Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke [7]
Homer meant to represent this man of affliction as hating, or being indifferent and cold in his affections to the poor relics of his house, or that he preferred a dead carcass to his living children.
"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to consistency everything he has said and done during the course of a political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man perhaps ever did in the same situation.
"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in that manner, and on that occasion.
"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from his service and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never chose to find any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in favour of liberty, and his votes on those questions. But there is a time for all things." We need not, however, confine our vindication of Burke to his own eloquence, but invite the especial attention of his accusers and defamers unto two forgotten facts: 1st. A few weeks before Fox died, he dictated a despatch to Lord Yarmouth, which confirmed all the policy for which Pitt for fifteen years had contended: moreover, in a debate on Wyndham's "Military System," 1806, Fox thus delivered his own recantation:--"Indeed, by the circumstances of Europe, I AM READY TO CONFESS I HAVE BEEN WEANED FROM THE OPINIONS I FORMERLY HELD WITH RESPECT TO THE FORCE WHICH MIGHT SUFFICE IN TIME OF PEACE: nor do I consider this any inconsistency, because I see no rational prospect of any peace, which would exempt us from the necessity of watchful preparation and powerful establishment." But the change of Fox's opinions, and their similarity to those maintained by Pitt, with reference to our war with France, are by no means ALL which history can produce in justification of Burke's political wisdom and consistency. The whole civilized world has read the "Reflections on the French Revolution," whose sale, in one year, achieved the enormous number of 30,000 copies, in connection with medals or marks of honour from almost every Court in Europe. Now, of all the replies made to this masterpiece of reasoning and reflection, Mackintosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae" was incontestably the ablest and profoundest. And yet, the greatest of all his intellectual opponents thus addresses Burke, as appears from "Memoirs" of Mackintosh, volume i. page 87:--"The enthusiasm with which I once embraced the instruction conveyed in your writings is now ripened into solid conviction by the experience and conviction of more mature age. For a time, SEDUCED BY THE LOVE OF WHAT I THOUGHT LIBERTY, I ventured to oppose, without ceasing to venerate, that writer who had nourished my understanding with the most wholesome principles of political wisdom...Since that time, A MELANCHOLY EXPERIENCE HAS UNDECEIVED ME ON MANY SUBJECTS, IN WHICH I WAS THE DUPE OF MY OWN ENTHUSIASM." Let us part from this branch of our subject by quoting Burke's own words, uttered, as it were, on the very brink of eternity. They attest, to the latest moment of his life, with what a sacred intensity and unflinching sincerity he clung to his original sentiments touching the French Revolution. Nor let the present writer shrink from adding, they constitute but one of the many specimens of that instinctive
"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which, if he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to consistency everything he has said and done during the course of a political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man perhaps ever did in the same situation.
"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in that manner, and on that occasion.
"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from his service and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never chose to find any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in favour of liberty, and his votes on those questions. But there is a time for all things." We need not, however, confine our vindication of Burke to his own eloquence, but invite the especial attention of his accusers and defamers unto two forgotten facts: 1st. A few weeks before Fox died, he dictated a despatch to Lord Yarmouth, which confirmed all the policy for which Pitt for fifteen years had contended: moreover, in a debate on Wyndham's "Military System," 1806, Fox thus delivered his own recantation:--"Indeed, by the circumstances of Europe, I AM READY TO CONFESS I HAVE BEEN WEANED FROM THE OPINIONS I FORMERLY HELD WITH RESPECT TO THE FORCE WHICH MIGHT SUFFICE IN TIME OF PEACE: nor do I consider this any inconsistency, because I see no rational prospect of any peace, which would exempt us from the necessity of watchful preparation and powerful establishment." But the change of Fox's opinions, and their similarity to those maintained by Pitt, with reference to our war with France, are by no means ALL which history can produce in justification of Burke's political wisdom and consistency. The whole civilized world has read the "Reflections on the French Revolution," whose sale, in one year, achieved the enormous number of 30,000 copies, in connection with medals or marks of honour from almost every Court in Europe. Now, of all the replies made to this masterpiece of reasoning and reflection, Mackintosh's "Vindiciae Gallicae" was incontestably the ablest and profoundest. And yet, the greatest of all his intellectual opponents thus addresses Burke, as appears from "Memoirs" of Mackintosh, volume i. page 87:--"The enthusiasm with which I once embraced the instruction conveyed in your writings is now ripened into solid conviction by the experience and conviction of more mature age. For a time, SEDUCED BY THE LOVE OF WHAT I THOUGHT LIBERTY, I ventured to oppose, without ceasing to venerate, that writer who had nourished my understanding with the most wholesome principles of political wisdom...Since that time, A MELANCHOLY EXPERIENCE HAS UNDECEIVED ME ON MANY SUBJECTS, IN WHICH I WAS THE DUPE OF MY OWN ENTHUSIASM." Let us part from this branch of our subject by quoting Burke's own words, uttered, as it were, on the very brink of eternity. They attest, to the latest moment of his life, with what a sacred intensity and unflinching sincerity he clung to his original sentiments touching the French Revolution. Nor let the present writer shrink from adding, they constitute but one of the many specimens of that instinctive