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BURKE, EDMUND. 



BURKE, EDMUND. 



1030 



of London, and also to many persons of political consequence. Among 

 the latter was the popular Irish nobleman, Lord Charlemout, during 

 a long life one of the most distinguished members of the Whig con- 

 nection in Ireland. His lordship introduced Burke in 1759 to Mr. 

 William Gerard Hamilton, better remembered by the name of Single- 

 Speech Hamilton. When Lord Halifax, who was Hamilton's patron, 

 went over to Ireland as lord-lieutenant in 1761, Hamilton accompanied 

 him as chief secretary, and the latter offered the place of hia private 

 secretary to Burke. The offer was accepted, and Burke now returned 

 to his native country, there to make his first entrance upon public life. 



This connection however did not last long. Burke's activity and 

 the usefulness of his services to the government soon acquired for 

 him much consideration ; and in April 1763 a pension of 3002. per 

 annum on the Irish establishment was settled on him : but having 

 been instrumental in procuring him this reward, Hamilton, whose 

 nature was intensely selfish, appears to have conceived that he had 

 thereby entitled himself to Burke's services and servility for life, as 

 much as if he had paid him the money out of his own pocket. On 

 discovering this, Burke immediately threw up the pension, after having 

 enjoyed it only a year, and broke with his patron for ever. 



When the Marquis of Hockingham was called to the head of affairs, 

 on the breaking up of the administration of Mr. George Grenville, in 

 July 1765, Mr. Burke was, on the recommendation of several common 

 friends, and, especially, it is said, of Mr. Fitzljerbert, member for 

 Derby, appointed to the situation of private secretary to the new 

 premier. He has himself, in his 'Appeal from the New to the Old 

 Whigi ' (written in July 1791), given us the date of his appointment 

 the 17th of July, which was just a week after the nomination of 

 the Marquis as First Lord of the Treasury. " This July," he says, 

 speaking of himself in the third person, " it will be twenty-six years 

 since he became connected with a man whose memory will ever be 

 precious to Englishmen of all parties, as long as the ideas of honour 

 and virtue, public and private, are understood and cherished in this 

 nation. That memory will be kept alive with particular veneration by 

 all rational and honourable Wbige. Mr. Burke entered into a con- 

 nection with that party, through that man, at an age far from raw 

 and immature; at those years when men are all they are ever likely 

 to become; when he was in the prime and vigour of his life; when 

 the powers of his understanding, according to their standard, were at 

 the best ; his memory exercised, his judgment formed, and his reading 

 much fresher in the recollection, and much readier in the application, 

 than now it is." He was also, as soon as the houses re-assembled, 

 brought into parliament as member for Wendover in Buckingham- 

 shire, a borough belonging to Lord Verney. In the preface to the 

 ' Observations on the Conduct of the Minority," already referred to, it 

 is said, " He declined taking any salary for his employment under 

 Lord Rockingham, as secretary to the First Lord of the Treasury, and 

 at his own cost he obtained a seat in parliament." As we have seen, 

 it has been a matter of inquiry and controversy how Burke was able 

 to support his position without any professional or official income : on 

 the one side is the statement of his having received large sums from his 

 family, and (as was no doubt the case) for some time after his marriage 

 from his wife's father Dr. Nugent ; on the other is the suggestion (the 

 evidence for which may be seen in the volumes of the ' Athenaeum,' 

 already referred to, especially 1853, p. 1513, and 1855, p. 195) that he 

 engaged with his brother and with William Burke, who was notoriously 

 largely concerned in such matters, and perhaps with others, in stock- 

 jobbing speculations. We do not undertake to support either of these 

 views : indeed it seems to us that there is no sufficient evidence yet 

 before the public to enable any one to make a decided statement 

 respecting Burke' s pecuniary affairs at this or a somewhat later period 

 of liia life, nor do we see the necessity for making such a statement. 



Subordinate as wan his nominal post, Burke may be said to have 

 become immediately the animating spirit and chief moving power of 

 the Rockingham administration. The very day he tcok his seat in 

 the House of Commons, the 14th of January 1766, he is stated to 

 have taken part in the debate on the address of thanks, and to have 

 been complimented on his appearance in very nattering terms by Mr. 

 Pitt. No account of his speech however, and indeed no notice of its 

 delivery, is given in the common report of the debate ; and the only 

 details of it preserved are hi the few notes taken by Lord Charlemont. 

 Burke immediately became one of the most active and efficient com- 

 batants in the ministerial phalanx. Probably no man ever entered 

 parliament so well trained and accomplished by previous acquirements 

 and intellectual discipline. But the natural ascendancy of the man 

 showed itself perhaps still more remarkably in the part he sustained 

 in the out-of-doord consultations and movements of his party. The 

 great question which the Rockingham administration was brought in 

 to settle was that of the American Stamp Act ; and the prudent and 

 conciliatory measures by which the rising storm in tlia colonies was 

 at this time allayed, are understood not only to have been originally 

 suggested and planned by Burke, but to have been mainly indebted to 

 hi indefatigable activity, and zealous, persevering, and persuasive 

 advocacy, for their final adoption by the various sections of the minis- 

 terial body. 



When Lord Rockingham and his colleagues were dismissed on the 

 30th of July 1766, Burke's pen was called into requisition to prepare 

 uch a manifesto for the public as was thought to be called for in the 



circumstances. This task he executed with much effect in a brief but 

 pithy statement, under the title of ' A Short Account of a late Short 

 Administration.' 



" There are who remember," he informs us in his 'Appeal' already 

 quoted, "that on the removal of the Whigs, in the year 1766, he was 

 as free to choose another connection as any man in the kingdom. To 

 put himself out of the way of the negociations which were then carry- 

 ing on very eagerly, and through many channels, with the Earl of 

 Chatham, he went to Ireland very soon after the change of ministry, 

 and did not return until the meeting of parliament. He was at that 

 time free from anything which looked like an engagement. He was 

 further free at the desire of his friends; for, the very day of his 

 return, the Marquis of Rockingbam wished him to accept an employ- 

 ment under the new system. He believes he might have had such a 

 situation ; but again he cheerfully took his fate with his party." It 

 is understood that in the '' crossly-indented and whimsically dove- 

 tailed piece of joinery" which Lord Chatham was now endeavouring 

 to put together, it was intimated to Burke that he might have the 

 place of one of the Lords of Trade. It is also said that before the 

 prorogation in July 1767, an offer of a seat at the Treasury Board was 

 made to him by the Duke of Grafton, who, in the illness and disgust 

 of Lord Chatham, had now become the head, or at least the nodding 

 part of the crazy administration. But the temptation, which had 

 allured several of the most distinguished of his former associates, was 

 again resisted. Up to this time it is to be remembered that the 

 Rockingham party, although they had refused as a body to ally them- 

 selves with the ministry, had not gone into opposition. They took 

 the latter course however in the following session, which opened in 

 November 1767. The parliament was dissolved in March 1768, when 

 Burke was again returned for Weudover. About the same time he 

 purchased for over 20,0001. the estate of Gregories near Beaconsfield, 

 Buckinghamshire. This expensive purchase is one of the chief items 

 in the question respecting the sources whence he derived his income. 

 The following is his own account of the transaction as made at the 

 time to Shackleton : " I have made a push with all I could collect 

 of my own and the aid of my friends to cast a little root into this 

 country. I have purchased a house with 600 acres of land in Buck- 

 inghamshire, 24 miles from London, where I now am. It is a place 

 exceedingly pleasant ; and I propose, God willing, to become a farmer 

 in good earnest" Mr. Prior says, " that a part of the money un- 

 doubtedly was his own, the bequest of his elder brother, and some 

 portion [it] is believed came from William Burke. The remainder 

 was to have been raised upon mortgage, when the Marquis of Roek- 

 iugham, hearing of his intention, voluntarily offered the loan of the 

 amount required to complete the purchase." This loan was subse- 

 quently converted into a gift : the marquis having by a codicil of his 

 will cancelled the bonds. How he was enabled to maintain such an 

 establishment is however still unexplained. 



In 1769 appeared Burke's first political pamphlet, under the title of 

 ' Observations on a late State of the Nation,' being a reply to a publica- 

 tion entitled ' The Present State of the Nation,' which was understood 

 to have been written either by Mr. George Grenville, or, under his eye, 

 by Mr. Knox, who had formerly been his secretary. From the tempo- 

 rary interest of much of the matter in Burke's pamphlet, it is now 

 probably little read ; although it seems to have continued in demand 

 for a good many years, if we may judge from a fifth edition of it pub- 

 lished by Dodsley in 1782, which is now before us. But it is a 

 remarkably able and vigorous performance, although presenting com- 

 paratively little of that splendour of imagination which distinguishes 

 many of the author's subsequent writings. Here again we find strongly 

 expressed the same aversion to abstract politics which we have already 

 described as the prevailing spirit both of his earliest and latest specu- 

 lations on such subjects. Speaking for instance of the state of the 

 Americans before the attempt made to impose internal taxes upon 

 them by the British parliament, he says, " In the midst of that happy 

 enjoyment, they never thought of actually settling the exact limits of 

 a power [that of the mother country] which was necessary to their 

 union, their safety, their equality, and even their liberty. 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." 

 This pamphlet has been sometimes referred to as curious, on account 

 of a passage in which some extraordinary convulsion in France is pre- 

 dicted as an event to be hourly looked for, from the deranged state of 

 the finances of that country, " the effect of which," it is added, " on 

 France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to conjecture." In his 

 latest writings however Burke was accustomed to take a somewhat 

 different view of the conuection between the French revolution and 

 the previous derangement of the finances. For instance, in his first 

 'Letter on a Regicide Peace' (1796), he says, " The financial difficulties 

 were only pretexts and instruments of those who accomplished the 

 ruin of that monarchy. They were not the causes of it." The produc- 

 tion before us is pethaps more remarkable for the progress in advance 

 of his age which it shows the author to have made in his views on the 

 subject of commerce. In his 'Account of the European Settlements 



