506 
 
 EDMUND BURKE 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. JOHN LORD 
 
 i»Y T^^^\'^' 
 
 •z/l specimen tenure from the Completed Edition of Dr. Lord's 
 " Beacon Lights of History 
 
 JAMES CLARKE ^ COMPANY 
 
 Publishers : 3, 5 and 7 West 22 d Street, New York 
 

 "^ 
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 These pages <xuill gi've you an idea of 
 just horn) interesting the '^Beacon 
 Lights " lectures are. The paper and 
 press'work are the same as appear in 
 the volumes themselves. 
 
 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 POLITICAL MORALITY. 
 
 TT would be difficult to select an example of a more 
 •^ lofty and irreproachable character among the great 
 statesmen of England than Edmund Burke. He is not 
 a puzzle, like Oliver Cromwell, although there are in- 
 consistencies in the opinions he advanced from time 
 to time. He takes very much the same place in the 
 parliamentary history of his country as Cicero took in 
 the Eoman senate. Like that greatest of Eoman orators 
 and statesmen, Burke was upright, conscientious, con- 
 servative, religious, and profound. Like him, he lifted 
 up his earnest voice against corruption in the govern- 
 ment, against great state criminals, against demagogues, 
 against rash innovations. Whatever diverse opinions 
 may exist as to his political philosophy, there is only 
 one opinion as to his character, which commands uni- 
 versal respect. Although he was the most conservative 
 of statesmen, clinging to the Constitution, and to con- 
 secrated traditions and associations both in Church and 
 
68 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 State, still Ms name is associated with the most impor- 
 tant and salutary reforms which England made for half 
 a century. He seems to have been sent to instruct and 
 guide legislators in a venal and corrupt age. To my 
 mind Burke looms up, after the lapse of a century, as a 
 prodigy of thought and knowledge, devoted to the good 
 of his country ; an unselfish and disinterested patriot, 
 as wise and sagacious as he was honest ; a sage whose 
 moral wisdom shines brighter and brighter, since it was 
 based on the immutable principles of justice and 
 morality. One can extract more profound and striking 
 epigrams from his speeches and writings than from any 
 prose writer that England has produced, if we except 
 Francis Bacon. And these writings and speeches are 
 still valued as among the most precious legacies of 
 former generations ; they form a thesaurus of political 
 wisdom which statesmen can never exhaust. Burke 
 has left an example which all statesmen will do well 
 to follow. He was not a popular favorite, like Fox 
 and Pitt ; he was not born to greatness, like North and 
 Newcastle ; he was not liked by the king or the nobil- 
 ity ; he was generally in the ranks of the opposition ; 
 he was a new man, like Cicero, in an aristocratic age, — 
 yet he conquered by his genius the proudest prejudices ; 
 he fought his way upward, inch by inch ; he was the 
 founder of a new national policy, although it was 
 bitterly opposed ; and he died universally venerated for 
 
 SO'OSC© liEtllS-OWJi 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 69 
 
 his integrity, wisdom, and foresight. He was the most 
 remarkable man, on the whole, who has taken part in 
 public affairs, from the Eevolution to our times. Of 
 course, the life and principles of so great a man are a 
 study. If history has any interest or value, it is to 
 show the iufluence of such a man on his own age and 
 the ages which have succeeded, — to point out his con- 
 tribution to civilization. 
 
 Edmund Burke was born, 1730, of respectable parents 
 in Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dub- 
 lin, where he made a fair proficiency, but did not give 
 promise of those rare powers which he afterwards 
 exhibited. He was no prodigy, like Cicero, Pitt, and 
 Macaulay. He early saw that his native country pre- 
 sented no adequate field for him, and turned his steps 
 to London at the age of twenty, where he entered 
 as a student of law in the Inner Temple, — since the 
 Bar was then, what it was at Eome, what it still is in 
 modern capitals, the usual resort of ambitious young 
 men. But Burke did not like the law as a profession, 
 and early dropped the study of it; not because he 
 failed in industry, for he was the most plodding of 
 students; not because he was deficient in the gift of 
 speech, for he was a born orator ; not because his mind 
 repelled severe logical deductions, for he was the most 
 philosophical of the great orators of his day, — not be- 
 
70 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 cause the law was not a noble field for the exercise of 
 the highest facilities of the mind, but probably because 
 he was won by the superior fascinations of literature 
 and philosophy. Bacon could unite the study of divine 
 philosophy with professional labors as a lawyer, also 
 with the duties of a legislator ; but the instances are 
 rare where men have united three distinct spheres, and 
 gained equal distinction in all, Cicero did, and Bacon, 
 and Lord Brougham; but not Erskine, nor Pitt, nor 
 Canning. Even two spheres are as much as most 
 distinguished men have filled, — the law with politics, 
 like Thurlow and Webster ; or politics with literature, 
 like Gladstone and Disraeli. Dr. Johnson, Garrick, 
 and Eeynolds, the early friends of Burke, filled only 
 one sphere. 
 
 The early literary life of Burke was signalized by his 
 essay on " The Sublime and Beautiful," original in its 
 design and execution, a model of philosophical criticism, 
 extorting the highest praises from Dugald Stewart and 
 the Abb^ Eaynal, and attracting so much attention that 
 it speedily became a text-book in the universities. For- 
 tunately he was able to pursue literature, with the aid 
 of a small patrimony (about ^300 a year), without 
 being doomed to the hard privations of Johnson, or the 
 humiliating shifts of Goldsmith. He lived independ- 
 ently of patronage from the great, — the bitterest trial 
 of the literati of the eighteenth century, which drove 
 
After the painting by J. Barry, Dublin National Gallery 
 
 EDMUND BURKE 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 71 
 
 Cowper mad, and sent Eousseau to attics and solitudes, 
 — so that in his humble but pleasant home, with his 
 young wife, with whom he lived amicably, he could 
 see his friends, the great men of the age, and bestow 
 an unostentatious charity, and maintain his literary 
 rank and social respectability. 
 
 ^ I have sometimes wondered why Burke did not pur- 
 sue this quiet and beautiful life, — free from the turmoils 
 of public contest, with leisure, and friends, and Nature, 
 and truth, — and prepare treatises which would have 
 been immortal, for he was equal to anything he at- 
 tempted. But such was not to be. He was needed in 
 the House of Commons, then composed chiefly of fox- 
 hunting squires and younger sons of nobles (a body as 
 Ignorant as it was aristocratic), — the representatives 
 not of the people but of the landed proprietors, intent 
 on aggrandizing their families at the expense of the 
 nation, — and of fortunate merchants, manufacturers, 
 and capitalists, in love with monopolies. Such an 
 assembly needed at that day a schoolmaster, a teacher 
 in the principles of political economy and political 
 wisdom ; a leader in reforming disgraceful abuses ; a 
 lecturer on public duties and public wrongs; a pa- 
 triot who had other views than spoils and place ; a man 
 who saw the right, and was determined to uphold it 
 whatever the number or power of his opponents. So 
 Edmund Burke was sent among them, — ambitious 
 
72 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 doubtless, stern, intellectually proud, incorruptible, in- 
 dependent, not disdainful of honors and influence, but 
 eager to render public services. 
 
 It has been the great ambition of Englishmen since 
 the Kevolution to enter Parliament, not merely for 
 political influence, but also for social position. Only 
 rich men, or members of great families, have found it 
 easy to do so. To such men a pecuniary compensa- 
 tion is a small affair. Hence, members of Parliament 
 have willingly served without pay, which custom has 
 kept poor men of ability from aspiring to the position. 
 It was not easy, even for such a man as Burke, to 
 gain admission into this aristocratic assembly. He 
 did not belong to a great family; he was only a 
 man of genius, learning, and character. The squire- 
 archy of that age cared no more for literary fame 
 than the Eoman aristocracy did for a poet or an actor. 
 So Burke, ambitious and able as he was, must bide 
 his time. 
 
 His first step in a political career was as private 
 secretary to Gerard Hamilton, who was famous for 
 having made but one speech, and who was chief sec- 
 retary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of 
 Halifax. Burke soon resigned his situation in disgust, 
 since he was not willing to be a mere political tool. 
 But his singular abilities had attracted the attention of 
 the prime-minister, Lord Eockingham, who made him 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 73 
 
 his private secretary, and secured his entrance into Par- 
 liament. Lord Verney, for a seat in the privy council, 
 was induced to give him a " rotten borough." 
 
 Burke entered the House of Commons in 1765, at 
 thirty-five years of age. He began his public life when 
 the nation was ruled by the great Whig families, whose 
 ancestors had fought the battles of reform in the times 
 of Charles and James. This party had held power 
 for seventy years, had forgotten the principles of the 
 Eevolution, and had become venal and selfish, dividing 
 among its chiefs the spoils of office. It had become as 
 absolute and unscrupulous as the old kings whom it 
 had once dethroned. It was an oligarchy of a few 
 powerful Whig noblemen, whose rule was supreme in 
 England. Burke joined this party, but afterwards de- 
 serted it, or rather broke it up, when he perceived its 
 arbitrary character, and its disregard of the funda- 
 mental principles of the Constitution. He was able 
 to do this after its unsuccessful attempt to coerce the 
 American colonies. 
 
 American difficulties were the great issue of that 
 day. The majority of the Parliament, both Lords and 
 Commons, — sustained by King George III., one of the 
 most narrow-minded, obstinate, and stupid princes who 
 ever reigned in England ; who believed in an absolute 
 jurisdiction over the colonies as an integral part of the 
 empire, and was bent not only in enforcing this juris- 
 
74 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 diction, but also resorted to the most offensive and 
 impolitic measures to accomplish it, — this omnipotent 
 Parliament, fancying it had a right to tax America 
 without her consent, without a representation even, was 
 resolved to carry out the abstract rights of a supreme 
 governing power, both in order to assert its prerogative 
 and to please certain classes in England who wished 
 relief from the burden of taxation. And because Par- 
 liament had this power, it would use it, against the 
 dictates of expediency and the instincts of common- 
 sense ; yea, in defiance of the great elemental truth in 
 government that even thrones rest on the affections 
 of the people. Blinded and infatuated with notions of 
 prerogative, it would not even learn lessons from that 
 conquered country which for five hundred years it had 
 vainly attempted to coerce, and which it could finally 
 govern only by a recognition of its rights. 
 
 Now, the great career of Burke began by opposing the 
 leading opinions of his day in reference to the coercion 
 of the American colonies. He discarded all theories and 
 abstract rights. He would not even discuss the subject 
 whether Parliament had a right to tax the colonies. 
 He took the side of expediency and common-sense. It 
 was enough for him that it was foolish and irritating to 
 attempt to exercise abstract powers which could not be 
 carried out. He foresaw and he predicted the conse- 
 q^uences of attempting to coerce such a people as the 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 75 
 
 Americans with the forces which England could com- 
 mand. He pointed out the infatuation of the mmisters 
 of the crown, then led by Lord North. His speech 
 af^ainst the Boston Port Bill was one of the most brill- 
 iant specimens of oratory ever displayed in the House 
 of Commons. He did not encourage the colonies in 
 rebellion, but pointed out the course they would surely 
 pursue if the irritating measures of the Government 
 were not withdrawn. He advocated conciliation, the 
 withdrawal of theoretic rights, the repeal of obnox- 
 ious taxes, the removal of restrictions on American 
 industry, the withdrawal of monopolies and of un- 
 generous distinctions. He would bind the two coun- 
 tries together by a cord of love. When some member 
 remarked that it was horrible for children to rebel 
 against their parents, Burke replied: "It is true the 
 Americans are our children ; but when children ask for 
 bread, shall we give them a stone ? " For ten years he 
 labored with successive administrations to procure recon- 
 ciliation. He spoke nearly every day. He appealed to 
 reason, to justice, to common-sense. But every speech 
 he made was a battle with ignorance and prejudice. " If 
 you must employ your strength," said he indignantly, 
 " employ it to uphold some honorable right. I do not 
 enter upon metaphysical distinctions, — I hate the very 
 name of them. Nobody can be argued into slavery. If 
 you cannot reconcile your sovereignty with their free- 
 
7G EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 dom, the colonists will cast your sovereignty in your 
 face. It is not enough that a statesman means well ; 
 duty demands that what is right should not only be 
 made known, but be made prevalent, — that what is 
 evil should not only be detected, but be defeated. Do 
 not dream that your register, your bonds, your aflfi- 
 davits, your instructions, are the things which hold 
 together the great texture of the mysterious whole. 
 These dead instruments do not make a government. 
 It is the spirit that pervades and vivifies an empire 
 which infuses that obedience without which your army 
 would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but 
 rotten timber." Such is a fair specimen of his elo- 
 quence, — earnest, practical, to the point, yet appealing 
 to exalted sentiments and pervaded with moral wis- 
 dom ; the result of learning as well as the dictate of a 
 generous and enlightened policy. When reason failed, 
 he resorted to sarcasm and mockery. " Because," said 
 he, " we have a right to tax America we must do it ; 
 risk everything, forfeit everything, take into consider- 
 ation nothing but our right. infatuated ministers ! 
 Like a silly man, full of his prerogative over the beasts 
 of the field, who says, there is wool on the [back of a 
 wolf, and therefore he must be sheared. What ! shear 
 a wolf ? Yes. But have you considered the trouble ? 
 Oh, I have considered nothing 'but my right. A wolf 
 is an animal that has wool ; all animals that have 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 77 
 
 wool are to be sheared ; and therefore I will shear the 
 wolf." 
 
 But I need not enlarge on his noble efforts to prevent 
 a war with the colonies. They were all in vain. You 
 cannot reason with infatuation, — Quem deus vult per- 
 dere, prius dementat. The logic of events at last showed 
 the wisdom of Burke and the folly of the king and his 
 ministers, and of the nation at large. The disasters 
 and the humiliation which attended the American war 
 compelled the ministry to resign, and the Marquis 
 of Eockingham became prime-minister in 1782, and 
 Burke, the acknowledged leader of his party, became 
 paymaster of the forces, — an office at one time worth 
 £25,000 a year, before the reform which Burke had 
 instigated. But this great statesman was not admitted 
 to the cabinet ; George III. did not like him, and his 
 connections were not sufficiently powerful to overcome 
 the royal objection. In our times he would have been 
 rewarded with a seat on the treasury bench ; with less 
 talents than he had, the commoners of our day become 
 prime-ministers. But Burke did not long enjoy even 
 the office of paymaster. On the death of Lord Eockiug- 
 ham, a few months after he had formed the ministry, 
 Burke retired from the only office he ever held. And 
 he retired to Beaconsfield, — an estate which he had 
 purchased with the assistance of his friend Eocking- 
 ham, where he lived when parliamentary duties per- 
 
78 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 mitted, in that state of blended elegance, leisure, and 
 study which is to be found, in the greatest perfection, 
 in England alone. 
 
 The political power of Burke culminated at the 
 close of the war with America, but not his political in- 
 fluence : and there is a great difference between power 
 and influence. Nor do we read that Burke, after this, 
 headed the opposition. That position was shared by 
 Charles James Fox, who ultimately supplanted his 
 master as the leader of his party ; not because Burke 
 declined in wisdom or energy, but because Fox had 
 more skill as a debater, more popular sympathies, and 
 more influential friends. Burke, like Gladstone, was 
 too stern, too irritable, too imperious, too intellectually 
 proud, perhaps too unyielding, to control such an igno- 
 rant, prejudiced, and aristocratic body as the House 
 of Commons, jealous of his ascendency and writhing 
 under his rebukes. It must have been galling to the 
 great philosopher to yield the palm to lesser men ; but 
 such has ever been the destiny of genius, except in 
 crises of public danger. Of all things that politicians 
 hate is the domination of a man who will not stoop to 
 flatter, who cannot be bribed, and who will be certain 
 to expose vices and wrongs. The world will not bear 
 rebukes. The fate of prophets is to be stoned. A 
 stern moral greatness is repulsive to the weak and 
 wicked. Parties reward mediocre men, whom they can 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 79 
 
 use or bend ; and the greatest benefactors lose their 
 popularity when they oppose the enthusiasm of new 
 ideas, or become austere in their instructions. Thus 
 the greatest statesman that this country has produced 
 since Alexander Hamilton, lost his prestige when his 
 conciliating policy became offensive to a rising party 
 whose watchword was " the higher law," although, by 
 his various conflicts with Southern leaders and his 
 loyalty to the Constitution, he educated the people to 
 sustain the very war which he foresaw and dreaded. 
 And had that accomplished senator from Massachusetts, 
 Charles Sumner, who succeeded to Webster's seat, and 
 who in his persona! appearance and advocacy for reform 
 strikingly resembled Burke, — had he remained unin- 
 jured to our day, with increasing intellectual powers 
 and profounder moral wisdom, I doubt whether even 
 he would have had much influence with our present 
 legislators; for he had all the intellectual defects of 
 both Burke and Webster, and never was so popular as 
 either of them at one period of their career, while he 
 certainly was inferior to both in native force, experience, 
 and attainments. 
 
 The chief labors of Burke for the first ten years of 
 his parliamentary life had been mainly in connection 
 with American affairs, and which the result proved he 
 comprehended better than any man in England. Those 
 of the next ten years were directed principally to Indian 
 
80 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 difficulties, in which he showed the same minuteness of 
 knowledge, the same grasp of intellect, the same moral 
 wisdom, the same good sense, and the same regard for 
 justice, that he had shown concerning the colonies. 
 But in discussing Indian affairs his eloquence takes a 
 loftier flight ; he is less conciliating, more in earnest, 
 more concerned with the principles of immutable obli- 
 gations. He abhors the cruelties and tyranny inflicted 
 on India by Clive and Hastings. He could see no 
 good from an aggrandizement purchased by injustice 
 and wrong. If it was criminal for an individual to 
 cheat and steal, it was equally atrocious for a nation 
 to plunder and oppress another nation, infidel or pagan, 
 white or black. A righteous anger burned in the 
 breast of Burke as he reflected on the wrongs and 
 miseries of the natives of India. Why should that 
 ancient country be ruled for no other purpose than 
 to enrich the younger sons of a grasping aristocracy 
 and the servants of an insatiable and unscrupulous 
 Company whose monopoly of spoils was the scandal 
 of the age ? If ever a reform was imperative in the 
 government of a colony, it was surely in India, where 
 the government was irresponsible. The English courts 
 of justice there were more terrible to the natives than 
 the very wrongs they pretended to redress. The cus- 
 toms and laws and moral ideas of the conquered 
 country were spumed and ignored by the greedy scions 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 81 
 
 of gentility who were sent to rule a population ten 
 times larger than that between the Humber and the 
 Thames. 
 
 So Burke, after the most careful study of the con- 
 dition of India, lifted up his voice against the iniquities 
 which were winked at by Parliament. But his fierce 
 protest arrayed against him all the parties that in- 
 dorsed these wrongs, or who were benefited by them. 
 I need not dwell on his protracted labors for ten years 
 in behalf of right, without the sympathies of those who 
 had formerly supported him. No speeches were ever 
 made in the English House of Commons which equalled, 
 in eloquence and power, those he made on the Nabob of 
 Arcot's debts and the impeachment of Warren Hast- 
 ings. In these famous philippics, he fearlessly exposed 
 the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the 
 inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants, — 
 speeches which extorted admiration, while they humili- 
 ated and chastised. I need not describe the nine years' 
 prosecution of a great criminal, and the escape of 
 Hastings, more guilty and more fortunate than Verres, 
 from the punishment he merited, through legal techni- 
 calities, the apathy of men in power, the private influ- 
 ence of the throne, and the sympathies which fashion 
 excited in his behalf, — and, more than all, because of 
 the undoubted service he had rendered to his country, 
 if it was a service to extend her rule by questionable 
 
82 EDMUND BURKE.] 
 
 means to the farthermost limits of the globe. I need 
 not speak of the obloquy which Burke incurred from 
 the press, which teemed with pamphlets and books 
 and articles to undermine his great authority, all in 
 the interests of venal and powerful monopolists, Nor 
 did he escape the wrath of the electors of Bristol, — 
 a narrow-minded town of India traders and Negro 
 dealers, — who withdrew from him their support. He 
 had been solicited, in the midst of his former ^clat, to 
 represent this town, rather than the " rotten borough " 
 of Wendover ; and he proudly accepted the honor, and 
 was the idol of his constituents until he presumed to 
 disregard their instructions in matters of which he con- 
 sidered they were incompetent to judge. His famous 
 letter to the electors, in which he refutes and ridicules 
 their claim to instruct him, as the shoemakers of Lynn 
 wished to instruct Daniel Webster, is a model of 
 irony, as well as a dignified rebuke of all ignorant 
 constituencies, and a lofty exposition of the duties of 
 a statesman rather than of a politician. 
 
 He had also incurred the displeasure of the Bristol 
 electors by his manly defence of the rights of the Irish 
 Catholics, who since the conquest of William III. had 
 been subjected to the most unjust and annojdng treat- 
 ment that ever disgraced a Protestant government. 
 The uijustices under which Ireland groaned were 
 nearly as repulsive as the cruelties inflicted upon the 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 83 
 
 Protestants of France during the reign of Louis XIV. 
 " On the suppression of the rebellion under Tyrconnel," 
 says Morley, " nearly the whole of the land was con- 
 fiscated, the peasants were made beggars and outlaws, 
 the Penal Laws against Catholics were enforced, and 
 the peasants were prostrate in despair." Even in 1765 
 " the native Irish were regarded by their Protestant op- 
 pressors with exactly that combination of intense con- 
 tempt and loathing, rage and terror, which his American 
 counterpart would have divided between the Indian and 
 the Negro." Not the least of the labors of Burke was to 
 bring to the attention of the nation the wrongs inflicted 
 on the Irish, and the impossibility of ruling a people 
 who had such just grounds for discontent. " His letter 
 upon the propriety of admitting the Catholics to the 
 elective franchise is one of the wisest of all his produc- 
 tions, — so enlightened is its idea of toleration, so saga- 
 cious is its comprehension of political exigencies." He 
 did not live to see his ideas carried out, but he was 
 among the first to prepare the way for Catholic emanci- 
 pation in later times. 
 
 But a greater subject than colonial rights, or Indian 
 wrongs, or persecution of the Irish Catholics agitated 
 the mind of Burke, to which he devoted the energies of 
 his declining years ; and this was, the agitation growing 
 out of the French Eevolution. When that "roaring 
 conflagration of anarchies" broke out, he was in the 
 
84 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 full maturity of his power and his fame, — a wise old 
 statesman, versed in the lessons of human experience, 
 who detested sophistries and abstract theories and 
 violent reforms ; a man who while he loved liberty 
 more than any political leader of his day, loathed the 
 crimes committed in its name, and who was sceptical 
 of any reforms which could not be carried on with- 
 out a wanton destruction of the foundations of society 
 itself. He was also a Christian who planted himself 
 on the certitudes of religious faith, and was shocked 
 by the flippant and shallow infidelity which passed 
 current for progress and improvement. Next to the 
 infidel spirit which would make Christianity and a 
 corrupted church identical, as seen in the mockeries 
 of Voltaire, and would destroy both under the guise of 
 hatred of superstition, he despised those sentimentali- 
 ties with which Eousseau and his admirers would veil 
 their disgusting immoralities. To him hypocrisy and 
 infidelity, under whatever name they were baptized by 
 the new apostles of human rights, were mischievous 
 and revolting. And as an experienced statesman he 
 held in contempt the inexperience of the Eevolutionary 
 leaders, and the unscrupulous means they pursued to 
 accomplish even desirable ends. 
 
 No man more than Burke admitted the necessity of 
 even radical reforms, but he would have accomplished 
 them without bloodshed and cruelties. He would not 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 85 
 
 have removed undeniable evils by introducing still 
 greater ones. He regarded the remedies proposed by 
 the Eevolutionary quacks as worse than the disease 
 which they professed to cure. No man knew better 
 than he the corruptions of the Catholic church in 
 France, and the persecuting intolerance which that 
 church had stimulated there ever since the revoca- 
 tion of the Edict of Nantes, — an intolerance so cruel 
 that to be married unless in accordance with Catholic 
 usage was to live in concubinage, and to be suspected 
 of Calvinism was punishable by imprisonment or the 
 galleys. But because the established church was cor- 
 rupt and intolerant, he did not see the necessity for 
 the entire and wholesale confiscation of its lands and 
 possessions (which had not been given originally by 
 the nation, but were the bequests of individuals), there- 
 by giving a vital wound to all the rights of property 
 which civilization in all countries has held sacred and 
 inviolable. Burke knew that the Bourbon absolute 
 monarchy was oppressive and tyrannical, extravagant 
 and indifferent to the welfare of the people ; but he 
 would not get rid of it by cutting off the head of the 
 king, especially when Louis was willing to make great 
 concessions : he would have limited his power, or 
 driven him into exile as the English punished James II. 
 He knew that the nobles abused their privileges ; he 
 would have taken them away rather than attempt 
 
86 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 to annul their order, and decimate them by horrid 
 butcheries. He did not deny the necessity of reforms 
 so searching that they would be almost tantamount to 
 revolution ; but he would not violate both constitutional 
 forms and usages, and every principle of justice and 
 humanity, in order to effect them. 
 
 To Burke's mind, the measures of the revolutionists 
 were all mixed up with impieties, sophistries, absurd- 
 ities, and blasphemies, to say nothing of cruelties 
 and murders. What good could grow out of such an 
 evil tree ? Could men who ignored all duties be the 
 expounders of rights ? What structure could last, 
 when its foundation was laid on the sands of hy- 
 pocrisy, injustice, ignorance, and inexperience ? What 
 sympathy could such a man as Burke have for athe- 
 istic theories, or a social progress which scorned the 
 only conditions by which society can be kept together ? 
 The advanced men who inaugurated the Eeign of Terror 
 were to him either fools, or fanatics, or assassins. He 
 did not object to the meeting of the States- General to 
 examine into the intolerable grievances, and, if neces- 
 sary, to strip the king of tyrannical powers, for such a 
 thing the English parliament had done ; but it was quite 
 another thing for one branch of the States-General to 
 constitute itself the nation, and usurp the powers and 
 functions of the other two branches ; to sweep away, 
 almost in a single night, the constitution of the realm ; 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 87 
 
 to take away all the powers of the king, imprison him, 
 mock him, insult him, and execute him, and then to 
 cut off the heads of the nobles who supported him, 
 and of all people who defended him, even women 
 themselves, and convert the whole land into a Pande- 
 monium ! What contempt must he have had for legis- 
 lators who killed their king, decimated their nobles, 
 robbed their clergy, swept away all social distinctions, 
 abolished the rites of religion, — all symbols, honors, 
 and privileges ; all that was ancient, all that was ven- 
 erable, all that was poetic, even to abbey churches ; yea, 
 dug up the very bones of ancient monarchs from the con- 
 secrated vaults where they had reposed for centuries, and 
 scattered them to the winds ; and then amid the mad 
 saturnalia of sacrilege, barbarity, and blasphemy to pro- 
 claim the reign of " Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality," 
 with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their 
 orator, and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, 
 to consummate the infamous farce of reform by openly 
 setting up a wanton woman as the idol of their wor- 
 ship, under the name of the Goddess of Reason ! 
 
 But while Burke saw only one side of these atrocities, 
 he did not close his eyes to the necessity for reforms. 
 Had he been a Frenchman, he would strenuously have 
 lifted up his voice to secure them, but in a legal and 
 constitutional manner, — not by violence, not by disre- 
 garding the principles of justice and morality to secure 
 
88 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 a desirable end. He was one of the few statesmen 
 then living who would not do evil that good might 
 come. He was no Jesuit. There is a class of politi- 
 cians who would have acted differently ; and this class, 
 in his day, was made up of extreme and radical people, 
 with infidel sympathies. With this class he was no 
 favorite, and never can be. Conservative people judge 
 him by a higher standard ; they shared at the time in 
 his sympathies and prejudices. 
 
 Even in America the excesses of the Eevolution 
 excited general abhorrence ; much more so in England. 
 And it was these excesses, this mode of securing reform, 
 not reform itself, which excited Burke's detestation. 
 Who can wonder at this ? Those who accept crimes 
 as a necessary outbreak of revolutionary passions adopt 
 a philosophy which would veil the world with a fune- 
 real and diabolical gloom. Keformers must be taught 
 that no reforms achieved by crime are worth the cost. 
 Nor is it just to brand an illustrious man with in- 
 difference to great moral and social movements because 
 he would wait, sooner than upturn the very principles 
 on which society is based. And here is the great 
 difficulty in estimating the character and labors of 
 Burke. Because he denounced the French Eevolu- 
 tion, some think he was inconsistent with his early 
 principles. Not at all ; it was the crimes and excesses 
 of the Eevolution he denounced, not the impulse of 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 89 
 
 the French people to achieve their liberties. Those 
 crimes and excesses he believed to be inconsistent 
 with an enlightened desire for freedom ; but freedom 
 itself, to its utmost limit and application, consistent 
 with law and order, he desired. Is it necessary for 
 mankind to win its greatest boons by going through a 
 sea of anarchies, madness, assassinations, and massa- 
 cres ? Those who take this view of revolutiou, it 
 seems to me, are neither wise nor learned. If a king 
 makes war on his subjects, they are warranted in tak- 
 ing up arms in their defence, even if the civil war is 
 followed by enormities. Thus the American colonies 
 took up arms against George III.; but they did not 
 begin with crimes. Louis XVI. did not take up arms 
 against his subjects, nor league against them, until they 
 had crippled and imprisoned him. He made even great 
 concessions ; he was willing to make still greater to save 
 his crown. But the leaders of the revolution were not 
 content with these, not even with the abolition of 
 feudal privileges; they wanted to subvert the mon- 
 archy itself, to abolish the order of nobility, to sweep 
 away even the Church, — not the Catholic establish- 
 ment only, but the Christian religion also, with all the 
 institutions which time and poetry had consecrated. 
 Their new heaven and new earth was not the reign 
 of the saints, which the millenarians of Cromwell's 
 time prayed for devoutly, but a sort of communistic 
 
90 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 equality, where every man could do precisely as he 
 liked, take even his neighbor's property, and annihilate 
 all distinctions of society, all inequalities of condition, 
 — a miserable, fanatical dream, impossible to realize 
 under any form of government which can be conceived. 
 It was this spirit of reckless innovation, promulgated 
 by atheists and drawn logically from some principles 
 of the "Social Contract" of which Kousseau was the 
 author, which excited the ire of Burke. It was license, 
 and not liberty. 
 
 And while the bloody and irreligious excesses of the 
 Eevolution called out his detestation, the mistakes 
 and incapacity of the new legislators excited his con- 
 tempt. He condemned a compulsory paper currency, — 
 not a paper currency, but a compulsory one, — and 
 predicted bankruptcy. He ridiculed an army without 
 a head, — not the instrument of the executive, but of 
 a military democracy receiving orders from the clubs. 
 He made sport of the legislature ruled by the com- 
 mune, and made up not of men of experience, but of 
 adventurers, stock-jobbers, directors of assignats, trus- 
 tees for the sale of church-lands, who " took a consti- 
 tution in hand as savages would a looking-glass," — a 
 body made up of those courtiers who wished to cut off 
 the head of their king, of those priests who voted religion 
 a nuisance, of those lawyers who called the laws a dead 
 letter, of those philosophers who admitted no argument 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 91 
 
 but the guillotine, of those sentimentalists who chanted 
 the necessity of more blood, of butchers and bakers and 
 brewers who would exterminate the very people who 
 bought from them. 
 
 And the result of all this wickedness and folly on 
 the mind of Burke was the most eloquent and masterly 
 political treatise probably ever written, — a treatise in 
 which there may be found much angry rhetoric and 
 some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius 
 on every page, which coruscates with wit, irony, and 
 invective ; scornful and sad doubtless, yet full of moral 
 wisdom ; a perfect thesaurus of political truths. I 
 have no words with which to express my admiration 
 for the wisdom and learning and literary excellence 
 of the " Reflections on the French Revolution " as a 
 whole, — so luminous in statement, so accurate in the 
 exposure of sophistries, so full of inspired intuitions, 
 so Christian in its tone. This celebrated work was 
 enough to make any man immortal. It was written 
 and rewritten with the most conscientious care. It 
 appeared in 1790 ; and so great were its merits, so 
 striking, and yet so profound, that thirty thousand 
 copies were sold in a few weeks. It was soon trans- 
 lated into all the languages of Europe, and was in the 
 hands of all thinking men. It was hailed with espe- 
 cial admiration by Christian and conservative classes, 
 though bitterly denounced by many intelligent people 
 
92 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 as gloomy and hostile to progress. But whether liked 
 or disliked, it made a great impression, and contributed 
 to settle public opinion in reference to French affairs. 
 What can be more just and enlightened than such 
 sentiments as these, which represent the spirit of the 
 treatise : — 
 
 "Because liberty is to be classed among the blessings 
 of mankind, am I to felicitate a madman who has escaped 
 from the restraints of his cell % There is no qualification 
 for government but virtue and wisdom. Woe be to that 
 country that would madly reject the service of talents and 
 virtues. Nothing is an adequate representation of a State 
 that does not represent its ability as well as property. Men 
 have a right to justice, and the fruits of industry, and the 
 acquisitions of their parents, and the improvement of their 
 offspring, — to instruction in life and consolation in death ; 
 but they have no right to what is unreasonable, and what is 
 not for their benefit. The new professors are so taken up 
 with rights that they have totally forgotten duties ; and with- 
 out opening one new avenue to the understanding, they have 
 succeeded in stopping those that lead to the heart. Those 
 who attempt by outrage and violence to deprive men of any ad- 
 vantage which they hold under the laws, proclaim war against 
 society. When, I ask, will such truths become obsolete among 
 enlightened people ; and when will they become stale ? " 
 
 But with this fierce protest against the madness and 
 violence of the French Eevolution, the wisdom of Burke 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 93 
 
 and of the English nation ended. The most experienced 
 and sagacious man of his age, with all his wisdom and 
 prescience, could see only one side of the awful politi- 
 cal hurricane wliich he was so eloquent in denouncing. 
 His passions and his prejudices so warped his mag- 
 nificent intellect, that he could not see the good which 
 was mingled with the evil; that the doctrine of equal- 
 ity, if false when applied to the actual condition of men 
 at their birth, is yet a state to which the institutions of 
 society tend, under the influence of education and re- 
 ligion ; that the common brotherhood of man, mocked 
 by the tyrants which feudalism produced, is yet to be 
 drawn from the Sermon on the Mount ; that the blood 
 of a plebeian carpenter is as good as that of an aristo- 
 cratic captain of artillery; that public burdens which 
 bear heavily on the poor should also be shared equally 
 by the rich ; that all laws should be abolished which 
 institute unequal privileges ; that taxes should be paid 
 by nobles as well as by peasants; that every man 
 should be unfettered in the choice of his calling and 
 profession ; that there should be unbounded toleration 
 of religious opinions ; that no one should be arbitrarily 
 arrested and confined without trial and proof of crime ; 
 that men and women, with due regard to the rights of 
 others, should be permitted to marry whomsoever they 
 please ; that, in fact, a total change in the spirit of 
 government, so imperatively needed in France, was 
 
94 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 necessary. These were among the great ideas which 
 the reformers advocated, but which they did not know 
 how practically to secure on those principles of justice 
 which they abstractly invoked, — ideas never afterwards 
 lost sight of, in all the changes of government. And 
 it is remarkable that the flagrant evils which the Kevo- 
 lution so ruthlessly swept away have never since been 
 revived, and never can be revived any more than the 
 oracles of Dodona or the bulls of Mediaeval Eome ; 
 amid the storms and the whirlwinds and the fearful 
 convulsions and horrid anarchies and wicked passions 
 of a great catastrophe, the imperishable ideas of prog- 
 ress forced their way. 
 
 Nor could Burke foresee the ultimate results of the 
 Eevolution any more than he would admit the truths 
 which were overshadowed by errors and crimes. Nor, 
 inflamed with rage and scorn, was he wise in the reme- 
 dies he proposed. Only God can overrule the wrath of 
 man, and cause melodious birth-songs to succeed the 
 agonies of dissolution. Burke saw the absurdity of 
 sophistical theories and impractical equality, — liberty 
 running into license, and license running into crime; 
 he saw pretensions, quackeries, inexperience, folly, 
 and cruelty, and he prophesied what their legitimate 
 effect would be : but he did not see in the Eevolution 
 the pent-up indignation and despair of centuries, nor 
 did he hear the voices of hungry and oppressed 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 
 
 95 
 
 millions crying to heaven for vengeance. He did not 
 recognize the chastening hand of God on tyrants and 
 sensualists ; he did not see the arm of retributive jus- 
 tice, more fearful than the daggers of Eoman assassins, 
 more stern than the overthrow of Persian hosts, more 
 impressive than the handwriting on the wall of Bel- 
 shazzar's palace ; nor could he see how creation would 
 succeed destruction amid the burnings of that vast 
 funeral pyre. He foresaw, perhaps, that anarchy 
 would be followed by military despotism ; but he never 
 anticipated a Napoleon Bonaparte, or the military 
 greatness of a nation so recently ground down by Jaco- 
 bin orators and sentimental executioners. He never 
 dreamed that out of the depths and from the clouds 
 and amid the conflagration there would come a deliver- 
 ance, at least for a time, in the person of a detested 
 conqueror ; who would restore law, develop industry, 
 secure order, and infuse enthusiasm into a country so 
 nearly ruined, and make that country glorious beyond 
 precedent, until his mad passion for unlimited domin- 
 ion should arouse insulted nations to form a coalition 
 which even he should not be powerful enough to resist, 
 gradually hemming him round in a king-hunt, until 
 they should at last confine him on a rock in the ocean, 
 to meditate and to die. 
 
 Where Burke and the nation he aroused by his elo- 
 quence failed in wisdom, was in opposing this revolu- 
 
96 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 tionary storm with bayonets. Had he and the leaders 
 of his day confined themselves to rhetoric and argu- 
 ments, if ever so exaggerated and irritating ; had they 
 allowed the Erench people to develop their revolution 
 in their own way, as they had the right to do, — then 
 the most dreadful war of modern times, which lasted 
 twenty years, would have been confined withiu smaller 
 limits. Napoleon would have had no excuse for ag- 
 gressive warfare ; Pitt would not have died of a broken 
 heart ; large standing armies, the curse of Europe, would 
 not have been deemed so necessary ; the ancient limits 
 of France might have been maintained ; and a policy 
 of development might have been inaugurated, rather 
 than a policy which led to future wars and national 
 humiliation. The gigantic struggles of Napoleon began 
 when France was attacked by foreign nations, fighting 
 for their royalties and feudalities, and aiming to sup- 
 press a domestic revolution which was none of their 
 concern, and which they imperfectly understood. 
 
 But at this point we must stop, for I tread on 
 ground where only speculation presumes to stand. The 
 time has not come to solve such a mighty problem as 
 the French Eevolution, or even the career of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. We can pronounce on the logical effects of 
 right and wrong, — that violence leads to anarchy, and 
 anarchy to ruin ; but we cannot tell what would have 
 been the destiny of France if the Eevolution had not 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 97 
 
 produced Napoleon, nor what would have been the 
 destiny of England if Napoleon had not been circum- 
 vented by the powers of Europe. On such questions 
 we are children ; the solution of them is hidden by the 
 screens of destiny ; we can only speculate. And since 
 we short-sighted mortals cannot tell what will be the 
 ultimate effect of the great agitations of society, whether 
 begun in noble aspirations or in depraved passions, it is 
 enough for us to settle down, with firm convictions, on 
 what we can see, — that crimes, under whatever name 
 they go, are eternally to be reprobated, whatever may 
 be the course they are made to take by Him who 
 rules the universe. It would be difficult to single out 
 any memorable war in this world's history which has 
 not been ultimately overruled for the good of the 
 world, whatever its cause or character, — like the Cru- 
 sades, the most unfortunate in their immediate effects 
 of all the great wars which nations have madly waged. 
 But this oiAy proves that God is stronger than devils, 
 and that he overrules the wrath of man. "It must 
 needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by 
 whom the offence cometh." There is only one standard 
 by which to judge the actions of men ; there is only 
 one rule whereby to guide nations or individuals, — 
 and that is, to do right; to act on the principles of 
 immutable justice. 
 
 Now, whatever were the defects in the character or 
 
98 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 philosophy of Burke, it cannot be denied that this was 
 the law which he attempted to obey, the rule which 
 he taught to his generation. In this light, his life and 
 labors command our admiration, because he did uphold 
 the right and condemn the wrong, and was sufficiently 
 clear-headed to see the sophistries which concealed the 
 right and upheld the wrong. That was his peculiar 
 excellence. How loftily his majestic name towers above 
 the other statesmen of his troubled age ! Certainly no 
 equal to him, in England, has since appeared, in those 
 things which give permanent fame. The man who has 
 most nearly approached him is Gladstone. If the 
 character of our own Webster had been as reproach- 
 less as his intellect was luminous and comprehensive, 
 he might be named in the same category of illustrious 
 men. Like the odor of sanctity, which was once sup- 
 posed to emanate from a Catholic saint, the halo of 
 Burke's imperishable glory is shed around every con- 
 secrated retreat of that land which thus far has been 
 the bulwark of European liberty. The English nation 
 will not let him die ; he cannot die in the hearts and 
 memories of man any more than can Socrates or Wash- 
 ington. No nation will be long ungrateful for emi- 
 nent public services, even if he who rendered them was 
 stained by grave defects ; for it is services which make 
 men immortal. Much more will posterity reverence 
 those benefactors whose private lives were in harmony 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 99 
 
 with their principles, — the Hales, the L'Hopitals, the 
 Hampdens of the world. To this class Burke undeni- 
 ably belonged. All writers agree as to his purity of 
 morals, his generous charities, his high social qualities, 
 his genial nature, his love of simple pleasures, his deep 
 affections, his reverence, his Christian life. He was a 
 man of sorrows, it is true, like most profound and con- 
 templative natures, whose labors are not fully appre- 
 ciated, — like Cicero, Dante, and Michael Angelo. He 
 was doomed, too, like Galileo, to severe domestic mis- 
 fortunes. He was greatly afflicted by the death of his 
 only son, in whom his pride and hopes were bound up. 
 " I am like one of those old oaks which the late hurri- 
 cane has scattered about me," said he. " I am torn up 
 by the roots ; I lie prostrate on the earth." And 
 when care and disease hastened his departure from a 
 world he adorned, his body was followed to the grave 
 by the most illustrious of the great men of the land, 
 and the whole nation mourned as for a brother or a 
 friend. 
 
 But it is for his writings and published speeches 
 that he leaves the most enduring fame ; and what is 
 most valuable in his writings is his elucidation of fun- 
 damental principles in morals and philosophy. And 
 here was his power, — not his originality, for which he 
 was distinguished in an eminent degree ; not learning, 
 which amazed his auditors ; not sarcasm, of which he 
 
100 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 was a master ; not wit, with which he brought down 
 the house ; not passion, which overwhelmed even such 
 a man as Hastings ; not fluency, with every word in 
 the language at his command ; not criticism, so search- 
 ing that no sophistry could escape him ; not philoso- 
 phy, musical as Apollo's lyre, — but insight into great 
 principles, the moral force of truth clearly stated and 
 fearlessly defended. This elevated him to a sphere 
 which words and gestures, and the rich music and 
 magnetism of voice and action can never reach, since 
 it touched the heart and the reason and the conscience 
 alike, and produced convictions that nothiug can stifle. 
 There were more famous and able men than he, in some 
 respects, in Parliament at the time. Fox surpassed him 
 in debate, Pitt in ready replies and adaptation to the 
 genius of the house, Sheridan in wit, Townsend in parlia- 
 mentary skill, Mansfield in legal acumen ; but no one of 
 these great men was so forcible as Burke in the state- 
 ment of truths which future statesmen will value. 
 And as he unfolded and applied the imperishable prin- 
 ciples of right and wrong, he seemed like an ancient 
 sage bringing down to earth the fire of the divinities 
 he invoked and in which he believed, not to chastise 
 and humiliate, but to guide and inspire. 
 
 In recapitulating the services by which Edmund 
 Burke will ultimately be judged, I would say that he 
 had a hand in almost every movement for which his 
 
POLITICAL MORALITY. 101 
 
 generation is applauded. He gave an impulse to almost 
 every political discussion which afterwards resulted in 
 beneficent reform. Some call him a croaker, without 
 sympathy for the ideas on which modern progress is 
 based; but he was really one of the great reformers 
 of his day. He lifted up his voice against the slave- 
 trade ; he encouraged and lauded the labors of Howard ; 
 he supported the just claims of the Catholics ; he at- 
 tempted, though a churchman, to remove the restric- 
 tions to which dissenters were subjected ; he opposed 
 the cruel laws against insolvent debtors ; he sought to 
 soften the asperities of the Penal Code ; he labored to 
 abolish the custom of enlisting soldiers for life; he 
 attempted to subvert the dangerous powers exercised 
 by judges in criminal prosecutions for libel ; he sought 
 financial reform in various departments of the State ; 
 he would have abolished many useless offices in the 
 government ; he fearlessly exposed the wrongs of the 
 East India Company; he tried to bring to justice the 
 greatest political criminal of the day ; he took the right 
 side of American difficulties, and advocated a policy 
 which would have secured for half a century longer the 
 allegiance of the American colonies, and prevented the 
 division of the British empire ; he advocated measures 
 which saved England, possibly, from French subju- 
 gation ; he threw the rays of his genius over all polit- 
 ical discussions ; and he left treatises which from his 
 
102 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 day to ours have proved a mine of political and moral 
 wisdom, for all whose aim or business it has been to 
 study the principles of law or government. These, 
 truly, were services for which any country should be 
 grateful, and which should justly place Edmund Burke 
 on the list of great benefactors. These constitute a 
 legacy of which all nations should be proud. 
 
 AUTHOKITIES. 
 
 Works and Correspondence of Edmund Burke; Life and Times of 
 Edmund Burke, by Macknight (the ablest and fullest yet written) ; An 
 Historical Study, by Morley (very able) ; Lives of Burke by Croly, Prior, 
 and Bisset ; Grenville Papers ; Parliamentary History ; the Encyclopaedia 
 Britannica has a full article on Burke ; Massey's History of England ; 
 Chatham's Correspondence ; Moore's Life of Sheridan ; also the Lives of 
 Pitt and Fox ; Lord Brougham's Sketch of Burke ; C. W. Dilke's Papers 
 of a Critic ; Boswell's Life of Johnson. The most brilliant of Burke's 
 writings, "Reflections on the French Revolution," should be read by 
 everybody. 
 
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