for her present station and her present security. This was the vital source of her triumph; that salient living principle of energy in the public mind of England, which, as Burke expressed it with his latest breath, left him no fears for the result. This alone can explain the constant and enduring spirit of the people throughout the alarms and privations of a contest, of which his prescience, and his alone, had not ill calculated the duration. Even among those who had direct influence on the management of the national resources, there were, we may believe, in the course of the long and dreary contest, moments enough of doubt, if not despondency. What then but this living and universal principle, this national instinct of elasticity, admitting no compromise and limited to no time, could have unfailingly encouraged the timid, confirmed the wavering, repressed the malevolent? To the constitution of England, of whose advantages he

VOL. XXXIV. NO. LXVIII.

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