ed, and the royal household has been carried away by the resistless tide of manners; but with this material difference-private men have got rid of the establishments, together with the reasons of them, whereas the royal household has lost all that was venerable and stately in the antique manners, without retrenching any thing of the cumbrous charge of a Gothic establishment. It is shrunk into the polished littleness of modern elegance and personal accommodation; it has evaporated from the gross concrete into an essence and rectified spirit of expense. You have tuns of ancient pomp in a vial of modern luxury."

After those general observations, he colours the topic with that pencil which he dipt in every hue of frolic and fancy. "When the reason of old establishments is gone, it is absurd 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. Our palaces are vast inhospitable halls. There the bleak winds-there'Boreas, and Eurus, and Caurus, and Argestes loud,' howling through the vacant lobbies, and clattering the doors of deserted guardrooms, appal the imagination, and conjure up the grim spectres of departed tyrants; the Saxon, the Norman, and the Dane-the stern Edwards and fierce Henrys, who stalk from desolation to desolation through the dreary vacuity and melancholy succession of chill and comfortless chambers. When this tumult subsides, a dead silence would reign in this desert, if every now and then the tacking of hammers did not announce, that those constant attendants upon all courts in all ages, jobs, were still alive, for whose sake alone it is, that any trace of ancient grandeur is suffered to remain. Those palaces are a true emblem of some governments; the inhabitants are decayed, but the governors and magistrates still flourish. They put me in mind of Old Sarum, where the representatives, more in number than the constituents, only serve to inform us, that this was once a place of trade, and sounding with the busy hum of men, though now we can trace the streets only by the colour

of the corn, and its sole manufacture is in members of Parliament."

The rapidity of movement, which is always affected by candidates for the favour of the multitude, found no advocate in Burke's philosophy. In alluding even to the obnoxious subject of the sinecures attached to the Exchequer, and admitting the fitness of curtailing their profits where they had grown large, he shrinks from their too sudden extirpation. "The nature of their profits, which grow out of the public distress, is, in itself, invidious and grievous. But, I fear, that Reform cannot be immediate. Those places, and others of the same kind, which are held for life, have been considered as property. They have been given as a provision for children, they have been the subject of family settlements, they have been the security of creditors. What the law respects shall be sacred to me. If the barriers of law should be broken down, upon ideas of convenience, even of public convenience, we shall no longer have any thing certain among us. If the discretion of power is once let loose upon property, we can be at no loss to determine whose power, and what discretion, will prevail at last. *** ** The mere time of the reform is by no means worth the sacrifice of a principle of law. Individuals pass like shadows, but the commonwealth is fixed and stable. The difference, therefore, of to-day and to-morrow, which to private people is immense, to the State is nothing. ****** Those things which are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial, that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding, and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us, that he has not given us the means to accomplish, in both the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on."

This memorable speech was delivered on the 11th of February, 1780. It excited great admiration in the House, and universal applause outside the walls; the bills brought in in consequence, were argued fiercely, clause by clause, during March, April, and May. But in the end the motion met its natural fate. Opposition had probably used it, from the

beginning, more as a matter of as sault than an object of success. Its popularity was of importance to them; its triumph would have been distasteful. In the ardour of their expectations of seeing the Ministry fall by its own hands, a measure which stripped all administrations of so large a share of patronage, could not be sincerely supported by men. who hourly expected to seat themselves in the Ministerial throne. The battle began to be fought more languidly. The clause for abolishing the third Secretaryship of State was lost by a majority of seven. And, within a short period, the leading clauses followed its fate. The Bill died away.

The object of Opposition was fully obtained by the celebrity of the attempt. It had given them a cheap opportunity of declaring their patriotism; it had enlisted the popular cry on their side; and pledging them to nothing but an indefinite zeal, and an impracticable purification, it gave them all the advantages of promises never to be performed, and virtues which cost them only words. Burke may have been sincere. He was an enthusiast. His poetic ardour dazzled himself, he saw nothing in the universal clearance of corruption, as it was termed, but the restoration of an age of political righteousness. His party, singularly profligate in their private lives, recklessly abandoned in their political views,-philosophers and patriots when out of place, rash, tyrannical, and corrupt, when in, were rejoiced to find so noble a pleader for their cause. But the sequel shewed how little they had in common with the purity, loftiness, and magnanimity of his mind. On the brief success, which at once raised them to power, and stamped the name of the Coalition with eternal ignominy, their great champion was almost totally neglected; his virtue was not to be trusted with the subtleties of the Cabinet; he had exhibited a simplicity of principle fit only to be scoffed at by political gamesters. He was characterised as too wrongheaded to take persuasion from his palm; and, accordingly, he was thrust into a subordinate office, which reluctance to seem craving for power only prevented him from rejecting; the banner which had waved before them in the battle, so

richly adorned with glorious devices, and prophetic of victory, was folded up and flung into a corner, until the time when they should again be driven to the field. But if the great Orator was to be cheered by national admiration, this speech brought an almost endless harvest of praise. Parliament, the people, Europe, received it with boundless applause. "The speech which has been delivered this night," exclaimed Dunning, of all critics the most cautious, and of all admirers the most reluc tant, "must remain as a monument to be handed down to posterity, of the honourable member's uncommon zeal, unrivalled industry, astonishing abilities, and invincible perseverance. He had undertaken a task big with labour and difficulty, a task that embraced a variety of the most important, extensive, and complicated objects. Yet such were the unequalled abilities, so extraordinary the talents and ingenuity, and such the fortunate frame of the honourable gentleman's mind, his vast capacity and happy conception, that in his hands what must have proved a vast heap of ponderous matter, composed of heterogeneous ingredients, discordant in their nature and opposite in principle, was so skilfully arranged as to become quite simple as to each respective part, and the whole at the same time so judiciously combined, as to present nothing to almost any mind tolerably intelligent, to divide, puzzle, or distract it."

This opinion was echoed and reechoed through the country; all expressing their delight and astonishment at the unexampled combination of eloquence, labour, and perseverance, displayed by Burke. Even the slow good-will of those whose emoluments he had placed in hazard was not refused to this fine performance; they acknowledged the glitter of the lance which pierced them. Like the knights of old, if they must yield, their defeat was alleviated by the rank and prowess of the chieftain to whom they surrendered. Gibbon, who was one of the Board of Trade, the only establishment which the speech succeeded in extinguishing, and succeeded probably only through the Minister's previous determination to get rid of an encumbrance, gave his tribute in his own formal yet forcible style.

"Mr Burke's reform bill was framed with skill, introduced with eloquence, and supported by numbers. Never can I forget the delight with which that diffusive and ingenious orator was heard by all sides of the House, and even by those whose existence he proscribed." The labour to which he submitted on this occasion can be conceived only by those who have known the difficulties through which public documents at this period were attainable, the infinite confusion of the national records, the quick jealousies of official persons, all sensitive to the approach of enquiry; the perplexity of the documents themselves, and the general incrustation of time, change, obscurity, and obsoleteness from which they were to be cleared. By nothing less than indefatigable diligence could even this have been effected; but to render the obscure plain, to give interest to the dull, to concentrate the whole mass of detail, confusion, and commonplace, into spirit and splendour, was the work of genius alone.

Still the speech has obvious faults, in a critical point of view. Gibbon's epithet, of diffusive, is its censure. The exordium is too long. The Orator treads too tenderly and too tardily on his ground. No advantages of caution can compensate for the feeling of disappointment with which those hearers, who were longing for facts, found themselves compelled to listen to theorems; the placeman anxious for the safety of his office, and the patriot eager to commence the work of renovation, must have equally desired the Orator to enter upon his detail, and been equally repelled by the long review of abstract principles, marshalled with whatever skill, and clothed in whatever brilliancy.

The style which conquers universal praise, may well be considered to have achieved its purpose. Yet even the powerful knowledge and rich imagination of Burke, in some degree embarrassed his effect in Parliament. He could not prevail on himself to discover the injury which is done to a cause by giving his hearers credit for too much taste, feeling, or knowledge. He overwhelmed dull men with imagery which would have " lapped" a poet

VOL. XXXIV. NO, CCX.

Yet in thus speaking of Burke, we would not be understood to depreciate in the slightest degree one of the most extraordinary leaders of the British mind. He wanted nothing for perfection as an orator, but the habit of public business. No man could devote himself to labour with

a

more gigantic perseverance, no man could study the details, or master the substance of public affairs with a more nervous and comprehensive sagacity, but it was the sagacity of the closet. He there prepared his armour calmly, sedulously, magnificently. He came into the field conspicuous at once to all eyes, but his lavish grandeur encumbered him in the various and desultory encounters through which final victory is to be alone purchased in the British House of Parliament. But those were the faults of his position. As an assailant, he was always allowed to choose his ground. If Burke had been a Minister, he would have been. forced into discipline,—he must have rapidly learned to throw aside the gold-studded and massive weapons which embarrassed the facility of his movements, he must have been wrought into the ready vigour, the perfect activity, and the pungent force which owes nothing to its weight, and all things to its point and penetration. The great failure of modern public speaking is this want of pungency. The singular expansion of Pitt's style often wearied his hearers; the measureless confusion of Fox's preambles as often tried the understanding till it shrunk from the task. Canning's clearness, lightness, and elegance, at all times delighted the House, but he purchased those fine qualities in debate by a total want of passion, a superficiality which was obvious through all his efforts to appear profound, and a perpetual study of pleasantry, which, often successful as it was, and ad

C

mirable as it is, in due subserviency to higher qualities, is, of all the attributes of the orator, the most delicate to manage, and the most difficult to reconcile with depth, dignity, or impression. Of all the eminent speak ers of the last hundred years, but two possessed pungency, in the effective sense of the word-Chatham in England, and Grattan in Ireland. It placed them both at the head of public eloquence in their countries, and placed them at such a height of superiority, that no man thought of rivalling, or scarcely of imitating either. Their faults were palpable, but their excellences placed a measureless distance between them and all who have followed them. Of Chatham few relics have been left; his monument is in the imperfect descriptions, but boundless admiration, of his time. Yet the Torso of his eloquence still shews the noble proportions of the original. Grattan has left abundant memorials of himself; and mingled as they are with the unhappy politics which turn the blood of Ireland to fever in every age, and perverted by the vexed spirit of disappointed partisanship, they embody some of the most powerful conceptions in the most vivid language ever forged in the fiery mind of impassioned oratory.

The loss of the Bill had been foreseen; the party were satisfied with its popularity, and its author was consoled by its praise. It passed away to the usual oblivion of popular projects found to be impracticable. The riots of 1780 called forth Burke again. The bitterness of Opposition was not to be reconciled by the imminent danger of the country. They actually triumphed in this rabble atrocity, as offering a hope of turning out Administration. Such was the patriotism of the great stronghold of patriotic professions. Burke, disdaining this criminal selfishness, and seeing nothing in the riots but the strong probability of their laying London in ashes, advised his friends to join with the Government in a manly and generous effort to put down the evil. But this was only an additional evidence to the declamatory race round him, how little he was fit for the statesmanship of their school. On this occasion he displayed alike his personal fearlessness and his humanity; the former, by ven

turing into the streets among the rioters while they were in the act of surrounding the House of Commons; the latter, by writing a number of letters to the Chancellor and other leading persons, imploring that mercy might be shewn to the utmost prac ticable extent. The recommendations were probably effective, for the punishments were few, and those, almost solely of the leading rioters.

The Slave-trade, which has brought into existence so persevering a party in the Legislature, and endowed Mr Wilberforce with all his fame, became an early object of Burke's humanity. Six years before Mr Wilberforce brought forward his first motion, Burke had formed a plan for the great alleviation, or abolition of the trade; had drawn up a negro code, and formed regulations for the milder government of the slaves in the Islands.

He now began to feel the nature of popularity. His constituents at Bristol were tired of being represented by the ablest man in Europe. They made their determination to get rid of him, and it was put in force without ceremony. One of the charges against a senator, who spent every hour in the House of Commons, was, "that he had not visited Bristol frequently." Burke was indignant at this fickleness, but he disdained to express his feelings by more than grave remonstrance.

k

Gentlemen," said he, "I do not stand before you, accused of venality, or of neglect of duty. It is not said, that in the long period of my service, I have in a single instance sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambition or my fortune. It is not alleged, that to gratify any anger or revenge of my own, or my party, I have had a share in wronging or oppressing any description of men, or any man in any description. No; the charges against me are all of one kind, that I have pushed the principles of general justice and benevolence too far, farther than a cautious policy would warrant, and farther than the opinions of many men would go with me. In every accident that may happen through life, in pain, in sorrow, in depression, in distress, I will call to mind this accusation and be comforted."

It was in his address to his constituents, who were to be his constitu

ents no more, that, in alluding to some efforts of his own for the relief of small debtors, he drew the famous sketch of Howard. "I cannot name this gentleman, without remarking, that his labours and writings have done much to open the eyes and hearts of mankind. He has visited all Europe; not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, nor the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosity of modern arts; not to collect or collate manuscripts; but to dive into the depths of dungeons, to plunge into the infection of hospitals, to survey the mansions of sorrow and pain, to take the gauge and dimension of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan is original, and it is as full of genius, as it is of humanity. It is a voyage of discovery, a circumnavigation of charity. Already the benefit of his labours is more or less felt in every country. I hope he will anticipate its final reward by seeing all its effects fully realized in his

own."

A new period now commenced in the life of Burke; Lord North, broken down by the attacks of Opposition, resigned, (March 19, 1782.) Fox became virtual Premier, the Marquis of Rockingham nominal Premier, and in the general distribution of office, Burke was appointed Paymaster-General of the forces, and made a Privy-Counsellor, but without a seat in the Cabinet.

Burke's loss of the representation of Bristol affords a practical lesson of the utter unfitness of the multitude to decide on the merits of public men, and not less of the practical good which may be included in a nominal evil. If it had depended on the principle of that multitudinous voting, which is the fashion of our day, Burke would probably never have found his way into Parliament again, and England would have lost the services of one of the most illustrious men that ever adorned her Senate. His narrow fortune would have been inadequate to the expenses of a contested election; his directness of opinion must have ren

dered him obnoxious to the capricious taste of the populace; and his sensibility of spirit would have disdained to stoop to the compliances which form the substance of popu larity. We find that he never again attempted a popular election. The Borough of Malton sent him to Parliament for the remainder of his life; and, much more receiving than giving honour by the choice, put to shame the mob-ridden city which had so rashly rejected him.

The Borough System is now no more, and in future no man whose humility of fortune, or whose inte grity of heart, shrinks from the expense and the degradation of popular canvass, can hope for a seat in Parliament. Whether corruption has been extinguished, or has only changed hands-whether the purchase of a borough, or the purchase of a mob be the purer transaction, are topics which may safely be left to common judgment, and to the Bribery Committees which are now sitting in such abundance. But while it is obvious that the Borough System, even supposing it to imply the monstrous supposition of purchase in every instance, had little other effect than that of giving property and rank their natural influence in the Legislature; or even supposing it to have implied the equally monstrous supposition of dependence on the opinions of the patron in every instance, had little other effect than that of protecting the settled order of things, by binding a certain number of votes to the service of that aristocracy, whose existence is bound up with the preservation of that settled order, it is equally obvious that by dissolving the system, we have incurred new difficulties of which no man can see the cure. By the new system the struggle is not between the People and the Peerage, for what struggle can subsist between an aristocracy stripped of every vote in the Commons, and the popular masters of the Commons? The true contest is between the populace and the elected; and the only question is, whether they shall be the representatives of the nation, or the delegates of the mob. The course of such a contest is easily foreseen. The mob, at this hour, deny to their representatives any other character than that of de