Book: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4

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This flexibility is not to be found in his manner of composition. That
derives its immense power from other sources; from passion, intensity,
imagination, size, truth, cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on
charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness
of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and
over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly
always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As
is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true
pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the
victim than to anger against the cause. Again, there are some gratuitous
and unredeemed vulgarities; some images that make us shudder. But only a
literary fop can be detained by specks like these.

The varieties of Burke's literary or rhetorical method are very striking.
It is almost incredible that the superb imaginative amplification of the
description of Hyder Ali's descent upon the Carnatic should be from the
same pen as the grave, simple, unadorned _Address to the King_ (1777),
where each sentence falls on the ear with the accent of some golden-tongued
oracle of the wise gods. His stride is the stride of a giant, from the
sentimental beauty of the picture of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, or the
red horror of the tale of Debi Sing in Rungpore, to the learning,
positiveness and cool judicial mastery of the _Report on the Lords'
Journals_ (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the
whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions.
But even in the coolest and driest of his pieces there is the mark of
greatness, of grasp, of comprehension. In all its varieties Burke's style
is noble, earnest, deep-flowing, because his sentiment was lofty and
fervid, and went with sincerity and ardent disciplined travail of judgment.
He had the style of his subjects; the amplitude, the weightiness, the
laboriousness, the sense, the high flight, the grandeur, proper to a man
dealing with imperial themes, with the fortunes of great societies, with
the sacredness of law, the freedom of nations, the justice of rulers. Burke
will always be read with delight and edification, because in the midst of
discussions on the local and the accidental, he scatters apophthegms that
take us into the regions of lasting wisdom. In the midst of the torrent of
his most strenuous and passionate deliverances, he suddenly rises aloof
from his immediate subject, and in all tranquillity reminds us of some
permanent relation of things, some enduring truth of human life or human
society. We do not hear the organ tones of Milton, for faith and freedom
had other notes in the 18th century. There is none of the complacent and
wise-browed sagacity of Bacon, for Burke's were days of personal strife and
fire and civil division. We are not exhilarated by the cheerfulness, the
polish, the fine manners of Bolingbroke, for Burke had an anxious
conscience, and was earnest and intent that the good should triumph. And
yet Burke is among the greatest of those who have wrought marvels in the
prose of our English tongue.

Not all the transactions in which Burke was a combatant could furnish an
imperial theme. We need not tell over again the story of Wilkes and the
Middlesex election. The Rockingham ministry had been succeeded by a
composite government, of which it was intended that Pitt, now made Lord
Chatham and privy seal, should be the real chief. Chatham's health and mind
fell into disorder almost immediately after the ministry had been formed.
The duke of Grafton was its nominal head, but party ties had been broken,
the political connexions of the ministers were dissolved, and, in truth,
the king was now at last a king indeed, who not only reigned but governed.
The revival of high doctrines of prerogative in the crown was accompanied
by a revival of high doctrines of privilege in the House of Commons, and
the ministry was so smitten with weakness and confusion as to be unable to
resist the current of arbitrary policy, and not many of them were even
willing to resist it. The unconstitutional prosecution of Wilkes was
followed by the fatal recourse to new plans for raising taxes in the
American colonies. These two points made the rallying ground of the new
Whig opposition. Burke helped to smooth matters for a practical union
between the Rockingham party and the powerful triumvirate, composed of
Chatham, whose understanding had recovered from its late disorder, and of
his brothers-in-law, Lord Temple and George Grenville. He was active in
urging petitions from the freeholders of the counties, protesting against
the unconstitutional invasion of the right of election. And he added a
durable masterpiece to political literature in a pamphlet which he called
_Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents_ (1770). The immediate
object of this excellent piece was to hold up the court scheme of weak,
divided and dependent administrations in the light of its real purpose and
design; to describe the distempers which had been engendered in parliament
by the growth of royal influence and the faction of the king's friends; to
show that the newly formed Whig party had combined for truly public ends,
and was no mere family knot like the Grenvilles and the Bedfords; and,
finally, to press for the hearty concurrence both of public men and of the
nation at large in combining against "a faction ruling by the private
instructions of a court against the general sense of the people." The
pamphlet was disliked by Chatham on the one hand, on no reasonable grounds
that we can discover; it was denounced by the extreme popular party of the
Bill of Rights, on the other hand, for its moderation and conservatism. In
truth, there is as strong a vein of conservative feeling in the pamphlet of
1770 as in the more resplendent pamphlet of 1790. "Our constitution," he
said, "stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters
upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning towards one
side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other. Every project of
a material change in a government so complicated as ours is a matter full
of difficulties; in which a considerate man will not be too ready to
decide, a prudent man too ready to undertake, or an honest man too ready to
promise." Neither now nor ever had Burke any other real conception of a
polity for England than government by the territorial aristocracy in the
interests of the nation at large, and especially in the interests of
commerce, to the vital importance of which in our economy he was always
keenly and wisely alive. The policy of George III., and the support which
it found among [v.04 p.0829] men who were weary of Whig factions, disturbed
this scheme, and therefore Burke denounced both the court policy and the
court party with all his heart and all his strength.

Eloquence and good sense, however, were impotent in the face of such forces
as were at this time arrayed against a government at once strong and
liberal. The court was confident that a union between Chatham and the
Rockinghams was impossible. The union was in fact hindered by the
waywardness and the absurd pretences of Chatham, and the want of force in
Lord Rockingham. In the nation at large, the late violent ferment had been
followed by as remarkable a deadness and vapidity, and Burke himself had to
admit a year or two later that any remarkable robbery at Hounslow Heath
would make more conversation than all the disturbances of America. The duke
of Grafton went out, and Lord North became the head of a government, which
lasted twelve years (1770-1782), and brought about more than all the
disasters that Burke had foretold as the inevitable issue of the royal
policy. For the first six years of this lamentable period Burke was
actively employed in stimulating, informing and guiding the patrician
chiefs of his party. "Indeed, Burke," said the duke of Richmond, "you have
more merit than any man in keeping us together." They were well-meaning and
patriotic men, but it was not always easy to get them to prefer politics to
fox-hunting. When he reached his lodgings at night after a day in the city
or a skirmish in the House of Commons, Burke used to find a note from the
duke of Richmond or the marquess of Rockingham, praying him to draw a
protest to be entered on the Journals of the Lords, and in fact he drew all
the principal protests of his party between 1767 and 1782. The accession of
Charles James Fox to the Whig party, which took place at this time, and was
so important an event in its history, was mainly due to the teaching and
influence of Burke. In the House of Commons his industry was almost
excessive. He was taxed with speaking too often, and with being too
forward. And he was mortified by a more serious charge than murmurs about
superfluity of zeal. Men said and said again that he was Junius. His very
proper unwillingness to stoop to deny an accusation, that would have been
so disgraceful if it had been true, made ill-natured and silly people the
more convinced that it was not wholly false. But whatever the London world
may have thought of him, Burke's energy and devotion of character impressed
the better minds in the country. In 1774 he received the great distinction
of being chosen as one of its representatives by Bristol, then the second
town in the kingdom.

In the events which ended in the emancipation of the American colonies from
the monarchy, Burke's political genius shone with an effulgence that was
worthy of the great affairs over which it shed so magnificent an
illumination. His speeches are almost the one monument of the struggle on
which a lover of English greatness can look back with pride and a sense of
worthiness, such as a churchman feels when he reads Bossuet, or an Anglican
when he turns over the pages of Taylor or of Hooker. Burke's attitude in
these high transactions is really more impressive than Chatham's, because
he was far less theatrical than Chatham; and while he was no less nobly
passionate for freedom and justice, in his passion was fused the most
strenuous political argumentation and sterling reason of state. On the
other hand he was wholly free from that quality which he ascribed to Lord
George Sackville, a man "apt to take a sort of undecided, equivocal, narrow
ground, that evades the substantial merits of the question, and puts the
whole upon some temporary, local, accidental or personal consideration." He
rose to the full height of that great argument. Burke here and everywhere
else displayed the rare art of filling his subject with generalities, and
yet never intruding commonplaces. No publicist who deals as largely in
general propositions has ever been as free from truisms; no one has ever
treated great themes with so much elevation, and yet been so wholly secured
against the pitfalls of emptiness and the vague. And it is instructive to
compare the foundation of all his pleas for the colonists with that on
which they erected their own theoretic declaration of independence. The
American leaders were impregnated with the metaphysical ideas of rights
which had come to them from the rising revolutionary school in France.
Burke no more adopted the doctrines of Jefferson in 1776 than he adopted
the doctrines of Robespierre in 1793. He says nothing about men being born
free and equal, and on the other hand he never denies the position of the
court and the country at large, that the home legislature, being sovereign,
had the right to tax the colonies. What he does say is that the exercise of
such a right was not practicable; that if it were practicable, it was
inexpedient; and that, even if this had not been inexpedient, yet, after
the colonies had taken to arms, to crush their resistance by military force
would not be more disastrous to them than it would be unfortunate for the
ancient liberties of Great Britain. Into abstract discussion he would not
enter. "Show the thing you contend for to be reason; show it to be common
sense; show it to be the means of attaining some useful end." "The question
with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable,
but whether it is not your interest to make them happy." There is no
difference in social spirit and doctrine between his protests against the
maxims of the English common people as to the colonists, and his protests
against the maxims of the French common people as to the court and the
nobles; and it is impossible to find a single principle either asserted or
implied in the speeches on the American revolution which was afterwards
repudiated in the writings on the revolution in France.

It is one of the signs of Burke's singular and varied eminence that hardly
any two people agree precisely which of his works to mark as the
masterpiece. Every speech or tract that he composed on a great subject
becomes, as we read it, the rival of every other. But the _Speech on
Conciliation_ (1775) has, perhaps, been more universally admired than any
of his other productions, partly because its maxims are of a simpler and
less disputable kind than those which adorn the pieces on France, and
partly because it is most strongly characterized by that deep ethical
quality which is the prime secret of Burke's great style and literary
mastery. In this speech, moreover, and in the only less powerful one of the
preceding year upon American taxation, as well as in the _Letter to the
Sheriffs of Bristol_ in 1777, we see the all-important truth conspicuously
illustrated that half of his eloquence always comes of the thoroughness
with which he gets up his case. No eminent man has ever done more than
Burke to justify the definition of genius as the consummation of the
faculty of taking pains. Labour incessant and intense, if it was not the
source, was at least an inseparable condition of his power. And magnificent
rhetorician though he was, his labour was given less to his diction than to
the facts; his heart was less in the form than the matter. It is true that
his manuscripts were blotted and smeared, and that he made so many
alterations in the proofs that the printer found it worth while to have the
whole set up in type afresh. But there is no polish in his style, as in
that of Junius for example, though there is something a thousand times
better than polish. "Why will you not allow yourself to be persuaded," said
Francis after reading the _Reflections_, "that polish is material to
preservation?" Burke always accepted the rebuke, and flung himself into
vindication of the sense, substance and veracity of what he had written.
His writing is magnificent, because he knew so much, thought so
comprehensively, and felt so strongly.

The succession of failures in America, culminating in Cornwallis's
surrender at Yorktown in October 1781, wearied the nation, and at length
the persistent and powerful attacks of the opposition began to tell. "At
this time," wrote Burke, in words of manly self-assertion, thirteen years
afterwards, "having a momentary lead (1780-1782), so aided and so
encouraged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand--I do not say I
saved my country--I am sure I did my country important service. There were
few indeed at that time that did not acknowledge it. It was but one voice,
that no man in the kingdom better deserved an honourable provision should
be made for him." In the spring of 1782 Lord North resigned. It seemed as
if the court system which Burke had been denouncing [v.04 p.0830] for a
dozen years was now finally broken, and as if the party which he had been
the chief instrument in instructing, directing and keeping together must
now inevitably possess power for many years to come. Yet in a few months
the whole fabric had fallen, and the Whigs were thrown into opposition for
the rest of the century. The story cannot be omitted in the most summary
account of Burke's life. Lord Rockingham came into office on the fall of
North. Burke was rewarded for services beyond price by being made paymaster
of the forces, with the rank of a privy councillor. He had lost his seat
for Bristol two years before, in consequence of his courageous advocacy of
a measure of tolerance for the Catholics, and his still more courageous
exposure of the enormities of the commercial policy of England towards
Ireland. He sat during the rest of his parliamentary life (to 1794) for
Malton, a pocket borough first of Lord Rockingham's, then of Lord
Fitzwilliam's. Burke's first tenure of office was very brief. He had
brought forward in 1780 a comprehensive scheme of economical reform, with
the design of limiting the resources of jobbery and corruption which the
crown was able to use to strengthen its own sinister influence in
parliament. Administrative reform was, next to peace with the colonies, the
part of the scheme of the new ministry to which the king most warmly
objected. It was carried out with greater moderation than had been
foreshadowed in opposition. But at any rate Burke's own office was not
spared. While Charles Fox's father was at the pay-office (1765-1778) he
realized as the interest of the cash balances which he was allowed to
retain in his hands, nearly a quarter of a million of money. When Burke
came to this post the salary was settled at L4000 a year. He did not enjoy
the income long. In July 1782 Lord Rockingham died; Lord Shelburne took his
place; Fox, who inherited from his father a belief in Lord Shelburne's
duplicity, which his own experience of him as a colleague during the last
three months had made stronger, declined to serve under him. Burke, though
he had not encouraged Fox to take this step, still with his usual loyalty
followed him out of office. This may have been a proper thing to do if
their distrust of Shelburne was incurable, but the next step, coalition
with Lord North against him, was not only a political blunder, but a shock
to party morality, which brought speedy retribution. Either they had been
wrong, and violently wrong, for a dozen years, or else Lord North was the
guiltiest political instrument since Strafford. Burke attempted to defend
the alliance on the ground of the substantial agreement between Fox and
North in public aims. The defence is wholly untenable. The Rockingham Whigs
were as substantially in agreement on public affairs with the Shelburne
Whigs as they were with Lord North. The movement was one of the worst in
the history of English party. It served its immediate purpose, however, for
Lord Shelburne found himself (February 24, 1783) too weak to carry on the
government, and was succeeded by the members of the coalition, with the
duke of Portland for prime minister (April 2, 1783). Burke went back to his
old post at the pay-office and was soon engaged in framing and drawing the
famous India Bill. This was long supposed to be the work of Fox, who was
politically responsible for it. We may be sure that neither he nor Burke
would have devised any government for India which they did not honestly
believe to be for the advantage both of that country and of England. But it
cannot be disguised that Burke had thoroughly persuaded himself that it was
indispensable in the interests of English freedom to strengthen the party
hostile to the court. As we have already said, dread of the peril to the
constitution from the new aims of George III. was the main inspiration of
Burke's political action in home affairs for the best part of his political
life. The India Bill strengthened the anti-court party by transferring the
government of India to seven persons named in the bill, and neither
appointed nor removable by the crown. In other words, the bill gave the
government to a board chosen directly by the House of Commons; and it had
the incidental advantage of conferring on the ministerial party patronage
valued at L300,000 a year, which would remain for a fixed term of years out
of reach of the king. In a word, judging the India Bill from a party point
of view, we see that Burke was now completing the aim of his project of
economic reform. That measure had weakened the influence of the crown by
limiting its patronage. The measure for India weakened the influence of the
crown by giving a mass of patronage to the party which the king hated. But
this was not to be. The India Bill was thrown out by means of a royal
intrigue in the Lords, and the ministers were instantly dismissed (December
18, 1783). Young William Pitt, then only in his twenty-fifth year, had been
chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Shelburne's short ministry, and had
refused to enter the coalition government from an honourable repugnance to
join Lord North. He was now made prime minister. The country in the
election of the next year ratified the king's judgment against the Portland
combination; and the hopes which Burke had cherished for a political
lifetime were irretrievably ruined.

The six years that followed the great rout of the orthodox Whigs were years
of repose for the country, but it was now that Burke engaged in the most
laborious and formidable enterprise of his life, the impeachment of Warren
Hastings for high crimes and misdemeanours in his government of India. His
interest in that country was of old date. It arose partly from the fact of
William Burke's residence there, partly from his friendship with Philip
Francis, but most of all, we suspect, from the effect which he observed
Indian influence to have in demoralizing the House of Commons. "Take my
advice for once in your life," Francis wrote to Shee; "lay aside 40,000
rupees for a seat in parliament: in this country that alone makes all the
difference between somebody and nobody." The relations, moreover, between
the East India Company and the government were of the most important kind,
and occupied Burke's closest attention from the beginning of the American
war down to his own India Bill and that of Pitt and Dundas. In February
1785 he delivered one of the most famous of all his speeches, that on the
nabob of Arcot's debts. The real point of this superb declamation was
Burke's conviction that ministers supported the claims of the fraudulent
creditors in order to secure the corrupt advantages of a sinister
parliamentary interest. His proceedings against Hastings had a deeper
spring. The story of Hastings's crimes, as Macaulay says, made the blood of
Burke boil in his veins. He had a native abhorrence of cruelty, of
injustice, of disorder, of oppression, of tyranny, and all these things in
all their degrees marked Hastings's course in India. They were, moreover,
concentrated in individual cases, which exercised Burke's passionate
imagination to its profoundest depths, and raised it to such a glow of
fiery intensity as has never been rivalled in our history. For it endured
for fourteen years, and was just as burning and as terrible when Hastings
was acquitted in 1795, as in the select committee of 1781 when Hastings's
enormities were first revealed. "If I were to call for a reward," wrote
Burke, "it would be for the services in which for fourteen years, without
intermission, I showed the most industry and had the least success, I mean
in the affairs of India; they are those on which I value myself the most;
most for the importance; most for the labour; most for the judgment; most
for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit." Sheridan's speech in the
House of Commons upon the charge relative to the begums of Oude probably
excelled anything that Burke achieved, as a dazzling performance abounding
in the most surprising literary and rhetorical effects. But neither
Sheridan nor Fox was capable of that sustained and overflowing indignation
at outraged justice and oppressed humanity, that consuming moral fire,
which burst forth again and again from the chief manager of the
impeachment, with such scorching might as drove even the cool and intrepid
Hastings beyond all self-control, and made him cry out with protests and
exclamations like a criminal writhing under the scourge. Burke, no doubt,
in the course of that unparalleled trial showed some prejudice; made some
minor overstatements of his case; used many intemperances; and suffered
himself to be provoked into expressions of heat and impatience by the
cabals of the defendant and his party, and the intolerable incompetence of
the tribunal. It is one of the inscrutable perplexities of human affairs,
that in the logic of practical [v.04 p.0831] life, in order to reach
conclusions that cover enough for truth, we are constantly driven to
premises that cover too much, and that in order to secure their right
weight to justice and reason good men are forced to fling the two-edged
sword of passion into the same scale. But these excuses were mere trifles,
and well deserve to be forgiven, when we think that though the offender was
in form acquitted, yet Burke succeeded in these fourteen years of laborious
effort in laying the foundations once for all of a moral, just,
philanthropic and responsible public opinion in England with reference to
India, and in doing so performed perhaps the most magnificent service that
any statesman has ever had it in his power to render to humanity.

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