120 



BURKE. 



Burke, over as confidential friend to Mr (Single Speech) 

 Hamilton, secretary to the Lord Lieutenant Lord 

 Halifax : He is supposed to have rendered some ser- 

 vice to the ministry, for which they rewarded him 

 with a pension of L. 300 a year on the Irish establish- 

 ment. Soon after his return to London, he was in- 

 troduced to Lord Rockingham, who made him his 

 private secretary, gave him a loan, or rather a present, 

 of several thousand pounds, and by his personal kind- 

 ness and congenial patriotism, gave a colour to the 

 politics of Burke, which they retained with few va- 

 riations during life. He was, indeed, at different 

 periods, both a democrat and an aristocrat ; but he 

 combined, during the greater part of his life, a cer- 

 tain visible connection between the apparently incon- 

 gruous qualities of those distinctions. He loved the 

 liberty of England, but he wished the moving power 

 of the government to centre in the great families. 

 These were the politics of Rockingham. Burke 

 stood up for America against the claim of taxation ; 

 but he wished to wave the question of abstract right. 

 This was the practice of Rockingham. By Lord 

 Rockingham's bounty, he was enabled to purchase 

 his seat at Beaconsfield ; by the interest of his pa- 

 tron he also got into parliament. His first speech 

 excited uncommon sensation ; more admiration, per- 

 haps, of his eloquence than of his logic ; but when 

 superior powers of imagination are displayed, the 

 mass of mankind look sanguinely for the further 

 evolution of practical and solid talents. Burke now 

 partakes the blame of what are called the indecisive 

 measures of the Rockingham cabinet with respect 

 to America ; but he shared at the time in the po- 

 pularity of the repeals of the cyder and warrant acts. 

 The administration of Lord Rockingham was short, 

 and Burke concluded his official labours by a forci- 

 ble and (considering the style of his eloquence) a 

 simple work, entitled, A short account of a late short 

 Administration. After which he took his station 

 among the determined opposers of ministry, and the 

 regular censurers of their proceedings. In his next 

 political work, his Thoughts on the Causes of the 

 present Discontents, while he asserts the most popu- 

 lar principles of the con&titution, he reverts to a 

 practical remedy, which attests his leaning to aris- 

 tocracy ; for the sum of his arguments is, that the 

 government ought to be placed in the hands of the 

 great Whig families, who had been favourers of the 

 Revolution, and of its consequent measures. The 

 same gist of argument is liberally strewn over the 

 speeches of Chatham himself, although the popula- 

 rity of that nobleman prevented the nation from in- 

 terpreting the meaning of his free advice to his sove- 

 reign, when he told him that he could not hope to 

 act by any minister without the aid of the powerful 

 families of England : There might be practical truth, 

 but there was little democracy in this sentiment. 



During his opposition to the American war, Burke 

 was certainly at an elevation of just favour, suffi- 

 cient, perhaps, to be a zenith to the fame of any 

 man but himself. A pacific adjustment of the dif- 

 ferences between the .mother country and America, 

 when affairs had gone so far, might have admitted 

 of principles more permanently decisive than his, but 

 they admitted of none more adapted to save the dig- 



nity or prejudices of Britain. For a lasting recon- Burke, 

 ciliation, the abandonment of the right of taxation 

 might have been advisable ; but for immediate truce, 

 which ought to have led to reconcilement, the aban- 

 donment of the question of right was better suited ; 

 or, perhaps, even an indistinct recognizance of it. 

 But the blundering hands which succeeded the short 

 Rockingham administration, did not do justice to the 

 mildly temporizing policy of that amiable cabinet^ 

 The American war at last became popular. Now it 

 is fashionable to lay the blame of it on Grenville and 

 North. A murderer might, with equal justice, 

 blame the sword, with which he has killed an inno- 

 cent man, as the British people accuse their mini- 

 sters their servants with the criminality of a war, 

 in the events of which they not only partook, but 

 sympathized in every fibre of their hearts. If we 

 do not recollect from our own memories, our fa- 

 thers have told us, that Washington was burnt in 

 effigy in England, and would have been hanged in re- 

 ality amidst the applauses of millions, if he could 

 have been laid hold of. 



In March 1782, an end was put to the ministry of 

 Lord North; and on the return of the Marquis of 

 Rockingham to power, Burke became paymaster of 

 the forces, and had a seat at the council-board. The 

 death of Lord Rockingham effectively dissolved the 

 ministry, and on the appointment of Lord Shelburne, 

 Mr Burke, with many of the Duke of Portland's 

 friends, resigned. After the peace, he had a leading 

 share in the formation of the coalition, which gave a 

 shock to the public ideas of political consistency be- 

 yond what either the enlarged mind of Fox, or the 

 more accommodating ideas of Burke, had room to 

 anticipate. Mr Pitt, by seizing on the happy mo- 

 ment when both king and people were on bad terms 

 with the ministry, turned them out, and withstood 

 minorities in the House of Commons till that house 

 presented him with majorities. In 1785, Burke seems 

 to have taken a sufficiently independent ground in 

 differing at once with the minister and with the 

 leaders of the opposition respecting the reform bill 

 of Mr Pitt. Such a conduct was consistent enough- 

 with his ideas of ruling by great families, and pre- 

 serving the borough influence in the hands of a few 

 nobles. His impeachment of Warren Hastings, was 

 one of the next and most important events of his life. 

 For even the outline of so complex a trial, we have 

 not limits. On this subject, the majority of common- 

 ly enlightened readers are as completely undecided, 

 or at least incompetent to be decided in their opi- 

 nion, as on the most abstruse problem in science ; for 

 in fact, the Principia of Newton might be studied ie 

 less time than the real substance of the trial of Has- 

 tings. Many men, however, as we believe, unbiassed 

 in the question, have, after laborious attention to it* 

 made up their opinion, that whatever were the op- 

 pressions perpetrated in India, Britain, and not Has- 

 tings, was responsible for them. All the conduct 

 of Burke, which forms the external avenues to the 

 que&tion, gives, as far as that goes, a sanction to this' 

 opinion. He was violent, bitter, and full of ostenta- 

 tion. In the moment of Hastings's hesitation about 

 the ceremony of kneeling at the bar, an hesitation? 

 proceeding from accident, he commanded him, to 



