Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and the Two Speeches on America
By Edmund Burke
The first three volumes of this set of Select Works of Edmund Burke, fully edited by Edward John Payne (1844-1904), were originally published by the Clarendon Press, Oxford, from 1874 to 1878. Liberty Fund now publishes them again, with a fourth volume of additional writings by Burke. The original set has been praised by Clara I. Gandy and Peter J. Stanlis as “an outstanding critical anthology of Burke’s essential works on the American and French revolutions”; and they went on to say: “The scholarship and criticism is perhaps the best on Burke during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.”… [From the Editor’s Foreword by Francis Canavan.]
Compiled and with a foreword and notes by Francis Canavan. Vols. 1-3 originally published Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1874-1878. E. J. Payne, Ed. Foreword and notes by Francis Canavan.
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Portions of this edited edition are under copyright.
As if it were to insult as well as to betray him,Deprived of his guiding influence, they were whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port; and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his opinions, measures, and character, and far the most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends; and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy. *156 departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a confidence in him, which was justified, even in its extravagance, by his superior abilities, had never, in any instance, presumed upon any opinion of their own.
[146]When his face was hid but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea, without chart or compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of various *1551.2.91For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb was entirely set, and while the Western horizon was in a blaze with his descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another luminary, and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant.*157 even long before the close of the first session of his administration, when everything was publicly transacted, and with great parade, in his name, they made an Act, declaring it highly just and expedient to raise a revenue in America. This light too is passed and set for ever. *158You understand, to be sure, that *159I speak of Charles Townshend, officially the re-producer of this fatal scheme; whom I cannot even now remember without some degree of sensibility. In truth, Sir, he was *160the delight and ornament of this House, and the charm of every private society which he honoured with his presence. Perhaps there never arose in this country, nor in any country, a man of a more pointed and finished wit; and (where his passions were not concerned) of a more refined, exquisite, and penetrating judgement. If he had *161not so great a stock, as some have had who flourished formerly,
[147] of knowledge long treasured up, he knew better by far, than any man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring together, within a short time, all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question he supported. He stated his matter skilfully and powerfully. He particularly excelled in a most luminous explanation and display of his subject. His style of argument was neither trite and vulgar, nor subtle and abstruse. He *162hit the House just between wind and water. And *163not being troubled with too anxious a zeal for any matter in question, he was never more tedious, or more earnest, than the pre-conceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required; to whom he was always in perfect unison. *164He conformed exactly to the temper of the House; and he seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow it.
I beg pardon, Sir, if, when I speak of this and of other great men, I appear to digress in saying something of their characters. In this eventful history of the revolutions of America, the characters of such men are of much importance. Great men are the guide-posts and land-marks in the state. The credit of such men at court, or in the nation, is *165the sole cause of all the public measures. It would be an invidious thing (most foreign, I trust, to what you think my disposition) to remark the errors into which the authority of great names has brought the nation, without doing justice, at the same time, to the great qualities whence that authority arose. The subject is instructive to those who wish to form themselves on whatever of excellence has gone before them. There are many young members in the House (such of late has been the rapid succession of public men) who never saw that prodigy, Charles Townshend; nor of course know what a ferment he was able to excite in everything by the violent ebullition of his mixed virtues and failings. For failings he had undoubtedly—many of us remember them; we are this
[148] day considering the effect of them. But he had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate, *166passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls. He worshipped that goddess wheresoever she appeared; but he paid his particular devotions to her in her favourite habitation, in her chosen temple, the House of Commons. Besides the characters of the individuals that compose our body, it is impossible, Mr. Speaker, not to observe that this House has a collective character of its own. That character too, however imperfect, is not unamiable. Like all great public collections of men, you possess a marked love of virtue, and an abhorrence of vice. But among vices, there is none which the House abhors in the same degree with *167obstinacy. Obstinacy, Sir, is certainly a great vice; and in the changeful state of political affairs it is frequently the cause of great mischief. It happens, however, very unfortunately, that almost the *168whole line of the great and masculine virtues, constancy, gravity, magnanimity, fortitude, fidelity, and firmness, are closely allied to this disagreeable quality, of which you have so just an abhorrence; and, in their excess, all these virtues very easily fall into it. He, who paid such a punctilious attention to all your feelings, certainly took care not to shock them by that vice which is the most disgustful to you.That fear of displeasing those who ought most to be pleased, betrayed him sometimes into the other extreme. He had voted, and, in the year 1765, had been an advocate, for the Stamp Act. *169Things and the disposition of *170men’s minds were changed. In short, the Stamp Act began to be no favourite in this House. He therefore attended at the private meeting, in which the *171resolutions moved by a Right Honourable Gentleman were settled; resolutions leading to the Repeal. The next day he voted for that Repeal; and
[149] he would have spoken for it too, *172if an illness, (not, as was then given out, a political, but to my knowledge, a very real illness,) had not prevented it.The very next session, *173as the fashion of this world passeth away, the Repeal began to be in as bad an odour in this House as the Stamp Act had been in the session before. To conform to the temper which began to prevail, and to prevail most amongst those most in power, he declared, very early in the winter, that a revenue must be had out of America. Instantly he was tied down to his engagements by some, who had no objection to such experiments, when made at the cost of persons for whom they had no particular regard. The whole body of courtiers drove him onward. They always talked as if the King stood in a sort of humiliated state, until something of the kind should be done.Here this extraordinary man, *174then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits. To please universally was the object of his life; but to tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men. However, he attempted it. To render the tax palatable to the partizans of American revenue, he made a preamble stating the necessity of such a revenue. To close with the American distinction, this revenue was external or port-duty; but again, to soften it to the other party, it was a duty of supply. To gratify the Colonists, it was laid on British manufactures; to satisfy the merchants of Britain, the duty was trivial, and (except that on tea, which touched only the devoted East India Company) on none of the grand objects of commerce. *175To counterwork the American contraband, the duty on tea was reduced from a shilling to three-pence. But to secure the favour of those who would tax America, the scene of collection was changed, and, with the rest, it was levied in the Colonies. What need I say more? This fine-spun scheme had the *176usual fate of all exquisite policy.
[150] But the original plan of the duties, and the mode of executing that plan, both arose singly and solely from a love of our applause. He was truly the child of the House. He never thought, did, or said anything, but with a view to you. He every day adapted himself to your disposition; and adjusted himself before it, as at a looking-glass.He had observed (indeed it could not escape him) that several persons, infinitely his inferiors in all respects, had formerly rendered themselves considerable in this House by one method alone. They were *177a race of men (I hope in God the species is extinct) who, when they rose in their place, no man living could divine, from any known adherence to parties, to opinions, or to principles; from any order or system in their politicks; or from any sequel or connexion in their ideas, what part they were going to take in any debate. It is astonishing how much this uncertainty, especially at critical times, called the attention of all parties on such men. All eyes were fixed on them, all ears open to hear them; each party gaped, and looked alternately for their vote, almost to the end of their speeches. While the House hung in this uncertainty, now *178the Hear-hims rose from this side—now they rebellowed from the other; and that party, *179to whom they fell at length from their tremulous and dancing balance, always received them in a tempest of applause. The fortune of such men was a temptation too great to be resisted by one, to whom *180a single whiff of incense withheld gave much greater pain, than he received delight in the clouds of it, which daily rose about him from the prodigal superstition of innumerable admirers. He was a candidate for contradictory honours; and his great aim was to make those agree in admiration of him who never agreed in anything else.Hence arose this unfortunate Act, the subject of this day’s debate; from a disposition which, after making an American revenue to please one, repealed it to please others, and again
[151] revived it in hopes of pleasing a third, and of catching something in the ideas of all.
This Revenue Act of 1767 formed the fourth period of American policy. How we have fared since then—what woeful variety of schemes have been adopted; what enforcing, and what repealing; what bullying, and what submitting; what doing, and undoing; what straining, and what relaxing; what assemblies dissolved for not obeying, and called again without obedience; what troops sent out to quell resistance, and on meeting that resistance, recalled; what shiftings, and changings, and jumblings of all kinds of men at home, which left no possibility of order, consistency, vigour, or even so much as a decent unity of colour in any one public measure—It is a tedious, irksome task. My duty may call me to open it out some other time; *181on a former occasion I tried your temper on a part of it; for the present I shall forbear.*182After all these changes and agitations, your immediate situation upon the question on your paper is at length brought to this. You have an Act of Parliament, stating, that “it is expedient to raise a revenue in America.” By a partial repeal you annihilated the greatest part of that revenue, which this preamble declares to be so expedient. You have substituted no other in the place of it. A Secretary of State has disclaimed, in the King’s name, all thoughts of such a substitution in future. The principle of this disclaimer goes to what has been left, as well as what has been repealed. The tax which lingers after its companions (under a preamble declaring an American revenue expedient, and for the sole purpose of supporting the theory of that preamble) militates with the assurance authentically conveyed to the Colonies; and is an exhaustless source of jealousy and animosity. On this state, which I take to be a fair one;
[152] not being able to discern any grounds of honour, advantage, peace, or power, for adhering, either to the Act or to the preamble, I shall vote for the question which leads to the repeal of both.If you do not fall in with this motion, then secure something to fight for, consistent in theory and valuable in practice. If you must employ your strength, employ it to uphold you in some honourable right, or some profitable wrong. If you are apprehensive that the concession recommended to you, though proper, should be a means of drawing on you further but unreasonable claims, why then employ your force in supporting that reasonable conception against those unreasonable demands. You will employ it with more grace; with better effect; and with great probable concurrence of all the quiet and rational people in the provinces; who are now united with, and hurried away by, the violent; having indeed different dispositions, but a common interest. If you apprehend that on a concession you shall be pushed by metaphysical process to the extreme lines, and argued out of your whole authority, my advice is this; when you have recovered your old, your strong, your tenable position, then face about—stop short—do nothing more— *183reason not at all—oppose the antient policy and practice of the Empire, as a rampart against the speculations of innovators on both sides of the question; and you will stand on great, manly, and sure ground. *184On this solid basis fix your machines, and they will draw worlds towards you.Your Ministers, in their own and his Majesty’s name, have already adopted the American distinction of internal and external duties. It is a distinction, whatever merit it may have, that was originally moved by the Americans themselves; and I think they will acquiesce in it, if they are not pushed with too much logick and too little sense, in all the consequences. That is, if external taxation be understood,
[153] as they and you understand it, when you please, to be not a distinction of geography, but of policy; that it is a power for regulating trade, and not for supporting establishments. The distinction, which is as nothing with regard to right, is of most weighty consideration in practice. Recover your old ground, and your old tranquillity—try it—I am persuaded the Americans will compromise with you. When confidence is once restored, the odious and suspicious *185summum jus will perish of course. The spirit of practicability, of moderation, and mutual convenience, will never call in geometrical exactness as the arbitrator of an amicable settlement. Consult and follow your experience. Let not the long story, with which I have exercised your patience, prove fruitless to your interests.For my part, I should choose (if I could have my wish) that the proposition of the Honourable Gentleman for the Repeal could go to America without the attendance of the penal Bills. Alone I could almost answer for its success. I cannot be certain of its reception in the bad company it may keep. In such heterogeneous assortments, the most innocent person will lose the effect of his innocency. Though you should send out this angel of peace, yet you are sending out a *186destroying angel too: and what would be the effect of the conflict of these two adverse spirits, or which would predominate in the end, is what I dare not say: whether the lenient measures would cause American passion to subside, or the severe would increase its fury. All this is in the hand of Providence. Yet now, even now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness, and in chaos, in the midst of all this unnatural and turbid combination: I should hope it might produce order and beauty in the end.*187Let us, Sir, embrace some system or other before we end this Session. Do you mean to tax America, and to draw a
[154] productive revenue from thence? If you do, speak out; name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its quantity; define its objects; provide for its collection; and then fight when you have something to fight for. If you murder—rob! if you kill—take possession! and do not appear in the character of madmen, as well as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and tyrannical, without an object. But may better counsels guide you!Again, and again, revert to your own principles— *188Seek Peace, and ensue it—leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax herself. I am not here going into the distinctions of rights, not attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these *189metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they antiently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They and we, and their and our ancestors, have been happy under that system. Let the memory of all actions, in contradiction to that good old mode, on both sides, be extinguished for ever. Be content to bind America by laws of trade; you have always done it. Let this be your reason for binding their trade. Do not burthen them by taxes; you were *190not used to do so from the beginning. Let this be your reason for not taxing. These are the arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave the rest to the schools; for there only they may be discussed with safety. But, if intemperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisticate and poison the very source of government, by urging subtle deductions, and consequences odious to those you govern, from the unlimited and illimitable nature of supreme sovereignty, you will teach them by these means to call that sovereignty itself in question. When you drive him hard, the boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If that sovereignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled, which will they take? They will cast your sovereignty in your face.
[155]*191No-body will be argued into slavery. Sir, let the gentlemen on the other side call forth all their ability; let the best of them get up, and tell me, *192what one character of liberty the Americans have, and what one brand of slavery they are free from, if they are bound in their property and industry, by all the restraints you can imagine on commerce, and at the same time are made pack-horses of every tax you choose to impose, without the least share in granting them. When they bear the burthens of unlimited monopoly, will you bring them to bear the burthens of unlimited revenue too? The Englishman in America will feel that this is slavery—that it is legal slavery, will be no compensation, either to his feelings or his understanding.*193A Noble Lord, who spoke some time ago, is full of the fire of ingenuous youth; and when he has modelled the ideas of a lively imagination by further experience, he will be an ornament to his country in either House. He has said, that *194the Americans are our children, and how can they revolt against their parent? He says, that if they are not free in their present state, England is not free; because Manchester, and other considerable places, are not represented. So then, because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are our children; but when *195children ask for bread, we are not to give a stone. Is it because the natural resistance of things, and the various mutations of time, hinder our government, or any scheme of government, from being any more than a sort of approximation to the right—is it therefore that the Colonies are to recede from it infinitely? When this child of ours wishes to assimilate to its parent, and to reflect with a true filial resemblance the *196beauteous countenance of British liberty; are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our Constitution? are we to give them our weakness for their strength? our opprobrium for their glory?
[156] and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom?If this be the case, ask yourselves this question, Will they be content in such a state of slavery? If not, look to the consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people, who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to—my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther—all is confusion beyond it.Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and before I sit down I must say something to another point with which gentlemen urge us. What is to become of the Declaratory Act asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation?For my part I look upon the rights stated in that Act, exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the Colonists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of *197her extensive Empire in two capacities: one as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the executive power. The other, and I think her nobler capacity, is *198what I call her imperial character; in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior legislatures, and guides and controuls them all, without annihilating any. As all these provincial legislatures are only co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her; else they can
[157] neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance. It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the over-ruling plenitude of her power. She is never to intrude into the place of the others, whilst they are equal to the common ends of their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these ends of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless. The gentlemen who think the powers of Parliament limited, may please themselves to talk of requisitions. But suppose the requisitions are not obeyed? What! Shall there be no reserved power in the Empire, to supply a deficiency which may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole? We are engaged in war—the Secretary of State calls upon the Colonies to contribute—some would do it, I think most would chearfully furnish whatever is demanded—one or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing themselves, let the *199stress of the draft lie on the others—surely it is proper, that some authority might legally say—”Tax yourselves for the common supply, or Parliament will do it for you.” This *200backwardness was, as I am told, actually the case of Pennsylvania for some short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in the Colony. But whether the fact were so, or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power; nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant, when I have said at various times, that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply.Such, Sir, is my idea of the Constitution of the British Empire, as distinguished from the Constitution of Britain; and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently reconciled through the whole; whether
[158] to serve a refining speculatist, or a factious demagogue, I know not; but enough surely for the ease and happiness of man.Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we drew more from the Colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war. It has never been once denied: and what reason have we to imagine that the Colonies would not have proceeded in supplying government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered them from contributing, by interrupting the channel in which their liberality flowed with so strong a course; by attempting to take, instead of being satisfied to receive? *201Sir William Temple says, that Holland has loaded itself with ten times the impositions, which it revolted from Spain, rather than submit to. He says true. *202Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to accumulate, nor how to extract.I charge therefore to this new and unfortunate system the loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but even of revenue, which its friends are contending for. It is *203morally certain, that we have lost at least a million of free grants since the peace. I think we have lost a great deal more; and that those, who look for a revenue from the provinces, never could have pursued, even in that light, a course more directly repugnant to their purposes.Now, Sir, I trust I have shown, first on that narrow ground which the Honourable Gentleman measured, that you are likely to lose nothing by complying with the motion, except what you have lost already. I have shown afterwards, that in time of peace you flourished in commerce, and, when war required it, had sufficient aid from the Colonies, while you pursued your antient policy; that you threw everything into confusion when you made the Stamp Act; and that you restored everything to peace and order when
[159] you repealed it. I have shown that the revival of the system of taxation has produced the very worst effects; and that the partial repeal has produced, *204not partial good, but universal evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back to our reason by the road of our experience.I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed measures: but surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the Act of Navigation when it ought to be enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought still further to be opened. Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, from policy, and not from rancour. Let us act like men—let us act like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is agreed that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the profit, let us get rid of the odium.On this business of America, I confess I am serious, even to sadness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I sat, in Parliament. *205The noble Lord will, as usual, probably attribute the part taken by me and my friends in this business, to a desire of getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take away most of his wit, and all his argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and indeed blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God for embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of his works. But I know the map of England, as well as the noble Lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and honourable *206friend under me on the floor has trod that road with great toil for upwards of twenty years together. He is not yet arrived at the noble Lord’s destination. However, the tracks of my worthy friend
[160] are those I have ever wished to follow; because I know they lead to honour. Long may we tread the same road together; whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us on our journey! I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other reason, than that I think it laid deep in your truest interests; and that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes, on the firmest foundations, a real, consistent, well-grounded authority in Parliament. Until you come back to that system, there will be no peace for England.
P. 159, L. 13.the Honourable Gentleman who spoke last. “Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Esq., lately appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury.” ( Burke). For a sketch of him, see Mr. Macknight’s Life of Burke, ii. 52. He was “Member for Grampound, descended from an ancient Herefordshire family, and a sensible lawyer. He (according to Walpole) married a sister of the first Earl of Liverpool: became a Lord of the Treasury in 1774, and Lord Chatham upon the occasion of the offer being made him, writes, ‘If he accepts, Government makes a very valuable and accredited instrument of public business. His character is respectable, and his manners and life amiable. Such men are not to be found every day.’ “; He continued a Junior Lord of the Treasury till 1780, when he was chosen Speaker. He thus figures in the Rolliad;
There Cornewall sits, and oh! unhappy fate!
Must sit for ever through the long debate.
Painful preeminence! he hears, ’tis true,
Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too;
Like sad Prometheus fastened to his rock,
In vain he looks for pity to the clock;
In vain the effects of strengthening porter tries,
[282]L. 14.this subject is not new in this House. “The long debates which have formerly happened upon this business. If this were a new question,” &c. Cornwall’s Speech. The present debate had begun in the dullest possible style, and had reached its meridian. Rose Fuller, Rice, Captain Phipps, Stephen Fox, and Cornwall had already well tried the patience of the House. The members had begun to disperse to the adjoining apartments, or places of refreshment. Hence the short, lashing, petulant exordium, contrasting strongly with those of the great speeches on the Economical Reform, and the Nabob of Arcot’s Debts. It was necessary to arrest the attention of the House in the dullest part of a debate. The report of it spread rapidly, and members crowded back till the hall was filled to the utmost. It resounded throughout the speech with the loudest applause. The student should observe the contrast between this preamble and that of the speech which follows. The latter is full of touches of that ostentatious trifling which was so common in the speaking of the last century; what Hazlitt terms, “calling out the Speaker to dance a minuet with him before he begins.”
L. 26.this disgusting argument. The epithet means no more than “wearisome,” “tedious.” Cp. Goldsmith, Citizen of the World, Letter lvii: “A nobleman has but to take a pen, ink, and paper, write away through three large volumes, and then sign his name to the title page; though the whole might have been before more disgusting than his own rent-roll, yet signing his name and title gives value to the deed,” &c.
L. 30.I had long the happiness to sit at the same side of the House…. privilege of an old friendship. Cornwall was a renegade from Lord Shelburne’s party, and had spoken with effect on the side of opposition in the debates on the Nullum Tempus Bill, and on Lotteries, as well as on the American question. He accepted office March 12, 1774, together with Lord Beauchamp, afterwards Marquis of Hertford. His speech is reported in the Parliamentary History, vol. xvii.
P. 160, L. 22.the most ample historical detail. It is to this demand of Cornwall’s that we are indebted for the second part of this speech—one of the most interesting passages in English literature. The student should supplement it by reading the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 1777.
P. 161, L. 2.He asserts, that retrospect is not wise. “I think it (the re-opening of the whole question) wrong; and wish only to pursue the present expediency of the measure.” Cornwall’s Speech.
L. 17.without the least management. In the French sense now disused. Dryden:
[283] Mark well what management their tribes divide:
Some stick to you, and some to t’other side.
Burnet: “The managements of the present administration.” Infra, p. 197, “He (Rockingham) practised no managements.” “Plus il y a de gens dans une nation qui ont besoin d’avoir des ménagements entre eux et de ne pas déplaire, plus il y a de politesse.” De l’Esprit des Lois, Liv. xix. c. 27. “Peut-être que ce fut un ménagement pour le clergé.” Ibid. xxviii. 20.
L. 29.call for a repeal of the duty on wine. “Let me ask, what answer will they give, when, after this, the Americans shall voluntarily apply to repeal the duty on wine, &c.? The same principle that operates for the repeal of this, will go to that,” &c. Cornwall’s Speech.
P. 162, L. 8.or even any one of the articles which compose it. At that time the Colonies would have not opposed duties imposed for the regulation of trade.
P. 164, L. 7.and he is the worst of all the repealers, because he is the last, i.e. Lord North. Lord Rockingham had repealed only one duty, while Lord North had repealed five. These four paragraphs must be understood in their true spirit of open irony in the form of an “argumentum ad hominem.”
L. 19.new recruits from this. Alluding to the deserters from the various sections of the Whig party, who by this time had gone over to the Court in large numbers.
P. 165, L. 2.Here Mr. Speaker, is a precious mockery. Used thus ironically by Locke. ” Precious limbs was at first an expression of great feeling: till vagabonds, draymen, &c., brought upon it the character of coarseness and ridicule.” Lord Thurlow, Letter to Cowper.
L. 12.the paper in my hand. Lord Hillsborough’s Circular Letter to the Governours of the Colonies, concerning the Repeal of some of the Duties laid in the Act of 1767. ( Burke.)
P. 165, L. 33.an advantage in Lead, that amounts to a monopoly. The total exports of lead from England in 1852 were about 23,000 tons, of which the United States took nearly a third, being three times as much as any other customer; and this notwithstanding the working of the productive mines of Illinois and Wisconsin. “The lead mines of Granada,” says Mr. Macculloch, “would, were they properly wrought, be among the most productive in the world.” Spain is now a large producer, and the advantage of England no longer exists.
P. 166, L. 20.Sir, it is not a pleasant consideration. Burke here makes a
[284] landing-place, as usual, out of a broad generalisation arising from a particularly striking point in his argument. The student should note the effective use of familiar terms in the body of the paragraph, and its contrast with the rhetorical sentence which concludes it. In the next paragraph he returns to the argument on the preamble, after a digression on the interests of the East India Company, who purchased tea in China with the silver of the Bengal revenue.
L. 22.mischief of not having large and liberal ideas in the management of great affairs. Cp. the peroration of the Speech on Conciliation ( Sursum Corda, p. 289), and especially the following passage from the Second Letter on a Regicide Peace: “In truth, the tribe of vulgar politicians are the lowest of our species. There is no trade so vile and mechanical as government in their hands. Virtue is not their habit. They are out of themselves in any course of conduct recommended only by conscience and glory. A large, liberal, and prospective view of the interests of states passes with them for romance; and the principles that recommend it, for the wanderings of a disordered imagination. The calculators compute them out of their senses. The jesters and buffoons shame them out of everything grand and elevated. Littleness in object and in means, to them appears soundness and sobriety. They think there is nothing worth pursuit, but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule; which they can tell upon ten fingers.”
L. 31.meanly to sneak out of difficulties, into which they had proudly strutted. “He (Bute) as abjectly sneaked out of an ostensible office in the State, as he had arrogantly strutted into it.” Public Advertiser, Aug. 30, 1776.
P. 167, L. 2.irresistible operation of feeble counsels… circled the whole globe. The device called by the rhetoricians contentio is here used by Burke with striking effect. Observe the same in the subsequent sentence: “The monopoly of the most lucrative trades… beggary and ruin.” Cp. the passage in the Speech on Economical Reform, ending: “The judges were unpaid; the justice of the kingdom bent and gave way; the foreign ministers remained inactive and unprovided; the system of Europe was dissolved; the chain of our alliances was broken; all the wheels of government at home and abroad were stopped— because the King’s turnspit was a Member of Parliament.“
L. 3.so insignificant an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher. In contrast with the paramount importance asserted for it from a commercial point of view in the previous paragraph.
L. 13.with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The mover and seconder of the Address “expatiated largely on the enormous transgressions of the East India Company, and described their affairs, as being in the most ruinous and almost irretrievable situation.” Ann. Reg. 1773.
L. 15.verge of beggary and ruin. The Company had agreed to the payment of 400,000 l. per annum to government. But in 1772, while many of their servants had returned to England with large fortunes, the Company became so involved in difficulties as not only to be unable to pay this sum, but to make it necessary that 1,400,000 l. should be advanced to them by the public. The exhaustion of the country, and the expenses incurred in the war with Hyder Ali and France, involved the Company in fresh difficulties; and they were obliged, in 1783, to present a petition to Parliament, setting forth their inability to pay their annual sum of 400,000 l., praying to be excused therefrom, and to be supported by a loan of 900,000 l. (Macculloch.) At this crisis Fox brought in his India Bill, on which Burke made one of the most memorable of his speeches, the last but one of the five parliamentary orations which he gave to the world through the press.
L. 17.Ten Millions of pounds… rotting in the warehouses. It was said by Burke’s critics on the opposite side, that the whole stock of tea in the Company’s warehouses was estimated at this quantity, and that by comparing his own estimate (p. 178) of the American consumption, and taking tea at an average price of five shillings the pound, it would be seen that Burke here exaggerated. It was only a fraction of the whole stock, according to this view, that was “locked up by the operation of an injudicious tax.” This
[285] objection seems, on a careful examination, to be unfounded. In 1772 official reports showed that the warehouses of the Company contained 16,000,000 pounds of tea.
L. 19.rotting in the warehouses. The absurd regulation which made it necessary for the Company to keep a year’s supply of tea in their warehouses, helped to raise its price and spoil its quality. Coarse teas deteriorate 5 per cent. in value by being kept a year.
L. 24.next to a necessary of life. The Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, in his Report for 1827, observed: “The use of tea has become so general throughout the United States, as to rank almost as a necessary of life.” The same may be said of Russia and Australia. The duty on tea once formed one of the largest items in the American revenue, but it has for many years been wholly repealed.
L. 25.our dear-bought East India Committees. Alluding to the Select Committee of thirty-one members appointed in pursuance of a motion, April 13, 1772, and the Secret Committee appointed in November of the same year, shortly after the opening of the session. By “dear-bought” Burke means that the practical result of those Committees, represented by the East India Act of 1773, was but small, or at least incommensurate to the difficulties experienced in getting the Committees appointed, and in procuring adequate information on the abuses they were intended to be instrumental in remedying. See Ninth Report from the Select Committee, &c., 25th June, 1783 (in Burke’s Works).
L. 29.through the American trade of Tea that your East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with their burthen, &c. The
[286] state of the recent conquest of Bengal was then exciting some not unreasonable apprehensions. Economists were alarmed by the gradual exhaustion of the circulating coin, military men by the attitude of the Mahrattas. Foreign critics described English rule in India as a brilliant illusion. From the origin of the tea trade in the reign of Charles II down to 1834, it was a monopoly in the hands of the East India Company. The history of this monopoly is a striking example of the mischiefs of the whole commercial system. “The teas sold by the Company,” says Mr. Macculloch, in his Commercial Dictionary, “cost the people of Britain, during the last years of the monopoly, upwards of 1,500,000 l. a year more than they would have cost had they been sold at the price at which teas of equal quality were sold, under a system of free competition, in New York, Hamburg, and Amsterdam.” And yet several gentlemen of great experience, who carefully inquired into the state of the Company’s affairs in 1830, expressed their decided conviction that they made nothing by the tea trade—the increased price at which they sold not being more that sufficient to balance the immense expenses incident to the monopoly! “But for the increased consumption of tea in Great Britain,” writes Mr. Macculloch in another place, “the company would have entirely ceased to carry on any branch of trade with the East: and the monopoly would have excluded us as effectually from the markets of India and China as if the trade had reverted to its ancient channels, and the route by the Cape of Good Hope been relinquished.” (Art. East India Company.)
L. 32.must have that great country to lean upon. The colonies consumed about one-third of the Company’s total importations of tea, and the war forced on a corresponding diminution in the tea trade. The void, however, was speedily filled up by an increased importation of silk.
P. 168, L. 18.Draw-back. Exportation was encouraged sometimes by drawbacks, sometimes by bounties, sometimes by advantageous treaties of commerce with foreign states, and sometimes by the establishment of colonies in distant countries. Drawbacks were given upon two different occasions. When the home manufactures were subject to any duty or excise, either the whole or a part of it was frequently drawn back upon their exportation; and when foreign goods liable to a duty were imported in order to be exported again, either the whole or a part of this duty was sometimes given back upon such exportation. Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap i.
L. 27.heavy excises on those articles. “The duty varied (previously to 1836) on the different descriptions of first-class paper from about 25 or 30 per cent. on the finest, to about 200 per cent. on the coarsest!” (Macculloch.) That on glass was even more exorbitant. “After successive augmentations,” says the same authority, “the duties were raised in 1813 to the amount of 98s. a cwt. on flint and plate glass! and the consequence was, that despite the increase of wealth and population in the interim, the consumption of both these sorts of glass was less than it had been in 1794, when the duty
[287] was only 32s. 2¼d. a cwt.!” The income-tax enabled Peel to abolish this monstrous imposition.
P. 169, L. 2.devour it to the bone. Cp. Europ. Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 215. “Therefore any failure in the sale of their goods brings them (the tobacco planters) heavily in debt to the merchants in London, who get mortgages on their estates, which are consumed to the bone, with the canker of an eight per cent. usury.”
P. 171, L. 2.a famous address for a revival. Agreed to in the Commons, February 8, 1769, requesting the King to revive the powers given for this purpose under an obsolete Act of 35 Henry VIII. The excellent speech of Governor Pownall on this occasion should be referred to in illustration of Burke. See the first part of the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. The expressions “well-considered address,” “graciously pleased,” &c., are of course ironical.
P. 172, L. 14.canonical book… General Epistle to the Americans. This is not mere raillery. Burke was justified in holding the ministry to so important a declaration.
ll. 17, 19, 21.I pass by… I conceal, &c. The classical reader will recognise the occultatio of the rhetoricians. “Et illud praetereo”; “Horum nihil dico”; “Furta, rapinas tuas omnes omitto.” Rhet. ad Herenn., lib. iv. c. xxvii. s. 37.
P. 173, L. 33.rather part with his crown, than preserve it by deceit. A material point is omitted by Mr. Burke in this speech, viz. the manner in which the Continent received this royal assurance. The assembly of Virginia, in their Address in answer to Lord Botetourt’s speech, express themselves thus: “We will not suffer our present hopes, arising from the pleasing prospect your Lordship hath so kindly opened and displayed to us, to be dashed by the bitter reflection that any future administration will entertain a wish to depart from that plan which affords the surest and most permanent foundation of public tranquillity and happiness. No, my Lord, we are sure our most gracious Sovereign, under whatever changes may happen in his confidential servants, will remain immutable in the ways of truth and justice, and that he is incapable of deceiving his faithful subjects; and we esteem your Lordship’s
[288] information not only as warranted, but even sanctified by the royal word.” ( Burke.)
L. 29.Session of 1768, that Session of idle terror and empty menaces. The Session which commenced November 8, 1768, and ended May 9, 1769, is alluded to.
P. 175, L. 6.mumping with a sore leg. To mump, in cant language, “to go a begging.” Johnson. The word may, however, be regarded as a classical vulgarism. “You it seems may mump it at your sister’s.” Echard’s Terence. Cp. Third Letter on a Regicide Peace, “Our embassy of shreds and patches, with all its mumping cant.”
L. 21.send the Ministers… to America. Burke perhaps had in mind the well-known occasion in the Samnite wars after the disgrace of the Caudine Forks. See Livy, ix. c. 8-11.
L. 22.tarred and feathered. A species of punishment peculiar to America. Mr. Flaw, in Foote’s comedy of the “Cozeners,” promises O’Flanagan that if he discharges properly his duty of a tidewaiter in the inland part of America, he will be “found in tar and feathers for nothing.” “When properly mixed, they make a genteel kind of dress, which is sometimes wore in that climate—very light, keeps out the rain, and sticks extremely close to the skin.”
L. 25.preservation of this faith… red lead, white lead, &c. By way of forcing his audience into some largeness of ideas, Burke often contrasts a great moral principle with a group of technical names. Cp. p. 288: “Your registers and your bonds, your affidavits and your sufferances, your cockets and your clearances,” &c. Observations on State of Nation: “Visions of stamp duties on Perwannas, Dusticks, Kistbundees, and Hushbulhookums.” Vol. ii. p. 193. “The State ought not to be considered nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern,” &c. Atlas-ordinary, &c., are papers of different qualities and sizes.
P. 177, L. 14.the very citadel of smuggling, the Isle of Man—annexed to the Crown in 1765. “Just loaded yonder from Douglas in the Isle of Man—neat cognac,” &c. Guy Mannering, ch. iv.
P. 178, L. 27.the end of every visto. Cp. vol. ii. p. 171, l. 27. Johnson only gives the more correct vista. Cp. the Sir Visto of Pope, Moral Essays, Ep. iv. Dyer, Grongar Hill:
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistoes shooting beams of day.
[289] “A long, dull, dreary, unvaried visto of despair and exclusion.” Speech on Econ. Reform.
IBID.Your commerce, &c., all jointly oblige you to this repeal. “If any man,” says Professor Goodrich, “has been accustomed to regard Mr. Burke as more of a rhetorician than a reasoner, let him turn back and study over the series of arguments contained in this first head. There is nothing in any of the speeches of Mr. Fox or Mr. Pitt which surpasses it for close reasoning on the facts of the case, or the binding force with which at every step the conclusion is linked to the premises. It is unnecessary to speak of the pungency of its application, or the power with which he brings to bear upon Lord North the whole course of his measures respecting the Colonies, as an argument for repealing this ‘solitary duty on tea.’ “;
L. 29.all jointly oblige you to this repeal. Burke does not mean that it is only when taken together that these considerations led to the repeal, which would be the strict meaning of the adverb. The context shows that he meant severally as well as jointly.
P. 179, L. 14.to say something on the historical part… open myself fully on that important and delicate subject. The history of American taxation, which follows, is probably the best known section of all Burke’s speeches and writings, and its parts are among the most popular “elegant extracts” of the English Classics. This portion of the speech bears marks of careful elaboration previous to delivery.
L. 22.the Act of Navigation. Passed by Cromwell in 1651, with the design of taking the carrying trade out of the hands of the Dutch. It prohibited amongst other things the importation into England and her Colonies, by foreign vessels, of any commodities which were not the growth and manufacture of the countries to which these vessels belonged. The policy of this Act, now totally repealed, was preserved in subsequent ones. See Smith’s Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. 2, and Macculloch’s note.
IBID.the corner-stone of the policy. A common Scriptural image. “The income-tax—the corner-stone of our whole financial plan.” Gladstone, financial statement, April 18, 1853.
L. 24.the commercial system was wholly restrictive. See Smith’s Wealth of Nations, book iv. It is justly observed by Smith that though the policy of Great Britain, with regard to the trade of her Colonies, was dictated by the same mercantile spirit as that of other nations, it had, upon the whole, been less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of them.
L. 25.the system of a monopoly. “Prior to this era (the peace of Paris) you were content with drawing from us the wealth produced by our commerce. You restrained our trade in every way that could conduce to your emolument. You exercised unbounded sovereignty over the sea. You named the ports and nations to which alone our merchandise should be carried, and with whom alone we should trade; and, though some of these restrictions were grievous, we nevertheless did not complain; we looked up
[290] to you as to our parent state, to which we were bound by the strongest ties, and were happy in being instrumental to your prosperity and your grandeur.” Address of Congress to the people of Great Britain, September 5, 1774.
P. 181, L. 27.attended the Colonies from their infancy. This is not strictly correct. “On the contrary, the charters granted to the founders of the settlement in Virginia distinctly empower the colonists to carry on a direct intercourse with foreign states. Nor were they slow to avail themselves of this permission; for they had, as early as 1620, established tobacco warehouses in Middelburg and Flushing.” (See further on this subject, Macculloch, Art. Colonies and Colony Trade.) The Navigation Acts of Cromwell and of Charles II founded the monopoly system.
P. 182, L. 4.this capital was a hot-bed to them. It was in the sugar Colonies that English capital was most extensively employed. It is observed by Smith that the capital of the French sugar Colonies was, on the other hand, almost entirely the product of the industry of the Colonists themselves.
L. 12.not so much sent as thrown out. “The original relation between the government of the Mother-Country and the New England Colonists was that of tyrant and refugee. The ancient ‘Art of Colonization,’ which it is supposed we have lost and may recover, consisted in persecuting the Puritans till they fled to the New World…. That which James I gave the founders of New England, under the name of a charter, was the inestimable boon of his neglect. It made them the fathers of a great nation. Later governments were more beneficent. They forcibly endowed the Southern States with the slave trade—the root of the present war (1862). Let us bless Lord North and Mr. Grenville that the war is not on our hands.” Goldwin Smith, The Empire, p. 84. The Puritans established the four Colonies of New England; the Catholics, treated with much greater injustice, that of Maryland; and the Quakers, that of Pennsylvania. The persecution of the Portuguese Jews by the Inquisition was the foundation of the prosperity of the Brazils. “Upon all these different occasions,” says Adam Smith, “it was not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of the European Governments, which peopled and cultivated America.”
L. 27.sole disposal of her own internal government. “The Colony Assemblies had not only the legislative, but a part of the executive power. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, they elected the governor. In the other Colonies, they appointed the revenue officers who collected the taxes imposed by those respective Assemblies, to whom those officers were immediately responsible. There is more equality, therefore, among the English
[291] Colonists, than among the inhabitants of the mother-country.” Adam Smith, book iv. ch. 7.
P. 183, L. 35.close of the last war… a scheme of government new in many things.Cp. the Present Discontents. American independence began to dawn upon the world with the rise of the Royal party. At the most unhappy juncture, just as the Colonists had been permanently freed from foreign danger by the acquisition of Canada, a plan was formed, and its execution commenced, to abolish the charters of the Colonies and “make them all royal governments.” (Bancroft, v. 83, note.) This arbitrary policy required a standing army, which was to be maintained by those whom it was destined to oppress. Ibid. The fifth and sixth volumes of Bancroft should be studied by those who wish to understand this speech in all its bearings.
P. 184, L. 5.the necessity was established, i. e. was confidently asserted—thought to be established. The great accession of French territory, inhabited by French subjects, in Lower Canada, certainly justified some increase of the military establishment.
L. 13.Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, &c. The cry against standing armies and corrupt expenditure was a watchword of the country party in the early part of the century. Cp. Bolingbroke, Pref. to Diss. on Parties, p. xxxiv.
L. 19.Townshend, in a brilliant harangue. “No man in the House of Commons was thought to know America so well; no one was so resolved on making a thorough change in its constitutions and government. ‘What schemes he will form,’ said the proprietary of Pennsylvania (February 11, 1763), ‘we shall soon see.’ But there was no disguise about his schemes. He was always for making thorough work of it with the Colonies.” Bancroft, v. 81.
L. 29.considered his objects in lights that were rather too detached. Burke’s intimacy with Reynolds should be remembered. The art of painting often furnished Burke with admirable illustrations. “Reformation is one of those pieces which must be put at some distance in order to please.” (Speech on Economical Reform.) “The works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute.” (Speech at Bristol previous to the Election.) “A group of regicide and sacrilegious slaughter was indeed boldly sketched, but it was only sketched. It unhappily was left unfinished, in this great history-piece of the massacre of innocents. What hardy pencil of a great master will finish it,” &c. Vol. ii. p. 166.
L. 30.Whether the business of an American revenue was imposed upon him altogether. The words of Walpole, “Grenville adopted, from Lord Bute, a plan of taxation formed by Jenkinson,” seem to express the truth. George the Third forced it upon Grenville, who is said to have at first
[292] positively declined the task. See Wraxall’s Historical Memoirs, vol. 1. p. 418 sqq.
P. 185, L. 4.to lean on the memory—to be severe upon. So our colloquialism “to be hard upon.” Erskine, Speech for Paine; “God forbid that I should be thought to lean upon her unfortunate monarch (Louis XVI).”
L. 7.acted with more pleasure with him. Grenville, when out of office, fell into the ranks of the general Whig opposition. In the Speech at Bristol at the Conclusion of the Poll, Burke speaks of his own share in Mr. Grenville’s most beneficial plan of scrutiny for elections.
L. 8.A first-rate figure in this country. Mr. Grenville, though not a man of first-rate abilities, was a distinguished financier. His whole policy was directed to making the most of the revenue, and especially to do this by repressing smuggling both in England and the colonies. He was also a rigid economist, and made good bargains for the public with capitalists. He was, says Dr. Bisset, “a most frugal, faithful, and skilful steward to his country.” In 1764, after the termination of a costly war of seven years, he was able to bring forward a budget which proposed no additional taxes.
L. 12.as a pleasure he was to enjoy, &c. Burke says the same of his own son. “He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty.” (Letter to a Noble Lord.) “No man,” says South, “ever was, or can be, considerable in any art or profession whatsoever, which he does not take a particular delight in.” “Use also such persons as affect (i. e. love) the business wherein they are employed.” Bacon, Essay on Negotiating. “Pleasures are all alike, simply considered in themselves: he that hunts, or he that governs the commonwealth.” Selden, Table-talk.
L. 16.noble and generous strain = breed. Spenser, Faery Queen, Book iv. Cant. 8: “Sprung of the ancient stocke of Princes’ straine.” “Intemperance and lust breed diseases, which propagated, spoil the strain of a nation.” Tillotson, quoted by Johnson.
L. 22.if such a man fell into errors, it must be; i. e. “it must have been.” Burke, following the Irish idiom, frequently neglects the proper sequence of tenses.
L. 23.intrinsical. Burke commonly follows the practice of the early part of the last century, in using such forms as intrinsic, intrinsical—ecclesiastic, ecclesiastical, almost indifferently.
L. 26.He was bred to the law, &c. With this portrait of Grenville, in which generosity to a deceased foe leads Burke, as in that of Townshend, to be onesided, should be compared those by Mr. Bancroft and Lord Macaulay. The North Briton, No. 46, contains a coarse sketch of him from Wilkes’s point of view. Of Burke’s sketch Professor Goodrich says, “It does not so much describe the objective qualities of the man, as the formative
[293] principles of his character. The traits mentioned were causes of his being what he was, and doing what he did. They account (and for this reason they were brought forward) for the course he took in respect to America. The same also is true respecting the sketch of Lord Chatham. This is one of the thousand exhibitions of the philosophical tendencies of Mr. Burke’s mind, his absorption in the idea of cause and effect, of the action and reaction of principles and feelings.” Cp. the contrast of the functions of the lawyer and the legislator in the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol.
P. 186, L. 2.There is no knowledge which is not valuable. “Burke was a strong advocate for storing the mind with multiform knowledge, rather than confining it to one narrow line of study.” Life of Crabbe, by his Son.
L. 3.men too much conversant, &c. Of such men Professor Smyth says, “They mistake their craft for sagacity, their acquaintance with detail for more profound wisdom,… if any crisis of human affairs occurs, they are the most fatal counsellors, with or without their intention, that their king or their country can listen to.” Lect. xxxii, on Modern History.
L. 9.as long as things go on in their common order. See Gordon’s Discourses on Tacitus, No. iv. sect. 9, in which the ability derived from practice is contrasted with the powerlessness of extraordinary talents without it. Cp. vol. ii. p. 134: “It cannot escape observation, that when men are too much confined to professional and faculty habits, and as it were inveterate in the recurrent employment of that narrow circle, they are rather disabled than qualified for whatever depends on the knowledge of mankind, on experience in mixed affairs, on a comprehensive, connected view of the various complicated external and internal interests, which go to the formation of that multifarious thing called a State.”
L. 10.when the high roads are broken up, and the waters out. The description of the Flood (Gen. vii. 11, &c.) seems to have afforded verbal hints for this celebrated sentence.
L. 20.regulation to be commerce, and taxes to be revenue. Such bold and easy touches are peculiarly characteristic of Burke. This sentence gives the key to the whole of his argument on Grenville’s share in the American business.
L. 29.After the war and in the last years of it, &c. The enforcement of the Navigation Act had preceded the Stamp Act. The important trade in British manufactures which the English colonists carried on with those of France and Spain, was certainly against the letter of the Navigation Act, though not, perhaps, against its spirit. This trade was afterwards allowed, though under duties that were virtually prohibitory.
P. 187, L. 1.It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact. Cp. the fine amplification of this by Erskine; “It is the nature of everything that is great and useful, both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular,” &c., in the Speech for Stockdale (1789).
[294]L. 27.appointment of Courts of Admiralty, which were employed in enforcing the Navigation Act, so as to deprive the offenders of trial by jury. This injudicious proceeding touched the sensibilities of the Colonists perhaps more keenly than anything else.
L. 29.sudden extinction of the paper currencies. The colonial assemblies during the war had issued notes, which were made a legal tender. To remedy the inconvenience produced by their natural depreciation, Mr. Grenville passed an act which took away from them the nature of a legal tender. Most of the bullion of the Colonies being employed in the trade to England (see Adam Smith), the extinction of the paper currencies must have caused a general stoppage in trade.
L. 33.as their recent services in the war did not at all merit. The Colonies had entered warmly into the war against France, and such was their zeal, that of their own accord they advanced for carrying it on much larger sums than were allotted to their quota by the British Government. ( Goodrich.) See the citations in the next speech, p. 271.
P. 189, L. 5.Great was the applause of this measure here, i.e. throughout the country. Public opinion was from first to last in favour of taxing America. Cp. Burke to Lord Rockingham, Aug. 23, 1775. Rockingham to Burke, Sept. 24, 1775: “I see and lament that the generality of the nation are aiding and assisting in their own destruction; and I conceive that nothing but a degree of experience of the evils can bring about a right judgment in the public at large.” See also Burke to the Duke of Richmond, Sept. 26, 1775.
L. 11.did not object to the principle. It is far from being true that the Americans “did not object to the principle” of the Act of 1764: nor is Mr. Burke correct in saying that they “touched it very tenderly.” The first Act of the British Parliament for the avowed purpose of raising a revenue in America was passed April 5th, 1764. Within a month after the news reached Boston, the General Court of Massachusetts met, and on the 13th of June, 1764, addressed a letter to Mr. Mauduit, their agent in England, giving him spirited and decisive instructions on the subject. It seems he had misconstrued their silence respecting another law, and had not, therefore, come forward in their behalf against the Act. They say, “No agent of the province has power to make concessions in any case without express orders”; and that “the silence of the province should have been imputed to any cause, even to despair, rather than to have been construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or of an acknowledgment of a right in Parliament to impose duties and taxes upon a people who are not represented in the House of Commons.” A Committee was also chosen with power to sit in the recess of the General Court, and directed to correspond with the other provinces on the subject, acquainting them with the instructions sent to Mr. Mauduit, and requesting the concurrence of the other provincial assemblies in resisting “any impositions and taxes upon this and the other American provinces.” Accordingly, in November of the same year, the House of Burgesses in Virginia
[295] sent an address to the House of Lords, and a remonstrance to the House of Commons on the same subject. Remonstrances were likewise sent from Massachusetts and New York to the Privy Council. James Otis also published during this year his pamphlet against the right of Parliament to tax the Colonies, while unrepresented in the House of Commons. This was printed in London in 1765, about the time when the Stamp Act was passed. See Holme’s American Annals, 2nd ed., vol. ii. p. 225-6. ( Goodrich.)
L. 12.It was not a direct attack; i.e. Their opposition was not that direct calling in question of the power of Parliament to impose taxes which was forced from them by the Stamp Act.
L. 15.like those which they had been accustomed to bear. The duties on rum, sugar, and molasses, imported from the West Indies; and on tobacco and indigo exported from the American continent to any of the other plantations.
P. 190, L. 7.his own favourite governour. Sir Francis Bernard, Governor of Massachuset’s Bay. It was commonly supposed in America that it was he and his coadjutors who laid the original plans for establishing the American revenue, out of which they promised themselves large stipends and extensive patronage.
P. 193, L. 2.the late Mr. Yorke, then Attorney-General. Son of Lord Hardwicke. In an evil hour, casting aside all promises and obligations, he yielded to the offers of the Court and accepted the Chancellorship on the resignation of Lord Camden, 1770. His brother refused to admit him to his presence, and in his agitation and remorse he put an end to his life. See Junius, Letters xxxviii and xlix; Walpole’s Mem., vol. iv. p. 52, and the note p. 53, on his subsequent interview with Burke, and Rockingham’s conduct on the occasion.
L. 6.of that constitution of mind.Cp. Present Discontents, p. 149, “of that ingenious paradoxical morality.” A latinism, using is for talis, not noticed in Johnson.
P. 194, L. 13.political equity. (See post, p. 198, l. 28). The principle which should correct and supplement the letter of the law. Cp. ante, p. 124, l. 23, where the idea of equity, of a “large and liberal construction,” and a “discretionary power,” which Burke approved in dealing with the interests, is reprobated as applied to the offences, of the subject.
[296]L. 31.A modification is the constant resource of weak, undeciding minds. “Media sequitur, quod inter ancipitia teterrimum est,” says Tacitus. De la Houssaie remarks the spirit of compromise in general policy as one of the causes of the decline of Venice. Compare the very different and truly philosophical view of compromise infra p. 278, l. 29.
P. 195, L. 5.this labour did knight’s service. The expression “yeoman’s service,” as used in Hamlet, Act v. Sc. 2, is applied to the result of labours actually performed by a superior intelligence which might have been done though not so well, by an inferior. Burke gives this expression new dignity by substituting for the “yeoman” the “knight,” whose service was under the feudal law the highest form of land tenure (abolished 12 Charles II). It was indeed in a great measure such “knight’s service” as that here alluded to, which raised Burke so far above his contemporaries in political wisdom, because it brought him into actual contact with so large a mass of political and social facts, which the inferior statesman is content to accept at second-hand.
L. 6.It opened the eyes of several. Burke himself probably knew more about America than any one in England. He had read every accessible authority on the subject at the commencement of the Seven Years’ War, when the attention of the public was strongly drawn to it, for his Account of the European Settlements in America (1757), which has been recognised from the first as a standard authority. Robertson commends it highly. It has not been reprinted in any of the English editions, but is to be found in the American edition.
L. 14.least garbled. Used as now commonly, in malam partem. To “garble” meant originally to sift the good from the bad, and it is still used in this sense in the drug trade. “They garbled our army,” Lyttelton, Persian Letters. Bolingbroke speaks of “garbling” corporations by prerogative, i.e. excluding the disaffected.
L. 19.old mercenary Swiss of state… practised instruments of a Court. See note, p. 96, ante. From the days of the battles of Granson and Morat in 1476, and Nanci in 1477, the Swiss mercenaries were highly valued throughout western Europe. Cp. Goldsmith, Traveller:
P. 196, L. 2.glaring and dazzling influence at which the eyes of eagles have blenched—alluding to the famous “eagle eye” of Chatham, which was often compared to that of Condé, and his submission to influence in 1766. “Blench, to shrink, to start back, to give way; not used” (Johnson). It occurs several times in Shakspeare, but is not used by Milton. Cp. vol. ii. p. 357: “It was wherewithal to dazzle the eye of an eagle. It was not made to entice the smell of a mole,” &c.
L. 9.whose aid was then particularly wanting. The accession of either Chatham, Temple, or Shelburne, was the sole hope of the Rockingham party in their administration of 1765-6. See the speech of Chatham (then Mr.
[297] Pitt) in the debate on the Address, January 14, 1766, containing the well-known passage, “I cannot give them my confidence: pardon me, Gentlemen (bowing to the Ministry), confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom,” &c. Cp. Lord Chesterfield to his son, Letters, vol. iv. p. 401. “Here is a new political arch almost built, but of materials of so different a nature, and without a key-stone, that it does not, in my opinion, indicate either strength or duration. It will certainly require repairs, and a key-stone, next winter; and that key-stone will, and must necessarily, be Mr. Pitt. It is true, he might have been that key-stone now; and would have accepted it, but not without Lord Temple’s consent: and Lord Temple positively refused.” Chesterfield believes that this “heterogeneous jumble of youth and caducity” must “centre before long in Mr. Pitt and Co.” Pitt was the only person who could have given strength to the Rockingham administration. June 13, 1766, Chesterfield writes: “It is a total dislocation and derangement, consequently, a total inefficiency.” The Duke of Grafton said as much in the Lords, on resigning the Seals. While Pitt was extending to them a useless patronage, the Earl of Bute was cajoling Temple with the prospect of a carte blanche for himself. Animated by the spirit of genuine Whiggism, this nobleman refused in 1770 and 1775 to “wear the livery” of the Court to which nearly all his adherents went over.
L. 23.of a complexion to be bullied by Lord Chatham. Constantly used by Burke in this sense = bodily temperament. “Their complexion, which might defy the rack, cannot go through such a trial.” Letter to Member of the Assembly. “Our complexion is such, that we are palled with enjoyment, and stimulated with hope.” Appeal from New to Old Whigs, &c., &c. He contrasts moral with complexional timidity, vol. ii. p. 364.
P. 198, L. 1.almost to a winter’s return of light. The Stamp Act was repealed March 18, 1766. “An event that caused more universal joy throughout the British dominions, than perhaps any other that can be remembered.” Ann. Reg. 1766.
L. 13.expression of the Scripture. Acts vi. 15. Lord Stanhope (vol. v. p. 213) criticises this comparison too severely. It is not a “metaphor” at all: and careful analysis on the ordinary principles of rhetoric discovers in it nothing “overstrained,” “bordering on the ludicrous,” or in the least resembling Pitt’s allusion to the mother of mankind.
L. 16.all that kings in their profusion could bestow. General Conway must have felt this passage keenly, and he deserved it. He was now connected with Lord North, and had gratified the King by going the whole length of the most violent measures against Wilkes. About three weeks before, he had said respecting the Boston Port Bill, that he “was particularly
[298] happy in the mode of punishment adopted in it.” He was then enjoying his reward in the emoluments pertaining to the office of Governor of Jersey, to which he had been promoted, after holding for some years that of Lieutenant-General of the Ordnance. In justice to Conway, it ought, however, to be said, that notwithstanding his hasty remark in favour of the Boston Port Bill, he was always opposed to American taxation. He differed from Lord North at every step as to carrying on the war, and made the motion for ending it, February 22, 1782, which drove Lord North from power. ( Goodrich.)
P. 202, L. 2.an advocate of that faction, a Dr. Tucker. Mr. Forster regards this as an “ill-considered attack” on Dean Tucker, “the only man of that day who thoroughly anticipated the judgment and experience of our own on the question of the American Colonies.” Life of Goldsmith, i. 412. Tucker was for first coercing the Colonists into submission, obliging them to pay their debts, and then enfranchising them, and making alliances with them as so many independent states, on the principle that the gain of England from them would be just as great, and the expense connected with them less. Johnson’s reply to this, is that by doing so before the war, many millions would have been saved. “One wild proposal is best answered by another. Let us restore to the French what we have taken from them. We shall see our Colonists at our feet, when they have an enemy so near them.” Taxation no Tyranny, Works, x. 139. A sufficient account of Tucker’s pamphlets will be found in Smyth’s Lectures on Modern History, No. 32.
P. 203, L. 7.the Earl of Halifax. Through this minister Burke had obtained the Irish Pension of 300 l. a year, in the days of his attachment to Hamilton. It has been remarked, that on this account he spares his memory.
P. 204, L. 2.their importunate buzzing. “Importun” is a common French epithet for troublesome noises. Cp. vol. ii. p. 180, l. 15, “importunate chink.” “Importunate guinea-fowls,” First Letter on a Regicide Peace.
P. 205, L. 15.in various ways demonstrated, &c. “South Carolina voted Pitt a statue; and Virginia a statue to the King, with an obelisk.” Bancroft, v. 457.
L. 8.fall from power… canonizes and sanctifies a great character. “Il y a des tems o� la disgrace est une manière de feu, qui purifie toutes les mauvaises qualitez, et qui illumine toutes les bonnes.” Mémoires du Card. de Retz, Liv. ii.
L. 17.maxims, flowing from an opinion not the most indulgent to our unhappy species. “He made far too little distinction between gangs of knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and confederacies of honourable men for the promotion of great public objects.” Macaulay, Essay on Chatham. See the paragraph commencing at p. 147, l. 19.
L. 22.an administration, so checkered and speckled. “Miserable examples of the several administrations constructed upon the idea of systematic discord, monstrous and ruinous conjunctions.” Obs. on a Late State of the Nation. “The last botching of Lord Chatham.” Letter to Rockingham, Oct. 29, 1769. This passage has been called a specimen of “dictionary eloquence.”
L. 25.a cabinet so variously inlaid. This frigid pun is probably not original. The image, however, as is usual with Burke, is quickly exchanged for a better.
L. 32.Were obliged to ask, &c. This dramatic manner must have been frequent in Burke’s speeches, though there are naturally few traces of it in those which he prepared for the press. See, however, his Speech on being elected at Bristol, Nov. 3, 1774.
IBID.heads and points, in the same truckle-bed. Supposed to allude to the Right Honourable Lord North and George Cooke, Esq., who were made joint paymasters in the summer of 1766, on the removal of the Rockingham administration. As a handful of pins shaken together will be found to have heads and points confused, so two persons get more space in a narrow bed by lying opposite ways. Cp. Erskine, Speech for Baillie; “Insulated passages, culled out and set heads and points in their wretched affidavits.” The truckle-bed was “a bed that runs on wheels under a higher bed” (Johnson). Hence to “truckle” to another, in which sense Burke here employs the image. It suggested an amusing passage in the debate on the Reform Bill, 1866: “But I must protest against one portion of the Speech of my Right Hon. Friend (Mr. Lowe), and that is, the portion in which he treated largely of the honour of the Government, and gave his views of the Government as being persons who needed not to be particular, and who were not in a condition to be fastidious on that subject, and he spoke, I think, with marked emphasis of a truckle-bed in which they were to lie,” &c. Mr. Gladstone, June 4, 1866. On Lord North’s and Mr. Cooke’s joint office, see note to Rockingham Memoirs, vol. i, p. 258.
L. 22.Deprived of his guiding influence, &c. Lord Macaulay thinks that on the whole, “the worst administration which has governed
[300] England since the Revolution was that of George Grenville.” Mr. Massey has happily transferred this compliment to the Grafton administration. To this Burke would certainly have assented. “The worst government which this country had experienced since the Revolution was the Rump administration of Lord Chatham. While that great man continued at the head of affairs and kept possession of his faculties, it mattered little that the other members of his cabinet were of slender capacity and experience…. Chatham had sketched the plan of a great administration, which his colleagues, deprived of his direction, were utterly unable to fulfil. For the perverse and calamitous measures which superseded the policy of Chatham, it would be a hard measure of justice to load the memory of his successor. The Duke of Grafton has been termed a minister by accident…. Grafton, unconnected with faction, and professing allegiance to Chatham alone, became as chief minister, a passive instrument in the hands of a determined will, in the furtherance of a definite policy. It was the King who insisted on the prosecution of Wilkes: and it was the King who urged measures of coercion towards the refractory Colonies.” History of England, i. 402. (Compare, however, the note to p. 189.)
L. 35.For even then, Sir, even before, &c. Cp. p. 97, l. 1. This passage is acknowledged to contain the most gorgeous image in modern oratory. Burke perhaps borrowed the germ of it from Smollett’s “Humphrey Clinker” (Letter of June 2): “Ha! there is the other great phenomenon, the grand pensionary, that weathercock of patriotism, that veers about in every point of the political compass, and still feels the wind of popularity in his tail. He, too, like a portentous comet, has risen again above the court horizon; but how long he will continue to ascend, it is not easy to foretell, considering his great eccentricity.” The name “grand pensionary” alludes to the similarity between the position of Pitt and the minister of that title in the Dutch Republic. It was sometimes significantly curtailed to “grand pensioner.” Cp. Bacon, Advice to Sir G. Villiers (afterwards Duke of Buckingham): “You are as a new-risen star, and the eyes of all men are upon you; let not your own negligence make you fall like a meteor.” The least rhetorical of writers makes free use of the image: “In the session of 1714, when he had become lord of the ascendant,” &c. Hallam, Const. Hist. ch. xvi, note. “The Whigs, now lords of the ascendant,” Ibid.
L. 6.I speak of Charles Townshend. With this affectionate panegyric should be compared the juster portraiture of Horace Walpole, in his Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 100, who would rank him with Churchill’s “Men void of Principle, and damn’d with Parts.” He is, however, forced to admit that “he seemed to create knowledge instead of searching for it, with a wit so abundant that in him it seemed loss of time to think. He had but to speak, and all he said seemed new, natural, and uncommon.” On the other hand, Grattan, in his character of Pitt, describes him as “for ever on the rack of exertion,” and
[301] contrasts his style with Chatham’s, “lightening upon the subject, and reaching the point by the flashings of his mind, which like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.” Smollett’s character of Townshend is excellent: “At length, a person of a very prepossessing appearance coming in, his grace (Newcastle) rose up, and, hugging him in his arms, with the appellation of ‘My dear Charles!’ led him forth into the inner apartment, or sanctum sanctorum of this political temple. That, said Captain C——, is my friend Charles Townshend, almost the only man of parts who has any concern in the present administration. Indeed, he would have no concern at all in the matter if the ministry did not find it absolutely necessary to make use of his talents upon some particular occasions. As for the common business of the nation, it is carried on in a constant routine, by the clerks of the different offices, otherwise the wheels of Government would be wholly stopped amidst the abrupt succession of ministers, every one more ignorant than his predecessor. I am thinking what a fine hobble we should be in, if all the clerks of the Treasury, if the secretaries, the War Office, and the Admiralty, should take it into their heads to throw up their places, in imitation of the great pensioner. But to return to Charles Townshend; he certainly knows more than all the Ministry and all the Opposition, if their heads were laid together, and talks like an angel on a vast variety of subjects. He would be really a great man, if he had any consistency or stability of character. Then, it must be owned, he wants courage, otherwise he would never allow himself to be cowed by the great political bully (Pitt), for whose understanding he has justly a very great contempt. I have seen him as much afraid of that overbearing Hector as ever schoolboy was of his pedagogue; and yet this Hector, I shrewdly suspect, is no more than a craven at bottom. Besides this defect, Charles has another, which he is at too little pains to hide. There’s no faith to be given to his assertions, and no trust to be put in his promises. However, to give the devil his due, he is very good-natured, and even friendly when close urged in the way of solicitation. As for principle, that’s out of the question. In a word, he’s a wit and an orator, extremely entertaining; and he shines very often at the expense of those ministers to whom he is a retainer. This is a mark of great imprudence by which he has made them all his enemies, whatever face they may put upon the matter; and sooner or later he’ll have cause to wish he had been able to keep his own counsel. I have several times cautioned him on this subject: but ’tis all preaching to the desert. His vanity runs away with his discretion.” (Humphrey Clinker.) The following clever stanzas “by a Friend,” are quoted from Belsham, v. 249:
Behold that ship in all her pride,
Her bosom swelling to the tide,
Each curious eye delighting:
With colours flying, sails unfurl’d,
From head to stern she’ll match the world
For sailing or for fighting.
[302] Alas, dear Charles! she cheats the sight,
Though all appears so fair and tight,
For sea so trim and ready;
Each breeze will toss her to and fro,
Nor must she dare to face the foe
Till BALLAST makes her steady.
On Townshend’s celebrated “Champagne Speech,” see Walpole, vol. iii, p. 25, and Lord Stanhope’s History, v. 272: “full of wit, comedy, quotation, &c., but not a syllable to the purpose. Upon this speech he had meditated a great while, and it only found utterance by accident on that particular day!”
L. 14.not so great a stock, as some have had who flourished formerly, of knowledge. The allusion seems to be to Pulteney and Carteret, to whose school Townshend may be ascribed.
L. 23.hit the House just between wind and water. Fr. entre deux eaux. When a ship heels over to leeward a part of her bottom (that portion of the keel which is usually below the water-line), is uncovered. An attacking enemy bearing down on the wind naturally aims at this strip along her side, which is “between wind and water.”
L. 24.not being troubled with too anxious a zeal. Villemain, in his Souvenirs, quotes Talleyrand on this point: “Talleyrand dit, ‘Il faut en politique, comme ailleurs, ne pas engager tout son coeur, ne pas trop aimer; cela embrouille, cela nuit à la clarté des vues, et n’est pas toujours compté à bien. Cette excessive préoccupation d’autrui, ce dévouement qui s’oublie trop soi-même, nuit souvent à l’objet aimé, et toujours à l’objet aimant qu’il rend moins mésuré, moins adroit, et même moins persuasif.’ “;
L. 28.He conformed exactly to the temper of the House.Cp. infra, p. 211, “He was truly the child of the House,” &c. Cp. Chesterfield, Character of Walpole: “He saw as by intuition the disposition of the House, and pressed or receded accordingly.” Lord Dalling, Character of Canning: “At last, when he himself spoke, he seemed to a large part of his audience to be merely giving a striking form to their own thoughts.”
L. 36.the sole cause of all the public measures. Further than this, Burke thought with Guicciardini that “any general temper in a nation” might always be traced to a few individuals. Letter to Rockingham, Aug. 23, 1775. “As well may we fancy,” he writes in the First Letter on a Regicide Peace, “that of itself the sea will swell, and that without winds the billows will insult the adverse shore, as that the gross mass of the people will be moved, and elevated, and continue by a steady and permanent direction to bear upon one point, without the influence of superior authority, or superior mind.” “It is the Few, which commonly give the turn to Affairs,” Guicc. Maxim 83. Cp. Gordon’s Discourses on Tacitus, ix, II.
P. 209, L. 15.passion for fame; a passion, &c. Cp. in the description of
[303] the trial of Hastings, in Erskine’s Speech for Stockdale, “the love of fame, which is the inherent passion of genius.”
L. 29.whole line of the great and masculine virtues. Cp. Speech on the Econ. Reform, near beginning; “Indeed, the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity. What is worse, there are very few of these virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone, by the worst of vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more deeply, and finish much more sharply, than frugality and prudence.”
P. 210, L. 3.Things and the disposition of men’s minds were changed. The opinion of most politicians was expressed in the application of a witty remark of Townshend on a former administration to the Rockingham ministry at the outset of its career, July 1765, as a ” lutestring ministry; fit only for the summer,” but he seems to have lent them an unconfiding support. Cp. Churchill, The Ghost, Book iv:
A slight shot silk, for summer wear,
Just as our modern Statesmen are,
If rigid honesty permit
That I for once purloin the wit
Of him, who, were we all to steal,
Is much too rich the theft to feel.
Macaulay errs in assigning the origin of the bon-mot to this particular occasion.
IBID.men’s minds. ” Men’s for the genitive plural of men, is not allowable. We say, a man’s mind, but we can only say, the minds of men.” Hurd, note on Spect., No. 262. The solecism is now well established.
L. 7.resolutions leading to the Repeal. These Resolutions embraced also the principle of the Declaratory Act, without which it is not probable that Townshend would have supported them. The inconsiderate strictures of Lord Campbell ( Lives of the Chancellors, Camden) on the exceeding “folly of accompanying the Repeal of the Stamp Act with the statutable declaration of the abstract right to tax,” are amply refuted by this Speech (see pp. 217-18). Macaulay is more just. “The Stamp Act was indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitutional competence of Parliament, but because it was unjust and impolitic, sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontents.”
L. 9.if an illness, (not, as was then given out, a political, but… a very real illness). Cp. the newspaper quotation in Chesterfield’s Letters, vol. iv. p. 404: “We hear that the Right Hon. Mr. Charles Townshend is indisposed, at his house in Oxfordshire, of a pain in his side: but it is not said in which side.“
L. 24.then Chancellor of the Exchequer, found himself in great straits.[304] Townshend had laughed at the weakness of the Rockingham ministry, but his own “tessellated” ministry was the first since the Revolution to endure the disgrace of being defeated on a Money Bill. Dowdeswell, his predecessor in the Exchequer, moved an amendment to the four-shilling Land Tax, and defeated him by 206 to 118. Rock. Mem., vol. ii. p. 34. It was the loss on the Land Tax of a shilling in the pound that his American taxes were intended partly to supply. Walpole, iii. 28.
L. 16.a race of men, &c. The class known in Parliamentary slang as “outsiders,” “loose fish,” &c. Or, by the transfer of an epithet formerly appropriated to electors, “independent” members. An “independent” member has been described as one who can never be depended on. Such men have naturally ever been unpopular with the organizers of parties.
L. 22.After all these changes and agitations. The remarks of Professor Goodrich (see note to p. 178) might be repeated here. The speech is here summed up with great force and perspicuity. The peroration, “If you do not fall in, &c.” which immediately follows, continues this style, in arguments of a more general character. Of these arguments Mr. Hazlitt says, they are “so sensible, so moderate, so wise and beautiful, that I cannot resist the temptation of copying them out, though I did not at first intend it.” Eloq. of the British Senate, vol. ii. p. 293. This peroration is a brilliant specimen of direct appeal. It unites, like the Theseus, the grace of the Apollo with the strength of the Hercules. Vehemently as the power is exerted, it is done so easily and temperately, as to suggest an infinite fund in store. The words are eloquent, but the eloquence appears to reside not in them, but in the subject.
L. 28.On this solid basis. Alluding to the
d&ogrgr;ς
po&uivrgr;
st&ohivrgr; of Archimedes, to which Burke often appears to have had recourse as an illustration in his parliamentary speeches. It must have been after some such passage as this that Lord John Townshend exclaimed aloud, Heavens! what a man this is! Where could he acquire such transcendent powers?
[305]P. 214, L. 9.summum jus. Gr. &apsgr;
kribod&iacgr;
kaion. The origin of the maxim Summum jus summa injuria is lost in antiquity. “That over-perfect kind of justice which has obtained, by its merits, the title of the opposite vice.” Speech on Econ. Reform. Cp. Aristotle, Ethics, lib. v. Macaulay compares the Stamp Act with Acts of Attainder and Confiscation. “Parliament was legally competent to tax America, as Parliament was legally competent to confiscate the property of all the merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint any man of high treason, without examining witnesses against him, or hearing him in his own defence.” “There is no worse torture than the torture of laws.” Bacon, Essay of Judicature.
L. 33.Let us, Sir, embrace some system. This final appeal is said to have fallen with immense weight on the audience. Burke not only knew that on a prepared audience the blow must be redoubled to produce a corresponding effect, but, as this paragraph proves, he was able to do it at will.
L. 11.metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Burke, says Bentham, had good cause to hate metaphysics; “The power he trusted to was oratory, rhetoric, the art of misrepresentation, the art of misdirecting the judgment by agitating and inflaming the passions,” Works, x. 510. Others have accused him of metaphysical subtleties. “Thus was this great man,” says Hazlitt, “merely for disclaiming metaphysical distinctions, and shewing their inapplicability to practical questions, considered as an unintelligible reasoner; as if you were chargeable with the very folly of which you convict others. Burke understood metaphysics, and saw their true boundaries. When he saw others venturing blindly on this treacherous ground, and called out to them to stop, shewing them where they were, they said, ‘This man is a metaphysician!’ General, unqualified assertions, universal axioms, and abstract rules, serve to embody our prejudices. They are the watch-words of party, the strong-holds of the passions. It is therefore dangerous to meddle with them! Solid reason means nothing more than being carried away by our passions, and solid sense is that which requires no reflection to understand it!” Eloq. of Brit. Senate, vol. ii. p. 297.
L. 32.Nobody will be argued into slavery. “Which government the English have best preserv’d, being a Nation too tenacious of their Libertys to be complemented out of ’em,” &c. Tindal, Essay Concerning Obedience, ch. 2. Burke’s happy expression reminds us of the equally happy phrase of Sherlock, “Never a man was reasoned out of his religion.”
L. 14.the Americans are our children, &c. An old commonplace of
[306] despotic theorists. Notice the gentle irony with which Burke receives its utterance by a young speaker.
P. 217, L. 19. Burke begins by personifying Great Britain in the feminine gender, which is common enough; but he goes on to do the same with Parliament, which seems a little ludicrous.
P. 219, L. 2.Sir William Temple says, that Holland, &c. “Thus this stomachful People, who could not endure the least exercise of Arbitrary Power or Impositions, or the sight of any Foreign Troops under the Spanish Government; have been since inured to all of them in the highest degree, under their own popular magistrates: Bridled with hard Laws; Terrified with severe executions; Environed with Foreign Forces; and opprest with the most cruel Hardship and Variety of Taxes, that ever was known under any Government.” Obs. upon the United Provinces, ch. ii. “Cette nation aimerait prodigieusement sa liberté, parce que cette liberté serait vraie; et il pouvrait arriver que, pour la défendre, elle sacrifierait son bien, son aisance, ses intérêts: et qu’elle se chargerait des impôts les plus durs, et tels que le prince le plus absolu n’oserait les faire supporter à ses sujets.” De l’Esp. des Lois, xix. 27. “Règle générale: on peut lever des tributs plus forts, à proportion de la liberté des sujets; et l’on est forcé de les modérer à mesure que la servitude augmente.” Id. xii. 12.
L. 4.Tyranny… knows neither how to accumulate nor how to extract. “Quand les sauvages de la Louisiane veulent avoir du fruit, ils coupent l’arbre au pied, et cueillent le fruit. Voilà le gouvernement despotique.” Id. v. 13. Cp. infra, p. 262.
L. 10. Johnson, “popularly, according to the common occurrences of life, according to the common judgment made of things.” The term is a relic of the Schoolmen, who allowed three degrees of certainty—mathematical, metaphysical, and moral.