', »wa ll ^'^wr;lBfe^^';V J r ■!^r■■ w ^. ^-( ^.v.■v■;^■' ^ v;" v " r r ^rv. "- ■sjw^^. ". l l; i !^'-■;■.■^r' l!! umu- i' .w 
 
 KE »*«'•• -W ^fjji --*&' *5> -^rf 4*' 
 
 ;TO'A-NOBLE'LOilD 
 
 •'¥*■>. 3°ft *^*i. 
 
 'STANDARD '-^-^ 
 
 a«5| - aEiimsStiiMf:! - 
 
CORNELL- 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 arV10401 
 
 Edmund Burke's Letter to a noble lord; 
 
 3 1924 031 222 346 
 
a Cornell University 
 y Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 924031 222346 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD 
 
(After a painting by RoM^"E^^) 
 
EDMUND BURKE'S 
 
 LETTER 
 
 TO A NOBLE LORD 
 
 Edited with Introduction and Notes 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT H. SMYTH 
 
 fROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 
 
 IN THE PHILADELPHIA HIGH SCHOOL 
 
 MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL. SOCIETY 
 
 BOSTON, U.S.A. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 
 
 Cbe 9ltl)en«nin preect 
 
 1903 
 
Copyright, i8g8 
 By albert H. SMYTH 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The " Letter to a Noble Lord " is the best possible 
 introduction to the study of Burke. It has brevity, force, 
 and variety, and there is not a dull page in it. It may be 
 made the subject of historical, biographical, and literary 
 study. It is a clear and calm review of the great political 
 measures of Burke's public career ; it is a proud and suffi- 
 cient apologia ; and it is a masterpiece of golden eloquence. 
 Alike in argument and irony, Burke rises in this instance 
 to the height of his skill and fame. He speaks poniards, 
 and every word stabs. Nor are the faults of his later man- 
 ner' so painfully apparent here as in the " Reflections on the 
 French Revolution," which preceded the "Letter," and in 
 the "Regicide Peace," which followed it. 
 
 The student of style should be taught to compare Burke's 
 architecture of sentence and paragraph with the robust 
 prose of Dryden and the pretentious manner of Bolingbroke. 
 And he may institute a profitable comparison between this 
 " Letter " and Wordsworth's superb pamphlet upon " The 
 Convention of Cintra " — one of the crowning glories of 
 English prose literature — and Cardinal Newman's " Apolo- 
 gia pro vita sua," both of which derive from Burke their 
 inspiration and their splendor. 
 
 It will be seen that Burke always rests his case upon his- 
 tory. Tradition and expediency are the lamps by which his 
 feet are guided. In this respect, though certainly in no 
 other, he resembles the German Hamann — whom Pusey 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 ranked among the unintelligibles — who accepted, above all 
 documents of human reason and analysis, the institutions 
 and measures authenticated by history. 
 
 Lest the student should be "lantern led" by the rhetoric 
 of Burke, it is well that the text of the " Letter " should be 
 abundantly illustrated and corrected by reference to histori- 
 cal sources. From the wealth of easily accessible material, 
 I may be permitted to recommend the histories of England 
 by Lord Mahon (from the Treaty of Utrecht to the Peace 
 of Versailles), John Adolphus (from the Accession of 
 George III to 1783), and William Massey (England during 
 the reign of George III) ; the "Grenville Papers," "The 
 Bedford Correspondence," "The Journals of Lord Auck- 
 land," " Memoirs of Rockingham," " Diary and " Corre- 
 spondence of Lord Colchester," Brougham's " Statesmen of 
 the Reign of George III," "Parliamentary History," "The 
 Annual Register," Alison's " History of .Europe " (or at 
 least the Epitome thereof), the " Memoirs and Letters " of 
 Horace Walpole, Fox's " Letters and Speeches," Wilkes's 
 " North Briton, "the " Letters of Junius " and the " Satires " 
 of Churchill. 
 
 The bearing of the " Letter " upon the circumstances of 
 Burke's life will be found fully set forth in the Notes. 
 
 ALBERT H. SMYTH. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Edmund Burke is sometimes ranked first among the 
 writers of English prose of the eighteenth century. There is 
 something imperial in his style. His sonorous sentences 
 roll and toss in profuse and majestic eloquence. His 
 thought streams from him, an impetuous and abundant tor- 
 rent. His resplendent rhetoric surges forward with the 
 pomp and state and endless barbaric variety of a Roman 
 triumph. 
 
 His eagerness and exuberance betrayed him at times 
 into grave faults of manner. His early and successful 
 imitation of Bolingbroke — by no means a flawless model — 
 set a permanent mark upon him. The high virtues of simplic- 
 ity and sobriety are not his. In imagination and expres- 
 sion he is magnificent, in the proudest sense of that much 
 misapplied term; but his literary taste is not absolutely 
 pure, nor his sense of proportion true, and his style is often 
 overheated. 
 
 Whatever the place to which he may be entitled among 
 the masters of English prose, it is not likely that any writer 
 will take precedence of him for subtle political wisdom and 
 serious and fruitful reflection upon the principles of govern- 
 ment and legislation. 
 
 Mr. John Morley has said of Burke's three pieces on the 
 American War : " They are an example without fault of all 
 the qualities which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, 
 of great political situations should strive by night and by day 
 to possess. If their subject were as remote as the quarrel 
 
VUl IXTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 between the Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between 
 Rome and the allies, instead of a conflict to which the world 
 owes the opportunity of the most important of political 
 experiments, we should still have everything to learn from 
 the author's treatment, — the vigorous grasp of masses of com- 
 pressed detail, the wide illumination from great principles of 
 human experience, the strong and masculine feeling for the 
 two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, the large 
 and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the 
 vision, the noble temper." ■" 
 
 However transient, commonplace, or personal the theme, 
 Burke never left it without investing it with the splendor 
 of history or introducing into it considerations drawn 
 from the widest range of political institutions. Now that 
 the violence of party strife has abated, and the figures 
 and events of one hundred years ago may be impartially 
 studied, it is unlikely that there should be any dissent from 
 Mr. Lecky's opinion : " No other politician or writer has 
 thrown the light of so penetrating a genius on the nature and 
 working of the British Constitution, has impressed his prin- 
 ciples so deeply on both of the great parties in the State, 
 and has left behind him a richer treasure of political wisdom 
 applicable to all countries and to all times. . . . There is per- 
 haps no English prose writer since Bacon whose works are 
 so thickly starred with thought. The time may come when 
 they will be no longer read. The time will never come in 
 which men would not grow the wiser by reading them," ^ 
 
 The " Letter to a Noble Lord " is a superb example of 
 Burke's gorgeous rhetoric, and of his high handling of a 
 personal and transient theme. "The most splendid repartee 
 in the English language," says John Morley ; and Mr. Gosse 
 pronounces it " the most typical of Burke's writings, the 
 
 1 Morley, " Burke," p. 1 16. 
 
 ^ Lecky, " England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. iii, p. 197. 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 most accomplished and surprising in matter, the most splen- 
 did, melodious, and refined in manner." 
 
 It is marked by dignity and elevation ; it is marred by no 
 disastrous lapses from good taste and self-possession. It is 
 at once the apologia of the proud, weary, broken-hearted 
 statesman and the completest condemnation of the political 
 fallacies and ethical monstrosities of the French Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 An attack had been made in Parliament upon the pension 
 granted by the crown to Edmund Burke. It was the close 
 of his life, his son was dead, he was desolate and alone 
 in his age. In his reply to his assailants — the Duke of 
 Bedford and Lord Lauderdale — Burke reviews his services 
 to the state. It is a majestic autobiography. He seems, as 
 Mr. Ellis Yarnall has so well said of Wordsworth, to be 
 awed by the greatness of his own power. 
 
 The "Letter "was published in London, Feb. 24, 1796, 
 and appeared.in the same year in Dublin and in Philadel- 
 phia, and was translated into French and German. 
 
 The Anti-Jacobin versified Burke's attack in the " New 
 Morality," — 
 
 And thou Leviathan ! on ocean's brim 
 Hugest of living things that sleep and swim, 
 Thou in whose nose by Burke's gigantic hand 
 The hook was fixed to drag thee to the land. 
 
 And Gillray remembered it in his caricature of "the Re- 
 publican Rattlesnake Fox fascinating the Bedford Squirrel " 
 (Nov. 16, 1796), in which the Duke with unpowdered hair 
 and a squirrel's body is falling into the capacious jaws of the 
 rattlesnake coiled round the tree. 
 
 A swarm of pamphlets followed in the train of Burke's 
 "Letter," containing every kind of answer — for the most 
 part abusive and intemperate ^ — and having in them so 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 little of real worth as to be undeserving even of record in a 
 bibliography. 
 
 In the preparation of the present edition, I have had 
 before me the first and the thirteenth London editions, 
 the first Dublin edition, and the first American edition, 
 edited by William Cobbett (Peter Porcupine) in Phila- 
 delphia in 1796, and reprinted in London in 1831, and in 
 Edinburgh in 1837. For the sketch of Edmund Burke, 
 which contains nothing new, I am indebted to the studies 
 of John Morley, Charles Wentworth Dilke, W. E. H. Lecky, 
 Edward Dowden, Leslie Stephen, Dr. William Hunt (in 
 the "Dictionary of National Biography"), Henry Thomas 
 Buckle, and the recent capital essay, " An Interpreter of 
 English Liberty," by Prof. Woodrow Wilson (in " Mere 
 Literature "). 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 Edmund Burke, the second son of Richard Burke, an 
 attorney, was born in Dublin, probably on Jan. 12, 1729. 
 His father was a Protestant, his mother a Catholic. 
 His first schooling was obtained at Ballitore, County Kil- 
 dare, from Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, for whom Burke 
 always entertained the greatest reverence and gratitude as 
 for the man who first awakened and directed his intel- 
 lect.^ He entered Trinity College — " the silent sister " — 
 in 1743, where he conformed little to the habits of the place, 
 read desultorily, studied Cicero, and took his bachelor's 
 degree at the Spring Commencements, 1748.^ 
 
 His name had been entered the previous year at the 
 Middle Temple, and he now proceeded to England to read 
 law. For the next few years little is known of him. Indeed, 
 from 1752 to 1757 nothing is known with certainty. Dur- 
 ing that period, with the exception of a single fragmentary 
 letter, not a shred of his correspondence exists. His health 
 was weak ; he rambled restlessly about in unknown places ; 
 and by his indifference to the study and practice of the 
 
 1 See " Memoirs and Letters of Richard and Elizabeth Shacltleton." 
 Compiled by their daughter, Mary Leadbeater, London [new edition], 
 1849. ^" affectionate friendship continued through life between 
 Burke and his school companion Richard Shackleton. 
 
 2 His scholarship was never exact, and his literary taste was often 
 bad, but he was not as ignorant of the classics as he has sometimes 
 been represented. Charles James Fox in a letter to Anthony Robinson 
 said that Burke knew as much of Greek as men usually do who have 
 neglected it since their college days (Dilke, " Papers of a Critic "). 
 
xu LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 law so vexed his father that in 1755 his annual allowance 
 (;£'ioo) was withdrawn. Here our knowledge of Burke 
 at this time ends. There is a curious parallel between the 
 lives of the two Irish adventurers Burke and Goldsmith, 
 who had been contemporaries at Trinity, though there it is 
 unlikely that they ever met, and who about the same time 
 came up to London, the one to vanish in the purlieus of 
 literature and in doubtful wanderings, the other to " dispute 
 his passage through Europe " for a year with a flute, a 
 guinea, and one shirt. Benjamin West, who knew Burke 
 well, said that there was about him a degree of mystery 
 connected with his early life which their long intercourse 
 never tended to explain. 
 
 While Burke was proud of his struggle — " nitor in adver- 
 sum is the motto for a man like me " — it is probable that 
 he shrank from the recollection of his shabby and unhappy 
 early years. Perhaps he himself — the last survivor of his 
 family — destroyed the letters and documentary evidence 
 which related to those days. He chose at all times to keep 
 a little solitude about him, and he enjoyed the independence 
 and isolation of life in mighty and mysterious London. It 
 was in this spirit that he said of the second city in the 
 kingdom : " Though I have the honor to represent Bristol, 
 I should not like to live there. I should be obliged to be 
 so much upon my good behavior." 
 
 It seems that during the early years in London he visited 
 the debating clubs, and frequented the theaters, where he 
 made the acquaintance of David Garrick. When apologiz- 
 ing to his old friend Richard Shackleton for his neglect of 
 correspondence, he says : " I have broken all rules ; I have 
 neglected all decorums, everything except that I have never 
 forgot a friend, whose good head and heart have made me 
 esteem and love him. What appearance there may have 
 been of neglect, arises from my manner of life ; chequered 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. XUI 
 
 with various designs ; sometimes in London, sometimes in 
 remote parts of the country ; sometimes in France, and 
 shortly, please God, to be in America." He never visited 
 America, nor contested the chair of moral philosophy at 
 Glasgow, nor did he do many other things that his biogra- 
 phers have imagined. 
 
 In 1756 he undertook two adventures : he married, and he 
 published his first writings. His wife was the daughter of 
 Dr. Nugent, an Irish physician, who had attended him in his 
 sickness and had received him into his own house to facilitate 
 his return to health. Two sons were born of this marriage, 
 — Richard, whose death occasions the most pathetic passage 
 in the " Letter to a Noble Lord," and Christopher, who 
 died in childhood. 
 
 Burke's first publication was " A Vindication of Natural 
 
 Society, in a Letter to Lord by a late Noble Writer " 
 
 (1756). It was an ironical commentary on the philosophy of 
 Bolingbroke — whose works had been posthumously pub- 
 lished in 1754 — and so dextrously was the rapid, ornate 
 style of Bolingbroke imitated that even accomplished critics 
 were deceived into the belief that the work was a genuine 
 original. The other work of the same year, which, however, 
 is said to have been written when Burke was but nineteen 
 years old, was " A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of 
 Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful." A copy of this 
 treatise fell into the hands of Lessing and Moses Mendels- 
 sohn, who held high converse in Breslau over the principles 
 of art rather crudely enunciated therein, and Lessing was 
 induced thereby to write the "Laokoon," a classic of Euro- 
 pean literature.^ Burke was now fairly launched upon litera- 
 ture. His interest in the theater caused him to begin a collec- 
 
 1 Macaulay was wont to say that whenever he read Lessing's " Laokoon" 
 and Goethe's " Wilhelm Meister " he felt like throwing everything of a 
 critical nature that he had himself written into the flames. 
 
xiv LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 tion of " Hints for an Essay on the Drama " at almost the 
 same time that Diderot in his " Paradoxe sur le Comedien " 
 and Lessing in the " Hamburgische Dramaturgie '' were 
 working a revolution in dramatic literature and furnishing a 
 philosophical interpretation of the actor's art. The dull and 
 sterile considerations of Burke's " Essay " are far removed 
 from the fresh and fertile thought of his great contemporaries 
 in France and Germany. The style, too, is simple and 
 austere, illustrating the canons of Irish taste rather than the 
 eighteenth-century English standard.' 
 
 1 Wraxall says of Flood's oratory that " the slow-measured and 
 sententious style of enunciation which characterized his eloquence, 
 however calculated to excite admiration it might be in the senate of 
 the sister kingdom, appeared to English ears cold, stiff, and deficient in 
 some of the best recommendations of attention" ("Memoirs," vol. iii, p. 
 587). Lecky, in his remarks upon Irish style in the eighteenth century, 
 says : " The standard of taste prevailing in Ireland, or at least in Dublin, 
 during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century appears to have 
 been as far as possible removed from the exaggerated, overheated, and 
 over-ornamented rhetoric which is so commonly associated virith the 
 term Irish eloquence. The style of Swift, the style of Berkeley, and 
 the style of Goldsmith are in their different ways among the most 
 perfect in English literature, but they are simple sometimes to the verge 
 of baldness, and they manifest a much greater distaste for ornamenta- 
 tion and rhetorical effect than the best contemporary writings in 
 England. Burke had by nature one of the most exuberant of human 
 imaginations, and his literary taste was by no means pure ; but it is 
 very remarkable that it was not until a long residence in England had 
 made him indifferent to the canons of Irish taste that the true character 
 of his intellect was fully disclosed. 
 
 " . . It represented, no doubt, in a great measure, the reaction of 
 the cultivated taste of the nation against popular and prevalent faults, 
 just as it is common to find among the illustrious writers and critics who 
 have in the present century arisen in America a severity of taste and of 
 literary judgment and a fastidious purity of expression rarely equalled 
 among good English writers " (" England in the Eighteenth Century," 
 vol. iv, p. 450). Sir James Mackintosh, describing the writings of 
 Berkeley, says : " Perhaps he also surpassed Cicero in the charm of 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xv 
 
 An "Abridgement of the History of England," brought 
 down to the reign of King John, and an "Account of the 
 European Settlements in America" (1757) indicate a change 
 of literary interest and a progress from abstract speculation 
 to political and economic affairs. He proposed a yearly 
 chronicle of political events, and with Dodsley as publisher 
 issued the first volume of the "Annual Register" in 1759, 
 receiving from his publisher one hundred pounds for his 
 work. It was a time of great political and military activity, 
 and the " Register " had abundant events to record. It was 
 the climax of the Seven Years' War and of the expansion 
 of England. In 1756 Clive won Plassey and took India 
 into his grasp; in 1759 General Wolfe took Quebec and 
 ended the long struggle between England and France for the 
 possession of America. At this time, too, Burke began to 
 gain a practical insight into public affairs. He was intro- 
 duced to William Gerard Hamilton, better known by his 
 nickname of " Single-speech," whom he accompanied to 
 Ireland when Hamilton went thither in 1761 as secre- 
 tary to the Earl of Halifax. Hamilton secured for his 
 auxiliary a pension of three hundred pounds, but demanded 
 that Burke should give to his service his entire time, and 
 dream no more of "authorism." Burke refused to sell 
 himself and threw up the pension after having held it for 
 two years. He left the service of his first political employer 
 entertaining an opinion of him that was afterward expressed 
 by Dr. Leland with more force than elegance when he 
 described Hamilton as a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, canker- 
 hearted, envious reptile. In the year (1764) marked by this 
 dissolution of amity Burke became a member of the famous 
 literary club which held its sessions at the Turk's Head, in 
 
 simplicity, a quality eminently found in Irish writers before the end of 
 the eighteenth century " (" Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy," 
 p. 214). 
 
XVI LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 Gerard Street, and which numbered among its original 
 members Johnson, Reynolds, Hawkins, Beauclerk, Gold- 
 smith, Burke, and Dr. Nugent. Tliis most celebrated of 
 " clubs " had its origin in the thought of Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 and in his conversation with Dr. Johnson. It grew to have 
 thirty-five members, meeting once a fortnight during the 
 session of Parliament. Edward Gibbon, who was elected 
 March 4, 1774, formulated the now famous announcement 
 of election to membership : " Sir, I have the pleasure to 
 inform you that you had last night the honour to be elected 
 a member of 'The Club.'" The club still exists, holding 
 its meetings at Willis's rooms, St. James's Street, on alternate 
 Friday evenings instead of Mondays, as in its earlier history. 
 It has had in recent years many distinguished members. 
 Dean Milman presided at the Centenary dinner June 7, 
 1864; Hallam, Macaulay, Earl Stanhope, the Marquis of 
 Lansdowne, Henry Reeve, Sir Henry Taylor, Sir Frederick 
 Leighton, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Spencer Walpole, and 
 other dignitaries of church and state have been connected 
 with it, and Lord Acton, W. E. H. Lecky, Mr. Gladstone, 
 Lord Salisbury, and the Duke of Argyll are among its 
 members at the present time (1898). 
 
 A change of ministry took place in 1765, when Grenville, 
 during whose administration Wilkes had been prosecuted 
 and the Stamp Act passed, was dismissed, and Lord Rock- 
 ingham was summoned by the king to perform the duties of 
 government. His appointment of Burke as his private 
 secretary occasioned much scandal-mongering.^ Burke was 
 
 ^ Burke was probably introduced to Lord Rockingham by William 
 Burke, with whom his relations were most intimate, and who may or 
 may not have been a kinsman. William Burke was a man of consider- 
 able ability — he was reputed to have written the Junius letters — and 
 had an Irishman's facility for knowing people. He was a desperate 
 stock gambler, and there were always ugly rumors afloat concerning the 
 transactions of "the Burkes." 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. XVU 
 
 denounced as a Jesuit, a Papist, an Irish adventurer; but 
 Lord Rockingham, after a frank conversation with his 
 maUgned secretary, built an absolute trust upon him, and a 
 generous and an abiding friendship began between the two 
 men, marred by no disagreement or slip of loyalty. Burke 
 was returned to Parliament for Lord Verney's pocket borough 
 of Wendover (Dec. 23, 1765). His maiden speech (Jan. 27, 
 1766) was on a motion that the petition sent from the 
 American Congress should be received by Parliament. He 
 argued that the petition should be received on the ground 
 that it was in itself an acknowledgment of the rights of the 
 House (see Bancroft, " History of the United States," vol. iii, 
 p. 551). The Rockingham ministry came to an end June 7, 
 1766. Burke wrote its obituary — "A Short History of a 
 Short Administration " — and, accepting the fate of his party, 
 declined the overtures of Chatham, who sought to attach 
 him to his administration. He visited Ireland, received the 
 freedom of Galway, and for his opposition — in the next 
 session — to the motion to forbid the importation of Irish 
 wool into England received the further honor of the freedom 
 of Dublin. 
 
 Burke was a lover of the country. He sought his recrea- 
 tion among trees and in gardens. In theories of arboriculture 
 and stock breeding he took as keen an interest as in the 
 great affairs of state. It was his ambition, as he said, to 
 "cast a little root" in England, and on May i, 1768, he 
 purchased six hundred acres in Buckinghamshire, twenty- 
 four miles from London. The estate, called Gregories, was in 
 the parishes of Penn and Beaconsfield. It had been the seat 
 of the poet Waller, and it is near the home of William Penn, 
 and not far from the country churchyard of Gray's elegy. 
 The mystery of Burke's purchase of this land for twenty- 
 two thousand pounds has never been entirely cleared up. 
 He was an adventurer when he entered Parliament, with no 
 
XVIU LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 apparent means of a livelihood. It is known that his 
 brother Richard and his kinsman William Burke and Lord 
 Verney were at this time gambling in East India stock, that 
 the stock fell and the Burkes were ruined. Whatever may 
 be our theory of Edmund Burke's financial resources and 
 speculations, it is certain that from 1769 he was never free 
 from the annoyance of debt. He borrowed thirty thousand 
 pounds from Lord Rockingham, and the debt was never paid, 
 Rockingham ordering all Burke's bonds to be destroyed. 
 He was frequently under the necessity of negotiating loans 
 for pitifully small amounts. The purchase of Beaconsfield 
 was as fatal to him as the acquisition of Abbotsford to Sir 
 Walter Scott. And yet Burke was not inordinately profuse 
 in his living; his expenses in the country did not exceed 
 twenty-five hundred pounds a year, and probably his city 
 life (for he neither drank nor gambled) did not add greatly 
 to this modest expenditure.' 
 
 After a visit to France (1773), where he saw much of the 
 old nobility and met Diderot and the Encyclopedists at the 
 salon of Mdlle. de I'Espinasse, Burke consented to enter a 
 contest for Parliament as member for Bristol. The six 
 years during which he represented the second city of the 
 kingdom were the years of the American Revolution. He 
 opposed " The Boston Port Bill " and the proposal to alter 
 the charter of the Province of Massachusetts. His famous 
 speech on " American Taxation " was delivered April 19, 
 1774. In it he utters the warning: "Again and again, 
 revert to your old principles. Seek peace and ensue it. 
 Leave America, if she has taxable matter in her, to tax 
 
 ' Charles Wentworth Dilke, " The Papers of a Critic," London, 
 1875, has exhaustively considered Burke's money affairs, and attempts 
 to show how Burke supported himself in London before being retained 
 by the Rockingham party, and where he got the money to buy and 
 to keep up Gregories. 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xix 
 
 herself. I am not going into the distinction of rights, nor 
 attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into 
 those metaphysical distinctions. I hate the very sound of 
 them. Leave the Americans as they anciently 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 forever. 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 burden them 
 with taxes ; you were not 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 sover- 
 eignty, 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 sover- 
 eignty and their freedom cannot be reconciled which will 
 they take ? They will cast your sovereignty in your face." 
 To Burke, as to Horace Walpole and many another thoughtful 
 observer, the failure of the struggle of the English people in 
 America meant the sacrifice of the English constitution and 
 the mortification of English liberty. " Nobody shall persuade 
 me," he said upon another occasion, " when a whole people 
 are concerned, that acts of lenity are not means of concilia- 
 tion"; and again: "I do not know the method of drawing 
 up an indictment against a whole people." 
 
 With the passing of Lord North's government in 1782, 
 Lord Rockingham, Charles Fox, and Lord Shelburne were 
 
XX LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 sent for to form a new niinislry. Eurke was appointed Pay- 
 master of the Forces, his brother made Secretary of the 
 Treasury, and his son Richard named to be his father's 
 deputy at the Pay-office. In three months Lord Rockingham 
 was dead, and Burke, allied with Fox, was pouring forth 
 daily invectives against Lord Shelburne. The administration 
 fell in 1783 and was succeeded by the ministry of the Duke 
 of Portland, in which North and Fox exercised sovereign 
 sway, and under which Burke returned to the Pay-office. 
 
 Between the American Revolution and the French Revo- 
 lution — the second portentous change in the world's affairs 
 with which Burke was concerned — intervened the trial of 
 Warren Hastings, which, with its allied Indian questions, 
 occupied Burke for fourteen years, and with whose story the 
 world is familiar through a hundred narratives of eloquence 
 and power. 
 
 Burke and the French Revolution. 
 
 The revolution which swept the feudal system out of 
 France was the most violent manifestation of a tremendous 
 series of changes which disturbed almost every country in 
 Europe. The earth was filled with the shrill cries of liberty 
 and equality and the proclamation of the rights of man. 
 The lurid effulgence of the French Revolution beat upon 
 English faces, arousing alternately hope and fear. An ideal 
 excitement seized upon the people, and the poets, always 
 the first to feel the rush of the nation in emotion, chanted 
 the praises of the new order. The eighteenth-century 
 literature, which had begun with the poetry of Pope 
 — steeped to the lips in artificial life — and which had 
 heard in Gray the distant approach of the voices of the 
 Revolution, now closed with the defiant songs of liberty of 
 Robert Burns. Wordsworth, also, and Coleridge and Southey 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xxi 
 
 began in sympathy with the destroyers of the Bastille, but 
 after the Reign of Terror grew disillusionized and conserva- 
 tive. Wordsworth visited France at the time of the 
 September massacres, and in both the clamorous halls, the 
 National Synod and the Jacobins, he 
 
 Saw the Revolutionary Power 
 Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms. 
 
 Southey wrote "Wat Tyler " as one who was impatient of " all 
 the oppressions that are done under the sun." Coleridge 
 sang his lofty gratulation, — 
 
 When France in wrath her giant limbs upreared. 
 And with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea 
 Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free. 
 
 The sentimental Jacobinism of Burns — a rebel to the 
 last — formulated in song a programme of social aspiration. 
 Dr. Priestley, Dr. Price, William Godwin, and Thomas Paine 
 theorized about the uprising of the proletariat, and with 
 metaphysical abstractions constructed an ideal society upon 
 "Political Justice" and the "Rights of Man." Even 
 Parliament rocked upon the strong current of revolutionary 
 sympathy. Fox declared that the fall of the Bastille was the 
 greatest and best event that had ever happened in the world, 
 and the Earl of Lauderdale appeared in the House wearing 
 a rough Jacobin costume. Burke never shared the tommon 
 transport. From the first he was uneasy and apprehensive. 
 He distrusted " the blind hysterics of the Celt," and watched 
 the rapid and singular proceedings across the channel with 
 absorbing interest and with suspended judgment. When 
 the terrible events of the Revolution came on, and France 
 performed the perilous feat that Carlyle called " shooting 
 Niagara," and the doctrine of the " rights of man " raged 
 like a fever in the blood of Europe, and fanaticism, specu- 
 
XXI 1 LIFE OF BUKKE. 
 
 lation, and atheism dethroned Burke's cherished idols of 
 order, sobriety, and "gently enlarged precedent," the states- 
 man's anxious vigils were startled by visions of stupendous 
 and hideous catastrophe. 
 
 Dr. Price, in addressing an association called the Revolution 
 Society, praised France in good set terms for having ad- 
 vanced the principles of the English Revolution to a loftier 
 height. Burke considered that the preacher had given " the 
 solemn public seal of sanction " to what was going on in 
 France, and set to work forthwith upon a message and 
 warning to the people of England. He toiled terribly upon 
 it, correcting and rewriting it in every sentence, until, in 
 exactly a year (November, 1790), " Reflections on the French 
 Revolution," a small octavo of three hundred and fifty-six 
 pages, appeared. Sir James Mackintosh, then a young man 
 of twenty-five years, replied to the " Reflections " in the 
 just and sane " Vindicice GalliccB," though he afterwards 
 recanted and joined hands with Burke. Thomas Paine 
 retorted in the " Rights of Man " with an energy and fierce- 
 ness which were a grim satisfaction to Burke. 
 
 The tears of passion shed in the " Reflections," and 
 the horror of anarchy which the gigantic diatribe displayed 
 proceeded from deep sources of conviction; peace, friendship, 
 all precious things Burke sacrificed in the intense heat of 
 mind aroused by the Revolution. He quarrelled with Sheri- 
 dan and separated from Fox, saying, " It is indiscreet at any 
 period, but especially at my time of life, to provoke enemies 
 or give my friends occasion to desert me. Yet if my firm 
 and steady adherence to the British Constitution place me 
 in such a dilemma, I am ready to risk it, and with my last 
 words to exclaim, ' Fly from the French Constitution.' " 
 John Morley, writing of the memorable scene of May 6, 
 1791, when these fatal words were spoken, says: "The mem- 
 bers who sat on the same side were aghast at proceedings 
 
LIFE OF BUJiKE. XXlll 
 
 which went beyond their worst apprehensions. Even the 
 ministerialists were shocked. Pitt agreed much more with 
 Fox than with Burke, but he would have been more than 
 human if he had not watched with complacency his two most 
 formidable adversaries turning their swords against one 
 another. Wilberforce, who was more disinterested, lamented 
 the spectacle as shameful. In the galleries there was hardly 
 a dry eye. Fox, as might have been expected from his warm 
 and generous nature, was deeply moved, and is described as 
 weeping even to sobbing. He repeated his former acknowl- 
 edgment of his debt to Burke, and he repeated his former 
 expression of faith in the blessings which the abolition of 
 royal despotism would bring to France. With unabated 
 vehemence, Burke again rose to denounce the French Con- 
 stitution, — ' a building composed of untempered mortar — 
 the work of Goths and Vandals, where everything was dis- 
 jointed and inverted.' After a short rejoinder from Fox, the 
 scene came to a close, and the once friendly intercourse 
 between the two heroes was at an end. When they met in 
 the managers' box in Westminster Hall on the business of 
 Hastings's trial, they met with the formalities of strangers. 
 There is a story that when Burke left the House on the night 
 of the quarrel it was raining, and Mr. Curwen, a member of 
 the Opposition, took him home in his carriage. Burke at 
 once began to declaim against the French. Curwen dropped 
 some remark on the other side. ' What ! ' Burke cried out, 
 grasping the check-string, 'are you one of these people.' Set 
 me down 1 ' It needed all Curwen's force to keep him where 
 he was; and when they reached his house Burke stepped out 
 without saying a single word." (Morley's " Burke," p. 264.) 
 At Margate, in ill health, Burke finished the "Appeal from 
 the Old to the New Whigs," which was published in August, 
 1791, "the last piece that Burke wrote on the Revolution in 
 which there is any pretense of measure, sobriety, and calm 
 
XXIV LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 judgment in face of a formidable and perplexing crisis. 
 Henceforth it is not political philosophy, but the minatory 
 exhortation of a prophet " (Morley). 
 
 At first blush it would appear that Burke entertained one 
 set of political doctrines when he favored the struggle of the 
 colonists in America and quite another when he inveighed 
 against the aspirations of the revolutionists in France. 
 
 His course was in reality thoroughly consistent. " I flatter 
 myself," he said, "that I love a manly, moral, regulated 
 liberty''; but he could not conceive of liberty apart from 
 order. He regarded with a reverence that was almost awe 
 the vast and intricate body of English law and tradition, 
 established by charter and custom. Lightly to overturn 
 ancient opinion, to innovate in morals or religion, to experi- 
 ment with the social order were to him acts of suicidal folly 
 leading to atheism, anarchy, and dissolution. His notion of 
 England was Tennyson's, ■ — 
 
 A land of settled government, 
 A land of just and old renown 
 Where Freedom broadens slowly down 
 From precedent to precedent. 
 
 Where faction seldom gathers head; 
 But by degrees to fulness wrought. 
 The strength of some diffusive thought 
 Hath time and space to work and spread. 
 
 He was everywhere recognized as the most stalwart 
 defender of the constitution, for which he entertained almost 
 a superstitious reverence. When Richard Watson, Bishop 
 of Llandaff, whose liberal sympathies had caused him to be 
 called " the levelling prelate " and " the Bishop of the 
 Dissenters," recanted after the execution of Louis XVI and 
 published his " Strictures on the French Revolution and the 
 British Constitution" (Jan. 15, 1793), Wordsworth regarded 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. XXV 
 
 him as a renegade, and replied with " An Apology for the 
 French Revolution," signed " A Republican," in which the 
 arguments were the arguments of Rousseau, and the object 
 of his attack was rather Burke than Watson. He declared 
 that Burke, with " a refinement of cruelty superior to that 
 which in the East yokes the living to the dead, strove to 
 persuade us that we and our posterity to the end of time were 
 riveted to a constitution by the indissoluble compact of a 
 dead parchment." Because of his evident sincerity of 
 purpose and his great services to English liberty, Burke's 
 opposition was regarded by the radicals with lenity and mild 
 regret. Coleridge, in his " Sonnets on Eminent Characters " 
 (December, 1794), compares Pitt, "the dark scowler," to 
 Judas Iscariot, but addresses Burke, — 
 
 As late I lay in slumber's shadowy vale, 
 
 With wetted cheek, and in a mourner's guise, 
 
 I saw the sainted form of Freedom rise ; 
 
 She spake ! not sadder moans the autumnal gale — 
 
 " Great Son of Genius ! sweet to me thy name, 
 
 Ere in an evil hour with altered voice 
 
 Thou bad'st Oppression's hireling crew rejoice. 
 
 Blasting with wizard spell my laurelled fame. 
 
 Yet never, Burke ! thou drank'st Corruption's bowl ! 
 
 Thee stormy Pity and the cherished lure 
 
 Of Pomp, and proud Precipitance of soul 
 
 Wildered with meteor fires. Ah Spirit pure ! 
 
 That error's mist had left thy purged eye, 
 
 So might I clasp thee with a Mother's joy. 
 
 "Murderous atheists," Burke called the sect of revolution. 
 To him they were "bloody felons who annoy the world." He 
 denounced all those who would irreverently meddle with 
 forms of life about which had accumulated " the awful hoar 
 of innumerable ages." He saw a new and pernicious doctrine 
 spreading from the schools into the mass of the people and 
 
^vi LIFE OF BUKKE. 
 
 threatening the old social order. It alarmed him that " rank 
 and office and all the solemn plausibilities of the world had 
 lost their reverence and effect " (" Present Discontents "). 
 Government by contract, by constitutions made in the study 
 and pigeon-holed and ticketed by an Abb^ Sieyes, shocked 
 his sense of the solemnity that attaches to the great invisible 
 ideas upon which the progress of a nation is borne. " One 
 sure symptom," he said to the sheriffs of Bristol, " of an ill- 
 conducted state is the propensity of the people to resort to 
 theories." And in his speech on Conciliation he declared 
 that the discussion of abstract rights "is the great 
 
 Serbonian bog 
 Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
 Where armies whole have sunk.'' 
 
 "All the ancient, honest, juridical principles and institu- 
 tions of England," he said, " are so many clogs to check and 
 retard the headlong course of violence and oppression; they 
 were invented for this one good purpose, that what was not 
 just should not be convenient." Burke was willing to admit 
 the right of England to tax her colonies, but he knew that if 
 the integrity of the empire was to be preserved it was not 
 expedient to enforce taxation. He waged his war of 
 fourteen years against Warren Hastings and the misman- 
 agement of India because he would save the empire, and he 
 believed right conduct indispensable to the preservation of 
 India. " Our business," he said, " is to rule, not to wrangle." 
 And as he pursued political expediency in India and Amer- 
 ica in order to preserve the constitution inviolate and the 
 integrity of the august empire, in precisely the same manner 
 he warned England to keep out French infection — " the 
 rude inroad of Gallic tumult" — lest England, too, should 
 "lead up the death-dance of democratic revolution " and all 
 "perish and be overwhelmed in a common ruin." 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xxvu 
 
 In his sixty-fourth year Burke announced his intention to 
 leave Parliament upon the conclusion of the trial of 
 Hastings. Accordingly, in 1794 he applied for the Chiltern 
 Hundreds. His son Richard Burke was nominated for his 
 seat in the House, and it was proposed to make Burke a 
 peer, — Lord Beaconsfield. But in August, 1794, Richard 
 Burke died, and the venerable statesman, overwhelmed and 
 desolate, withdrew to Beaconsfield to drag out three sad, 
 weary years. The arrangements for a peerage ceased with 
 the son's death. Pitt, who was aware of Burke's financial 
 distress, offered him a grant of twelve hundred pounds a 
 year from the Civil List for Mrs. Burke's life, "to be 
 followed by a proposition to Parliament in a message from 
 the king to confer an annuity of greater value upon a 
 statesman who had served the country to his own loss for 
 thirty years. As a matter of fact, the grant, twenty- 
 five hundred pounds a year in amount, much to Burke's 
 chagrin, was never brought before Parliament, but was 
 conferred directly by the Crown, as a charge on the four 
 and a half per cent fund for two or more lives." The 
 Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale attacked the 
 pension because it had not been given with the consent of 
 Parliament and therefore was an offense against the plan of 
 economic reform. Burke's reply to the attack is "The 
 Letter to a Noble Lord." 
 
 He died July 9, 1797, and is buried at Beaconsfield. On 
 July 13 George Canning wrote to one of Lord Malmes- 
 bury's embassy, "There is but one event, but that is an 
 event for the world, — Burke is dead." 
 
 The Personality of Burke. 
 
 Edmund Burke won many friends. He was a " clubable " 
 man, as Dr. Johnson said, and men were attracted to him 
 
xxviu LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 and loved him. He served Lord Rockingham, in a political 
 alliance, with unswerving loyalty, and he was devoted to 
 Garrick and Sir Joshua Reynolds. The literary coterie with 
 whom he was early associated believed in a great future for 
 Burke in letters and philosophy. They admired his vast 
 abilities and the riches of his knowledge. " Burke," said 
 Johnson, "is such a man that if you met him for the first 
 time in the street, when you were stopped by a drove of 
 oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for 
 five minutes, he 'd talk to you in such a manner that, when 
 you departed, you would say, ' This is an extraordinary 
 man.' He is never what we would call humdrum ; never 
 unwilling to begin to talk, nor in haste to leave off." Once 
 when he was ill Burke's name was mentioned. Johnson 
 cried out, " That fellow calls forth all my powers ; were I to 
 see Burke now it would kill me." 
 
 The opinion that the club entertained of Burke is perhaps 
 expressed by Goldsmith in "Retaliation," — 
 
 Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, 
 We scarcely can praise it or blame it too much ; 
 Who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind, 
 And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. 
 Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat 
 To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote ; 
 Who, too deep for his hearers, still went on refining, 
 And thought of convincing, while they thought of dining. 
 Though equal to all things, for all things unfit ; 
 Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit ; 
 For a patriot too cool ; for a drudge disobedient ; 
 And too fond of the right to pursue the expedient. 
 In short, 't was his fate, unemployed, or in place, sir, 
 To eat mutton cold, and cut blocks with a razor. 
 
 The qualities that amazed and fascinated his hearers in 
 conversation were precisely the characteristics of his public 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xxix 
 
 address, — great and varied supplies of knowledge, an 
 imperjal command of all the resources of language, and a 
 subtle, sinewy flexibility of logic. Goldsmith said of him 
 that he wound into a subject like a serpent. Never at a 
 loss for the right word, he struggled with the hurrying crowd 
 of his ideas. His thought issued in rapid speech, opulent 
 with all gorgeous ornament. His style had the rapidity of 
 Bolingbroke and the masculine vigor of Dryden. In his 
 flight he passed from Miltonic elevation to Crabbe-like 
 terseness of colloquialism. 
 
 His oratory suffered from natural disabilities. His voice 
 was harsh, and he spoke with a marked Irish accent. He 
 lacked tact, was choleric and irritable, and displayed at 
 times a fierce Irish temper. On more than one occasion he 
 was forcibly dragged into his seat by his coat tails when the 
 fiery eruption of his anger or Scorn threatened to bring him 
 into danger. In 1778 Lord Mulgrave, in a speech on the 
 navy estimates, acknowledged that not a shilling had been 
 laid out on the purposes for which the last vote had been 
 made. Burke's anger blazed. " Snatching ' the fine gilt 
 book of estimates ' from the table, he flung it at the Treasury 
 bench, and the volume hit the candle, and nearly hit Wel- 
 bore Ellis, the treasurer of the navy, on the shins." 
 
 And yet he was gentle of heart and sympathetic with all 
 suffering or aspiring ones. The poet Crabbe, in peril of the 
 debtor's prison, appealed to him by letter for aid; and 
 Burke, occupied with the most exacting duties of his busy 
 public life, paused to answer the begging note and to 
 receive its writer and to relieve his distress with money and 
 to grant him rooms in his own house at Beaconsfield. When 
 his own income was inadequate to his needs he stinted 
 himself that he might send James Barry, a promising Irish 
 lad, to study art in foreign capitals. 
 
 "It is at his country home," says Mr. Morley, "that we 
 
XXX LIFB OF BURKE. 
 
 like best to think of Burke. It is still a touching picture to 
 the historic imagination to follow him from the heat and 
 violence of the House, where tipsy squires derided the 
 greatest genius of the time, down to the calm shades of 
 Beaconsfield, where he would with his own hands give food 
 to a starving beggar, or medicine to a peasant sick of the 
 ague ; where he would talk of the weather, the turnips, and 
 the hay with the team men and the farm bailiff ; and where, 
 in the evening stillness, he would pace the walk under the 
 trees, and reflect on the state of Europe and the distractions 
 of his country." 
 
 The House of Russell. 
 
 Francis Russell, fifth Duke of Bedford (1765-1802), by 
 his speech upon Burke's pension provoked " The Letter to 
 a Noble Lord." He was the son of Francis Russell, Mar- 
 quis of Tavistock, and Elizabeth, sixth daughter of William 
 (Keppel), second Earl Albemarle. He succeeded his 
 grandfather, John Russell, the fourth duke, in 1771. He 
 was educated at Westminster School and at Trinity College, 
 Cambridge. After two years of foreign travel he took his 
 seat in the House of Lords, Dec. 5, 1787. He was not a 
 lover of books, and indeed had read so little that he told 
 Lord Holland in 1793 that he hesitated to address the 
 House for fear of exposing himself by his bad English. His 
 acquaintance with James Maitland (Earl of Lauderdale) and 
 Charles James Fox encouraged him, and he became a lead- 
 ing debater. He died unmarried, March 2, 1802, and was 
 succeeded by his brother John, sixth Duke of Bedford. On 
 March 16, 1802, Fox delivered an eloquent eulogy upon the 
 dead duke, which was seconded by Sheridan, and the 
 manuscript of which is preserved at Woburn Abbey. 
 
 The Russells are descended, as Burke reminds the fifth 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xxxi 
 
 duke, from John Russell, a gentleman of the chamber to 
 Henry VIII, who was employed by the king in several 
 important missions and was rewarded with the plunder of 
 the monasteries. In 1540 the abbey of Tavistock, in 
 Devonshire, and many manors belonging to the abbey were 
 presented -to him. After the accession of Edward VI still 
 other large grants were made to him, notably the Cistercian 
 abbey of Woburn in Bedfordshire, in 1547, and the abbey 
 of Thorney, in 1549. These grants were the origin of the 
 immense wealth of the family. 
 
 John Russell was created Earl of Bedford Jan. 19, 1550. 
 He died in London March 14, 1555, and was succeeded 
 by his only son, Francis Russell, second Earl of Bedford, 
 who was Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1547, Member of Par- 
 liament for Buckinghamshire, 1547-1552, and Lord Warden 
 of the Stannaries, 1553-1580. He was a stalwart Prot- 
 estant, was imprisoned during Queen Mary's reign, and 
 when released retired to Geneva, where he relieved the 
 wants of many of the religious exiles. In 1558 he was made 
 Lord-Lieutenant of the counties of Dorset, Devon, and Corn- 
 wall. Upon the accession of Elizabeth he was named 
 Privy Councillor. He enjoyed the costly luxury of enter- 
 taining Queen Elizabeth twice, — at Cheneys and at Woburn. 
 Upon the second occasion he wrote in some alarm to Lord 
 Burleigh: " I am now going to prepare for her Ma*i=^ coming 
 to Woborne, which shall be done in the best and most 
 hastiest manner that I can. I trust y"" L? will bear in 
 remembrance to provide helpe that her Mat= tarrieng be 
 not above two nights and a daye, for, for so long tyme do I 
 prepare. I pray God, thi Rowmes and Lodgings there may 
 be to her Mat^ contentacion for the tyme. If I could make 
 them better upon such a sodeyn, then would I, be assured, 
 they should be better than they be. So w' my heartie 
 thanks to your good L. remayning always, as I have just 
 
XXXU LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 cause, yo", and so commit you to God's keeping. From 
 Russell House this XVI* of July, 1572. 
 
 Yr L. right assured, 
 
 F. Bedford." 
 
 He was godfather to Sir Francis Drake, founded the Free 
 School at Woburn, and left money to University College, 
 Oxford. His eldest daughter married Ambrose Dudley, 
 Earl of Warwick. One of his sons. Sir William Russell 
 (Lord Russell of Thornhaugh), fought bravely in the fatal 
 battle of Zutphen, where Sir Philip Sidney fell. It was Sir 
 William's only son Francis (1593-1641) who became fourth 
 Earl of Bedford, having succeeded his cousin Edward, who 
 died young and unmarried. Francis was one of thirty- 
 three peers who in 162 1 petitioned James I on the prejudice 
 caused to the English peerage by the lavish grant of Irish 
 and Scottish titles of nobility. 
 
 William, the fifth Earl of Bedford, was son to Francis. 
 He commanded the Parliamentary Cavalry at Edgehill, but 
 gradually separated himself from the Parliamentary cause 
 and went to the king. He was made first Duke of Bedford 
 (1694). According to Macaulay, he " accepted the dukedom 
 with some reluctance, alleging, as a reason for preferring his 
 earldom to a dukedom, that an earl who had a numerous 
 family might send one son to the Temple, and another to a 
 counting house in the City, but the sons of a duke were all 
 lords, and a lord could not make his bread either at the Bar 
 or on 'Change." 
 
 The Dukes of Bedford have been: 
 
 William, the first duke, succeeded by his son. 
 Wriothesley, the second duke, succeeded by his son. 
 Wriothesley, the third duke, succeeded by his brother. 
 Lord John Russell, the fourth duke, succeeded by his grandson. 
 Francis, the fifth duke, succeeded by his brother. 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. XXXlll 
 
 John, the sixth duke, succeeded by his son. 
 
 Francis, the seventh duke, succeeded by his son. 
 
 William, the eighth duke, succeeded by his cousin. 
 
 Francis Charles Hastings Russell, the ninth duke, succeeded by 
 his son. 
 
 George William Francis Sackville, the tenth duke, succeeded 
 by his brother. 
 
 Herbrand Arthur, the eleventh and present duke. 
 
 The present duke has published an exact account of his 
 stewardship in administering the affairs of the vast property 
 to which Burke refers. His book is " A Great Agricultural 
 Estate, being the Story of the Origin and Administration of 
 Woburn and Thorney," London, 1897. It is modestly 
 and clearly written, and explains the contraction of values 
 in land in England, the failure of agriculture, and the 
 decline of rents, which have reduced to actual poverty many 
 of the landed gentry. The Duke of Bedford's seventy- 
 three thousand acres are farmed at a financial loss, though 
 the deficit is handsomely provided for by the rentals of 
 "certain lodging houses" in Bloomsbury — one square 
 mile of houses in the heart of London ! — which bring to the 
 duke an annual income of three hundred thousand pounds.^ 
 
 The Thorney estate is situated in the basin of the Fen- 
 lands of the Bedford Level. It is lower than the sea, " the 
 level varying from nine to twelve feet below high-water 
 mark in the German Ocean." The Romans had attempted 
 to drain the Fens, and their works had been maintained and 
 carried on by the monks of Ely. The work had ceased and 
 the land was submerged when Francis, fourth Earl of Bed- 
 
 1 The great Bloomsbury estate came to the Bedfords through the 
 marriage of William Russell, son of the fifth earl, to Lady Vaughan, 
 daughter and co-heiress of the last Earl of Southampton. It is after 
 this connection that the name Wriothesley (Southampton) appears in the 
 Bedford line. 
 
XXXI V LIFE OF BURKE. 
 
 ford, resumed the task of reclamation ; " the river beds 
 were foul; the channels choked ; the streams continually 
 overflowed their banks ; twice a day the tides drove back 
 the fresh water and prevented the discharge of the 
 upland streams. The country which Francis, Earl of 
 Bedford, took in hand in the year 1630, in company with 
 thirteen gentlemen adventurers, had thus become one vast 
 deep fen, ' affording little benefit to the realm, other than 
 fish and fowl, and overmuch harbor to a rude and almost 
 barbarous sort of lazy and beggarly people.' " 
 
 In three years the whole level was declared to be drained. 
 Within this space of time the Earl of Bedford and his 
 participants had spent no less than one hundred thousand 
 pounds, equal perhaps to three hundred thousand pounds at 
 present. The undertaking was pronounced defective, 
 because it was found that in the winter the lands were 
 under water. " The king was declared ' undertaker,' and 
 was not only to have the ninety-five thousand acres set out 
 for the Earl of Bedford, but also fifty-seven thousand acres 
 more from the country. ' Being prevented, however, by 
 troubles arising in the kingdom,' the king, it seems, did 
 nothing in the work of draining." The work was resumed 
 in 1649 by William, Earl of Bedford, who with tremendous 
 toil won back the land from the sea and the swamps. 
 
 The Dukes of Bedford have maintained an interest in 
 agriculture. John, the fourth duke, was especially inter- 
 ested in planting. Of him the present duke relates the 
 following anecdote : " The duke, perceiving that the plan- 
 tation required thinning in order to admit a free circulation 
 of air and give health and vigor to the young trees, gave 
 instructions to his gardener, and directed him as to the 
 mode and extent of the thinning required. The gardener 
 paused and hesitated, and at length said : ' Your grace must 
 pardon me if I humbly remonstrate against your orders, but 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. xxxv 
 
 I cannot possibly do what you desire; it would at once 
 destroy the young plantation, and, moreover, it would be 
 seriously injurious to my reputation as a planter.' The 
 duke replied : ' Do as I desire you, and I will take care of 
 your reputation.' The plantation was consequently thinned 
 according to his instructions, and the duke caused a board 
 to be fixed in the plantation, facing the road, on which was 
 inscribed, ' This plantation has been thinned by John, Duke 
 of Bedford, contrary to the advice and opinion of his 
 gardener.' " The fifth duke at the very time that he was 
 assailing Burke's pension was conducting experiments in the 
 feeding of cattle and the growing of grasses, and of him 
 Burke's friend Arthur Young declared: "The agricultural 
 world never perhaps sustained a greater individual loss than 
 the husbandry of this empire has suffered by the death of 
 the Duke of Bedford." 
 
 The house of Russell has produced some men of distin- 
 guished power in the present century. Professor Jowett, the 
 Master of Balliol, contributed to the Spectator, March 7, 
 1 89 1, an appreciation of Hastings Russell, the ninth duke, 
 which is a capital estimate of a highly accomplished man of 
 a singular goodness and kindness of heart. " He was,'' 
 says Jowett, " one of the richest men in England, but he had 
 also been one of the poorest. He would sometimes say that 
 he had lived on all incomes from two hundred pounds to 
 two hundred thousand pounds a year, and that he could do 
 so again." 
 
 But the most illustrious of the family was Lord John, first 
 Earl Russell, the youngest son of the sixth Duke of Bedford, 
 and born in London, Aug. 18, 1792. The Times on the 
 occasion of his death said: "In him we have lost a man 
 who illustrates the history of England for half a century 
 better, perhaps, than any other person of his time. During 
 his long season of toil there were more brilliant political 
 
xxxvi LIFE OF BURk-R. 
 
 intellects, more striking masters of debate, and men more 
 gifted with the various qualities of party leadership. There 
 were, on the whole, statesmen of greater foresight and more 
 executive ability. There were statesmen who exercised a 
 far more powerful fascination on the minds of rich and poor. 
 But there was no other man so closely identified with the 
 political movements which will make fifty or sixty years of 
 our history memorable to the future." A reformer and 
 leader in politics, he essayed to be a tragedian, a novelist, a 
 historian, a biographer, an editor, and a pamphleteer. His 
 audacity and universality made Sydney Smith say: " I believe 
 Lord John Russell would perform the operation for the stone, 
 build St. Peters, or assume with or without ten minutes' 
 notice the command of the channel fleet, and no one would 
 discover by his manner that the patient had died, the church 
 tumbled down, and the channel fleet been knocked to 
 atoms." He was the author of several political epigrams 
 that have circulated widely, — "the honorable member talks 
 of the cant of patriotism, but there is something worse than 
 the cant of patriotism, and that is the re-cant of patriotism "; 
 "one man's wit and all men's wisdom"; "a spur in the 
 head is worth two in the heel." Lord John was raised to 
 the peerage in 1861, and died May 28, 1878. He was twice 
 married, first to Adelaide, daughter of Thomas Lister and 
 widow of Thomas, second Lord Ribblesdale, and then to 
 Lady Frances Anna Maria Elliott, daughter of Gilbert, second 
 Earl of Minto. His eldest son by the second marriage was 
 Viscount Amberley (1842-1876), who was an agnostic and 
 wrote " An Analysis of Religious Belief," London, 1876, in 
 two volumes. He married a daughter of Baron Stanley of 
 Alderley, and his son John Francis Stanley succeeded Lord 
 John Russell as second Earl Russell in 1878. 
 
 Lord John's eldest brother, Lord George William Russell 
 (1790-1846), served in the Peninsular War, was minister to 
 
LIFE OF BURKE. XXXVU 
 
 Portugal, and ambassador at Berlin. Of his three sons, the 
 eldest was Hastings, the ninth Duke of Bedford, and the 
 youngest, Odo William, first Baron Ampthill (1829-1884), 
 ambassador at Berlin in 187 1, and plenipotentiary at the 
 Berlin Congress with Beaconsfield and Salisbury. 
 
 ALBERT H. SMYTH. 
 
A Letter 
 
 from the Right Honourable 
 Edmund Burke 
 
 to 
 
 A Noble Lord 
 
 on the 
 
 Attacks made upon him and his Pension 
 
 in 
 
 The House of Lords 
 
 by 
 
 The Duke of Bedford 
 
 and the 
 
 Earl of Lauderdale 
 Early in the present session of Parliament 
 
 London : 
 1796. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 
 
 My Lord: I could hardly flatter myself with the hope 
 that so very early in the season I should have to acknowl- 
 edge obligations to the Duke of Bedford and to the Earl 
 of Lauderdale. These noble persons have lost no time 
 in conferring upon me that sort of honor which it is alone 5 
 within their competence, and which it is certainly most 
 congenial to their natures and their manners, to bestow. 
 
 To be ill spoken of, in whatever language they speak, 
 by the zealots of the new sect in philosophy and politics, 
 of which these noble persons think so charitably, and of 10 
 which others think so justly, to me is no matter of 
 uneasiness or surprise. To have incurred the displeasure 
 of the Duke of Orleans, or the Duke of Bedford, to fall 
 under the censure of Citizen Brissot, or of his friend the 
 Earl of Lauderdale, I ought to consider as proofs, not the 1 5 
 least satisfactory, that I have produced some part of the 
 effect I proposed by my endeavors. I have labored hard 
 to earn what the noble lords are generous enough to pay. 
 Personal offence I have given them none. The part they 
 take against me is from zeal to the cause. It is well ! — it 20 
 is perfectly well ! I have to do homage to their justice. 
 I have to thank the Bedfords and the Lauderdales for 
 having so faithfully and so fully acquitted towards me 
 whatever arrear of debt was left undischarged by the 
 Priestleys and the Paines. 25 
 
■1 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Some, perhaps, may think them executors in their own 
 wrong: I, at least, have nothing to complain of. They 
 have gone beyond the demands of justice. They have 
 been (a little, perhaps, beyond their intention) favorable 
 5 to me. They have been the means of bringing out by their 
 invectives the handsome things which Lord Grenville has 
 had the goodness and condescension to say in my behalf. 
 Retired as I am from the world, and from all its affairs 
 and all its pleasures, I confess it does kindle in my nearly 
 
 10 extinguished feelings a very vivid satisfaction to be so 
 attacked and so commended. It is soothing to my 
 wounded mind to be commended by an able, vigorous, 
 and well-informed statesman, and at the very moment 
 when he stands forth, with a manliness and resolution 
 
 15 worthy of himself and of his cause, for the preservation 
 of the person and government of our sovereign, and 
 therein for the security of the laws, the liberties, the 
 morals, and the lives of his people. To be in any fair 
 way connected with such things is indeed a distinction. 
 
 20 No philosophy can make me above it; no melancholy can 
 depress me so low as to make me wholly insensible to 
 such an honor. Why will they not let me remain in 
 obscurity and inaction ? Are they apprehensive, that, if 
 an atom of me remains, the sect has something to fear? 
 
 25 Must I be annihilated, lest, like old John Zisca's, my skin 
 might be made into a drum, to animate Europe to eternal 
 battle against a tyranny that threatens to overwhelm all 
 Europe and all the human race ? 
 
 My Lord, it is a subject of awful meditation. Before 
 
 30 this of France, the annals of all time have not furnished 
 an instance of a complete revolution. That revolution 
 seems to have extended ev'en to the constitution of the 
 mind of man. It has this of wonderful in it, that it 
 resembles what Lord Verulam says of the operations of 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 5 
 
 nature : It was perfect, not only in all its elements and 
 principles, but in all its members and its organs from the 
 very beginning. The moral scheme of France furnishes 
 the only pattern ever known, which they who admire will 
 instantly resemble. It is indeed an inexhaustible reper- 5 
 tory of one kind of examples. In my wretched condition, 
 though hardly to be classed with the living, I am not safe 
 from them. They have tigers to fall upon animated 
 strength. They have hyenas to prey upon carcasses. The 
 national menagerie is collected by the first physiologists 10 
 of the time; and it is defective in no description of 
 savage nature. They pursue, even such as me, into the 
 obscurest retreats, and haul them before their revolution- 
 ary tribunals. Neither sex, nor age — nor the sanctuary 
 of the tomb is sacred to them. They have so determined 15 
 a hatred to all privileged orders, that they deny even to 
 the departed, the sad immunities of the grave. They are 
 not wholly without an object. Their turpitude purveys 
 to their malice ; and they unplumb the dead for bullets to 
 assassinate the living. If all revolutionists were not 20 
 proof against all caution, I should recommend it to their 
 consideration, that no persons were ever known in history, 
 either sacred or profane, to vex the sepulchre, and by 
 their sorceries, to call up the prophetic dead, with any 
 other event, than the prediction of their own disastrous 25 
 fate. — " Leave me, oh leave me to repose ! " 
 
 In one thing I can excuse the Duke of Bedford for his 
 attack upon me and my mortuary pension: He cannot 
 readily comprehend the transaction he condemns. What 
 I have obtained was the fruit of no bargain, the production 30 
 of no intrigue, the res&lt of no compromise, the effect of 
 no solicitation. The first suggestion of it never came 
 from me, mediately or immediately, to his majesty or any 
 of his ministers. It was long known that the instant my 
 
6 EDMUiW BURKE. 
 
 engagements would permit it, and before the heaviest of 
 all calamities had forever condemned me to obscurity and 
 sorrow, I had resolved on a total retreat. I had executed 
 that design. I was entirely out of the way of serving or 
 5 of hurting any statesman or any party, when the ministers 
 so generously and so nobly carried into effect the spon- 
 taneous bounty of the crown. Both descriptions have 
 acted as became them. When I could no longer serve 
 them, the ministers have considered my situation. When 
 
 10 I could no longer hurt them, the revolutionists have 
 trampled on my infirmity. My gratitude, I trust, is equal 
 to the manner in which the benefit was conferred. It 
 came to me, indeed, at a time of life, and in a state of 
 mind and body, in which no circumstance of fortune could 
 
 15 afford me any real pleasure. But this was no fault in the 
 
 royal donor, or in his ministers, who were pleased, in 
 
 acknowledging the merits of an invalid servant of the 
 
 public, to assuage the sorrows of a desolate old man. 
 
 It would ill become me to boast of anything. It would 
 
 20 as ill become me, thus called upon, to depreciate the 
 value of a long life, spent with unexampled toil in the 
 service of my country. Since the total body of my 
 services, on account of the industry which was shown in 
 them, and the fairness of my intentions, have obtained 
 
 25 the acceptance of my sovereign, it would be absurd in me 
 to range myself on the side of the Duke of Bedford and 
 the corresponding society, or, as far as in me lies, to 
 permit a dispute on the rate at which the authority 
 appointed by our constitution to estimate such things, has 
 
 30 been pleased to set them. 
 
 Loose libels ought to be passed "by in silence and con- 
 tempt. By me they have been so always. I knew that 
 as long as I remained in public, I should live down the 
 calumnies of malice, and the judgments of ignorance. If 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 7 
 
 I happened to be now and then in the wrong, as who is 
 not, Uke all other men, I must bear the consequence of 
 my faults and my mistakes. The libels of the present day, 
 are just of the same stuff as the libels of the past. But 
 they derive an importance from the rank of the persons 5 
 they come from, and the gravity of the place where they 
 were uttered. In some way or other I ought to take some 
 notice of them. To assert myself thus traduced is not 
 vanity or arrogance. It is a demand of justice ; it is a 
 demonstration of gratitude. If I am unworthy, the 10 
 ministers are worse than prodigal. On that hypothesis, I 
 perfectly agree with the Duke of Bedford. 
 
 For whatever I have been (I am now no more) I put 
 myself on my country. I ought to be allowed a reason- 
 able freedom, because I stand upon my deliverance ; and 15 
 no culprit ought to plead in irons. Even in the utmost 
 latitude of defensive liberty, I wish to preserve all possi- 
 ble decorum. Whatever it may be in the eyes of these 
 noble persons themselves, to me their situation calls for 
 the most profound respect. If I should happen to tres- 20 
 pass a little, which I trust I shall not, let it always be 
 supposed that a confusion of characters may produce 
 mistakes ; that, in the masquerades of the grand carnival 
 of our age, whimsical adventures happen, odd things are 
 said and pass off. If I should fail a single point in the 25 
 high respect I owe to those illustrious persons, I cannot 
 be supposed to mean the Duke of Bedford and the Earl 
 of Lauderdale of the House of Peers, but the Duke of 
 Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale of Palace Yard — 
 the Dukes and Earls of Brentford. There they are on 30 
 the pavement ; there they seem to come nearer to my 
 humble level, and, virtually at least, to have waived their 
 high privilege. 
 
 Making this protestation, I refuse all revolutionary 
 
8 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 tribunals, where men have been put to death for no 
 other reason than that they had obtained favors from the 
 crown. I claim, not the letter, but the spirit of the old 
 English law — that is, to be tried by my peers. I decline 
 S his Grace's jurisdiction as a judge. I challenge the 
 Duke of Bedford, as a juror, to pass upon the value of 
 my services. Whatever his natural parts may be, I 
 cannot recognize in his few and idle years the compe- 
 tence to judge of my long and laborious life. If I can 
 
 lo help it, he shall not be on the inquest of my quantum 
 meruit. Poor rich man ! he can hardly know anything of 
 public industry in its exertions, or can estimate its com- 
 pensations when its work is done. I have no doubt of 
 his Grace's readiness in all the calculations of vulgar 
 
 15 arithmetic ; but I shrewdly suspect that he is very little 
 studied in the theory of moral proportions, and has never 
 learned the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and 
 state. 
 
 His Grace thinks I have obtained too much. I answer, 
 
 20 that my exertions, whatever they have been, were such 
 as no hopes of pecuniary reward could possibly excite ; 
 and no pecuniary compensation can possibly reward 
 them. Between money and such services, if done by abler 
 men than I am, there is no common principle of com- 
 
 25 parison : they are quantities incommensurable. Money 
 is made for the comfort and convenience of animal life. 
 It cannot be a reward for what mere animal life must, 
 indeed, sustain, but never can inspire. With submission 
 to his Grace, I have not had more than sufficient. As 
 
 30 to any noble use, I trust I know how to employ as well 
 as he a much greater fortune than he possesses. In a 
 more confined application, I certainly stand in need of 
 every kind of relief and easement much more than 
 he does. When I say I have not received more than I 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 9 
 
 deserve — is this the language I hold to Majesty? No! 
 Far, very far, from it ! Before that presence I claim no 
 merit at all. Everything towards me is favor and bounty. 
 One style to a gracious benefactor ; another to a proud 
 and insulting foe. 5 
 
 His Grace is pleased to aggravate my guilt, by charg- 
 ing my acceptance of his Majesty's grant as a departure 
 from my ideas, and the spirit of my conduct with regard 
 to economy. If it be, my ideas of economy were false 
 and ill founded. But they are the Duke of Bedford's 10 
 ideas of economy I have contradicted, and not my own. 
 If he means to allude to certain bills brought in by me 
 on a message from the throne in 1782, I tell him, that 
 there is nothing in my conduct that can contradict either 
 the letter or the spirit of those acts. Does he mean the 15 
 pay-office act ? I take it for granted he does not. The 
 act to which he alludes is, I suppose, the establishment 
 act. I greatly doubt whether his Grace has ever read 
 the one or the other. The iirst of these systems cost 
 me, with every assistance which my then situation gave 20 
 me, pains incredible. I found an opinion common 
 through all the offices, and general in the public at large, 
 that it would prove impossible to reform and methodize 
 the office of paymaster-general. I undertook it, however, 
 and I succeeded in my undertaking. Whether the 25 
 military service, or whether the general economy of our 
 finances have profited by that act, I leave to those who 
 are acquainted with the army, and with the treasury, to 
 judge. 
 
 An opinion full as general prevailed also at the same 30 
 time, that nothing could be done for the regulation of 
 the civil-list establishment. The very attempt to intro- 
 duce method into it, and any limitations to its services, 
 was held absurd. I had not seen the man, who so much 
 
10 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 as suggested one economical principle, or an economical 
 expedient, upon that subject. Nothing but coarse ampu- 
 tation, or coarser taxation, were then talked of, both of 
 them without design, combination, or the least shadow 
 5 of principle. Blind and headlong zeal, or factious fury, 
 were the whole contribution brought by the most noisy 
 on that occasion-, towards the satisfaction of the public, 
 or the relief of the crown. 
 
 Let me tell my youthful censor that the necessities of 
 
 lo that time required something very different from what 
 others then suggested, or what his Grace now conceives. 
 Let me inform him that it was one of the most critical 
 periods in our annals. 
 
 Astronomers have supposed that, if a certain comet, 
 
 1 5 whose path intersected the ecliptic, had met the earth in 
 some (I forget what) sign, it would have whirled us along 
 with it, in its eccentric course, into God knows what 
 regions of heat and cold. Had the portentous comet of 
 the Rights of Man (which "from its horrid hair shakes 
 
 20 pestilence and war," and " with fear of change perplexes 
 monarchs "), had that comet crossed upon us in that 
 internal state of England, nothing human could have 
 prevented our being irresistibly hurried out of the high- 
 way of heaven into all the vices, crimes, horrors, and 
 
 25 miseries of the French Revolution. 
 
 Happily, France was not then Jacobinized. Her 
 hostility was at a good distance. We had a limb cut off, 
 but we preserved the body ; we lost our colonies, but we 
 kept our Constitution. There was, indeed, much intestine 
 
 30 heat ; there was a dreadful fermentation. Wild and savage 
 insurrection quitted the woods, and prowled about our 
 streets in the name of Reform. Such was the distemper 
 of the public mind, that there was no madman, in his 
 maddest ideas and maddest projects, who might not count 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. \\ 
 
 upon numbers to support his principles and execute his 
 designs. 
 
 Many of the changes, by a great misnomer called 
 Parliamentary Reforms, went, not in the intention of all 
 the professors and supporters of them, undoubtedly, but 5 
 went in their certain, and, in my opinion, not very remote 
 effect, home to the utter destruction of the Constitution 
 of this kingdom. Had they taken place, not France, but 
 England, would have had the honor of leading up the 
 death-dance of democratic revolution. Other projects, 10 
 exactly coincident in time with those, struck at the very 
 existence of the kingdom under any Constitution. There 
 are who remember the blind fury of some, and the lamen- 
 table helplessness of others; here, a torpid confusion, 
 from a panic fear of the danger — there, the same inac- 15 
 tion, from a stupid insensibility to it ; here, well-wishers 
 to the mischief — there, indifferent lookers-on. At the 
 same time, a sort of National Convention, dubious in its 
 nature, and perilous in its example, nosed Parliament in 
 the very seat of its authority, sat with a sort of superin- 20 
 tendence over it, and little less than dictated to it, not 
 only laws, but the very form and essence of legislature 
 itself. In Ireland things ran in a still more eccentric 
 course. Government was unnerved, confounded, and in 
 a manner suspended. Its equipoise was totally gone. 25 
 I do not mean to speak disrespectfully of Lord North. 
 He was a man of admirable parts, of general knowledge, 
 of a versatile understanding fitted for every sort of 
 business, of infinite wit and pleasantry, of a delightful 
 temper, and with a mind most perfectly disinterested. 3° 
 But it would be only to degrade myself by a weak adula- 
 tion, and not to honor the memory of a great man, to 
 deny that he wanted something of the vigilance and 
 spirit of command that the time required. Indeed, a 
 
12 EDMUA'D BURKE. 
 
 darkness next to the fog of this awful day lowered over 
 the whole region. For a little time the helm appeared 
 abandoned. 
 
 Ipse diem noctemque negat discernere coelo, 
 5 Nee meminisse viaa media Palinurus in undl. 
 
 At that time I was connected with men of high place 
 in the community. They loved liberty as much as the 
 Duke of Bedford can do ; and they understood it at least 
 as well. Perhaps their politics, as usual, took a tincture 
 
 10 from their character, and they cultivated what they 
 loved. The liberty they pursued was a liberty insepa- 
 rable from order, from virtue, from morals, and from 
 religion, and was neither hypocritically nor fanatically 
 followed. They did not wish that liberty, in itself 
 
 15 one of the first of blessings, should in its perversion 
 become the greatest curse which could fall upon man- 
 kind. To preserve the Constitution entire, and practically 
 equal to all the great ends of its formation, not in one 
 single part, but in all its parts, was to them the first object. 
 
 20 Popularity and power they regarded alike. These were 
 with them only different means of obtaining that object, 
 and had no preference over each other in their minds, 
 but as one or the other might afford a surer or a less 
 certain prospect of arriving at that end. It is some 
 
 25 consolation to me, in the cheerless gloom which darkens 
 the evening of my life, that with them I commenced my 
 political career, and never for a moment, in reality nor 
 in appearance, for any length of time, was separated 
 from their good wishes and good opinion. 
 
 3° By what accident it matters not, nor upon what desert, 
 but just then, and in the midst of that hunt of obloquy 
 which ever has pursued me with a full cry through life, I 
 had obtained a very considerable degree of public confi- 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 13 
 
 dence. I know well enough how equivocal a test this 
 kind of popular opinion forms of the merit that obtained 
 it. I am no stranger to the insecurity of its tenure. I 
 do not boast of it. It is mentioned to show, not how 
 highly I prize the thing, but my right to value the use I 5 
 made of it. I endeavored to turn that short-lived advan- 
 tage to myself into a permanent benefit to my country. 
 Far am I from detracting from the merit of some gentle- 
 men, out of office or in it, on that occasion. No ! it is 
 not my way to refuse a full and heaped measure of justice 10 
 to the aids that I receive. I have through life been 
 willing to give everything to others, and to reserve nothing 
 for myself but the inward conscience that I had omitted 
 no pains to discover, to animate, to discipline, to direct 
 the abilities of the country for its service, and to place 15 
 them in the best light to improve their age, or to adorn it. 
 This conscience I have. I have never suppressed any 
 man, never checked him for a moment in his course, by 
 any jealousy, or by any policy. I was always ready, to 
 the height of my means (and they were always infinitely 20 
 below liiy desires), to forward those abilities which over- 
 powered my own. He is an ill-furnished undertaker who 
 has no machinery but his own hands to work with. Poor 
 in my own faculties, I ever thought myself rich in theirs. 
 In that period of difficulty and danger, more especially, I 25 
 consulted and sincerely cooperated with men of all parties, 
 who seemed disposed to the same ends, or to any main 
 part of them. Nothing to prevent disorder was omitted : 
 when it appeared, nothing to subdue it was left uncoun- 
 selled nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At the 30 
 time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, 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. 
 
U EDMUiVD BURKE. 
 
 that did not at that time acknowledge it ; and that time 
 was thirteen years ago. It was but one voice, that no 
 man in the kingdom better deserved an honorable pro- 
 vision should be made for him. 
 
 5 So much for my general conduct through the whole of 
 the portentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and the general 
 sense then entertained of that conduct by my country. 
 But my character, as a reformer, in the particular instances 
 which the Duke of Bedford refers to, is so connected in 
 
 10 principle with my opinions on the hideous changes, which 
 have since barbarized France, and spreading thence, 
 threaten the political and moral order of the whole world, 
 that it seems to demand something of a more detailed 
 discussion. 
 
 15 My economical reforms were not, as his Grace may 
 think, the suppression of a paltry pension or employment, 
 more or less. Economy in my plan was, as it ought to 
 be, secondary, subordinate, instrumental. I acted on 
 state principles. I found a great distemper in the com- 
 
 20 monwealth ; and, according to the nature of the evil and 
 of the object, I treated it. The malady was deep ; it was 
 complicated, in the causes and in the symptoms. Through- 
 out it was full of contra-indicants. On one hand govern- 
 ment, daily growing more invidious from an apparent 
 
 25 increase of the means of strength, was every day growing 
 more contemptible by real weakness. Nor was this 
 dissolution confined to government commonly so called. 
 It extended to Parliament ; which was losing not a little 
 in its dignity- and estimation, by an opinion of its not 
 
 30 acting on worthy motives. On the other hand, the desires 
 of the people, (partly natural and partly infused into them 
 by art) appeared in so wild and inconsiderate a manner, 
 with regard to the economical object (for I set aside for 
 a moment the dreadful tampering with the body of the 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 15 
 
 constitution itself) that if their petitions had literally been 
 complied with, the state would have been convulsed ; and 
 a gate would have been opened, through which all prop- 
 erty might be sacked and ravaged. Nothing could have 
 saved the public from the mischiefs of the false reform 5 
 but its absurdity ; which would soon have brought itself, 
 and with it all real reform, into discredit. This would 
 have left a rankling wound in the hearts of the 
 people, who would know they had failed in the accom- 
 plishment of their wishes, but who, like the rest of 10 
 mankind in all ages, would impute the blame to anything 
 rather than to their own proceedings. But there were 
 then persons in the world, who nourished complaint ; and 
 would have been thoroughly disappointed if the people 
 were ever satisfied. I was not of that humor. I wished 15 
 that they should be satisfied. It was my aim to give to 
 the people the substance of what I knew they desired, 
 and what I thought was right whether they desired it or 
 not, before it had been modified for them into senseless 
 petitions. I knew that there is a manifest marked dis- 20 
 tinction, which ill men, with ill designs, or weak men 
 incapable of any design, will constantly be confounding, 
 that is, a marked distinction between change and reforma- 
 tion. The former alters the substance of the objects 
 themselves ; and gets rid of all their essential good, as 25 
 well as of all the accidental evil annexed to them. Change 
 is novelty; and whether it is to operate any one of the 
 effects of reformation at all, or whether it may not con- 
 tradict the very principle upon which reformation is 
 desired, cannot be certainly known beforehand. Reform 3° 
 is, not a change in the substance, or in the primary 
 modification of the object, but a direct application of a 
 remedy to the grievance complained of. So far as that is 
 removed, all is sure. It stops there ; and if it fails, the 
 
16 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 substance which underwent the operation, at the very 
 worst, is but where it was. 
 
 All this, in effect, I think, but am not sure, I have said 
 elsewhere. It cannot at this time be too often repeated, 
 5 line upon line, precept upon precept, until it comes into 
 the currency of a proverb. To innovate is not to reform. 
 The French revolutionists complained of everything ; they 
 refused to reform anything; and they left nothing, no, 
 nothing at all, imchanged. The consequences are before 
 
 10 us, not in remote history, not in future prognostication : 
 they are about us, they are upon us. They shake the 
 public security ; they menace private enjoyment. They 
 dwarf the growth of the young ; they break the quiet of 
 the old. If we travel, they stop our way. They infest us 
 
 15 in town; they pursue us to the country. Our business- 
 is interrupted, our repose is troubled, our pleasures arf 
 saddened, our very studies are poisoned and perverted, 
 and knowledge is rendered worse than ignorance by the 
 enormous evils of this dreadful innovation. The revolu 
 
 20 tion harpies of France, sprung from night and hell, 01 
 from that chaotic anarchy, which generates equivocally 
 "all monstrous, all prodigious things," cuckoo-like, adul- 
 terously lay their eggs, and brood over, and hatch them in 
 the nest of every neighboring state. These obscene 
 
 25 harpies, who deck themselves, in I know not what divine 
 attributes, but who in reality are foul and ravenous birds 
 of prey (both mothers and daughters) flutter over our 
 heads, and souse down upon our tables, and leave nothing 
 unrent, unrifled, unravaged, or unpolluted with the slime 
 
 30 of their filthy offal. ^ 
 
 ^ Tristius haud illis monstrum, nee saevior uUa 
 Pestis, & ira Deiim Stygiis sese extulit undis. 
 Virginei volucnim vultus ; faedissima ventris 
 Proluvies ; uncaeque manus ; & pallida semper 
 Ora fame — 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 17 
 
 If his Grace can contemplate the result of this complete 
 innovation, or, as some friends of his will call it, reform, 
 in the whole body of its solidity and compound- mass, at 
 which, as Hamlet says, the face of heaven glows with 
 horror and indignation, and which, in truth, makes every 5 
 reflecting mind and every feeling heart perfectly thought- 
 sick, without a thorough abhorrence of everything they 
 say and everything they do, I a"m amazed at the morbid 
 strength or the natural infirmity of his mind. 
 
 It was, then, not my love, but my hatred to innovation, 10 
 that produced my plan of reform. Without troubling 
 myself with the exactness of the logical diagram, I con- 
 sidered them as things substantially opposite. It was to 
 prevent that evil that I proposed the measures which his 
 Grace is pleased, and I am not sorry he is pleased, to 15 
 recall to my recollection. I had (what I hope that noble 
 Duke will remember in all his operations) a state to pre- 
 serve, as well as a state to reform. I had a people to 
 gratify, but not to inflame or to mislead. I do not claim 
 half the credit for what I did as for what I prevented from 20 
 being done. In that situation of the public mind, I did 
 not undertake, as was then proposed, to new-model the 
 House of Commons or the House of Lords, or to change 
 the authority under which any oiBcer of the crown acted, 
 who was suffered at all to exist. Crown, lords, commons, 25 
 judicial system, system of administration, existed as they 
 had existed before, and in the mode and manner in which 
 
 Here the Poet breaks the Ime, because he (and that He is Virgil) 
 had not verse or language to describe that monster even as he had 
 conceived her. Had he lived to our time, he would have been more 
 overpowered with the reality than he was with the imagination. 
 Virgil only knew the horror of the times before him. Had he lived 
 to see the revolutionists and constitutionalists of France, he would 
 have had more horrid and disgusting features of his harpies to 
 describe, and more frequent failures in the attempt to describe them. 
 
IS EDAR/ND BURKE. 
 
 they had always existed. My measures were, what I then 
 truly stated them to the House to be, in their intent, heal- 
 ing and mediatorial. A complaint was made of too much 
 influence in the House of Commons : I reduced it in both 
 5 Houses ; and I gave my reasons, article by article, for 
 every reduction, and showed why I thought it safe for the 
 service of the state. I heaved the lead every inch of way 
 I made. A disposition to expense was complained of : to 
 that I opposed, not mere retrenchment, but a system of 
 
 10 economy, which would make a random expense, without 
 plan or foresight, in future, not easily practicable. I pro- 
 ceeded upon principles of research to put me in posses- 
 sion of my matter; on principles of method to regulate 
 it ; and on principles in the human mind and in civil 
 
 15 affairs to secure and perpetuate the operation. I con- 
 ceived nothing arbitrarily ; nor proposed anything to be 
 done by the will and pleasure of others, or my own ; but 
 by reason, and by reason only. I have ever abhorred, 
 since the first dawn of my understanding to this its 
 
 20 obscure twilight, all the operations of opinion, fancy, incli- 
 nation, and will, in the affairs of government, where only 
 a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation 
 and administration, should dictate. Government is made 
 for the very purpose of opposing that reason to will and 
 
 25 to caprice, in the reformers or in the reformed, in the 
 governors or in the governed, in kings, in senates, or in 
 people. 
 
 On a careful review, therefore, and analysis, of all the 
 component parts of the civil list, and on weighing them 
 
 30 against each other, in order to make, as much as possible, 
 all of them a subject of estimate (the foundation and corner- 
 stone of all regular provident economy) it appeared to me 
 evident, that this was impracticable, whilst that part, 
 called the pension list, was totally discretionary in its 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 19 
 
 amount. For this reason, and for this only, I proposed 
 to reduce it, both in its gross quantity, and in its larger 
 individual proportions, to a certainty : lest, if it were left 
 without a general limit, it might eat up the civil list ser- 
 vice ; if suffered to be granted in portions too great for the 5 
 fund, it might defeat its own end ; and by unlimited allow- 
 ances to some, it might disable the crown in means of 
 providing for others. The pension list was to be kept as 
 a sacred fund; but it could not be kept as a constant 
 open fund, sufficient for growing demands, if some 10 
 demands would wholly devour it. The tenor of the act 
 will show that it regarded the civil list only, the reduc- 
 tion of which to some sort of estimate was my great 
 object. 
 
 No other of the crown funds did I meddle with, be- 15 
 cause they had not the same relations. This of the four 
 and a half per cents does his Grace imagine had escaped 
 me, or had escaped all the men of business, who acted 
 with me in those regulations? I knew that such a fund 
 existed, and that pensions had been always granted on it, 20 
 before his Grace was born. This fund was full in my 
 eye. It was full in the eyes of those who worked with 
 me. It was left on principle. On principle I did what 
 was then done ; and on principle what was left undone 
 was omitted. I did not dare to rob the nation of all 25 
 funds to reward merit. If I pressed this point too close, 
 I acted contrary to the avowed principles on which I 
 went. Gentlemen are very fond of quoting me ; but if any 
 one thinks it worth his while to know the rules that guided 
 me in my plan of reform, he will read my printed speech 30 
 on that subject ; at least what is contained from page 230 
 to page 241 in the second volume of the collection which 
 a friend has given himself the trouble to make of my 
 publications. Be this as it may, these two bills (though 
 
20 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 achieved with the greatest labor, and management of 
 every sort, both within and without the house) were only 
 a part, and but a small part, of a very large system, 
 comprehending all the objects I stated in opening my 
 5 proposition, and indeed many more, which I just hinted 
 at in my speech to the. electors of Bristol, when I was put 
 out of that representation. All these, in some state or 
 other of forwardness, I have long had by me. 
 
 But do I justify his Majesty's grace on these grounds? 
 
 lo I think them the least of my services. The time gave 
 them an occasional value. What I have done in the way 
 of political economy was far from confined to this body of 
 measures. I did not come into Parliament to con my 
 lesson. I had earned my pension before I set my foot in 
 
 15 St. Stephen's Chapel. I was prepared and disciplined to 
 this political warfare. The first session I sat in Parlia- 
 ment, I found it necessary to analyze the whole commer- 
 cial, financial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great 
 Britain and its empire. A great deal was then done ; and 
 
 20 more, far more, would have been done, if more had been 
 permitted by events. Then, in the vigor of my manhood, 
 my constitution sunk under my labor. Had I then died 
 (and I seemed to myself very near death), I had then 
 earned for those who belonged to me more than the Duke 
 
 25 of Bedford's ideas of service are of power to estimate. 
 But, in truth, these services I am called to account for 
 are not those on which I value myself the most. If I 
 were to call for a reward (which I have never done), it 
 should be for those in which, for fourteen years without 
 
 30 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 labor, most for the judgment, 
 most for constancy and perseverance in the pursuit. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 21 
 
 Others may value them most for the intention. In that, 
 surely, they are not mistaken. 
 
 Does his Grace think, that they who advised the crown 
 to make my retreat easy, considered me only as an econo- 
 mist? That, well understood, however is a good deal. If 5 
 I had not deemed it of some value, I should not have 
 made political economy an object of my humble studies, 
 from my very early youth to near the end of my service 
 in Parliament, even before, (at least to any knowledge of 
 mine) it had employed the thoughts of speculative men in 10 
 other parts of Europe. At that time it was still in its 
 infancy in England, where, in the last century, it had its 
 origin. Great and learned men thought my studies were 
 not wholly thrown away, and deigned to communicate 
 with me now and then on some particulars of their 'S 
 immortal works. Something of these studies may appear 
 incidentally in some of the earliest things I published. 
 The House has been witness to their effect, and has 
 profited of them more or less, for above eight and twenty 
 years. To their estimate I leave the matter. 20 
 
 I was not, like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled, and 
 rocked, and dandled into a legislator : "JViiorin adversum" 
 is the motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the 
 qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend 
 men to the favor and protection of the great. I was not 25 
 made for a minion or a tool. As little did I follow the 
 trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the under- 
 standings of the people. At every step of my progress in 
 life (for in every step was I traversed and opposed), and 
 at every turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my pass- 3° 
 port, and again and again to prove my sole title to the 
 honor of being useful to my country, by a proof that I 
 was not wholly unacquainted with its laws, and the whole 
 system of its interests both abroad and at home. Other- 
 
22 EDMUXD BURKE. 
 
 wise, no rank, no toleration even, for me. I had no arts 
 but manly arts. On them I have stood, and, please God, 
 in spite of the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauder- 
 dale, to the last gasp will I stand. 
 5 Had his Grace condescended to inquire concerning the 
 person whom he has not thought it below him to reproach, 
 he might have found, that, in the whole course of my 
 life, I have never, on any pretence of economy, or any 
 other pretence, so much as in a single instance, stood 
 
 10 between any man and his reward of service or his 
 encouragement in useful talent and pursuit, from the high- 
 est of those services and pursuits to the lowest. On the 
 contrary, I have on a hundred occasions exerted myself 
 with singular zeal to forward every man's even tolerable 
 
 15 pretensions. I have more than once had good-natured 
 reprehensions from my friends for carrying the matter to 
 something bordering on abuse. This line of conduct, 
 whatever its merit might be, was partly owing to natural 
 disposition, but I think full as much to reason and prin- 
 
 20 ciple. I looked on the consideration of public service or 
 public ornament to be real and very justice ; and I ever 
 held a scanty and penurious justice to partake of the 
 nature of a wrong. I held it to be, in its consequences, 
 the worst economy in the world. In saving money I soon 
 
 25 can count up all the good I do ; but when by a cold 
 penury I blast the abilities of a nation, and stunt the 
 growth of its active energies, the ill I may do is beyond 
 all calculation. Whether it be too much or too little, what- 
 ever I have done has been general and systematic. I 
 
 30 have never entered into those trifling vexations, and oppres- 
 sive details, that have been falsely and most ridiculously 
 laid to my charge. 
 
 Did I blame the pensions given to Mr. Barre and Mr. 
 Dunning between the proposition and execution of my 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 23 
 
 plan? No! surely, no ! Those pensions were within my 
 principles. I assert it, those gentlemen deserved their 
 pensions, their titles, — all they had ; and if more they 
 had, I should have been but pleased the more. They 
 were men of talents; they were men of service. I put s 
 the profession of the law out of the question in one of 
 them. It is a service that rewards itself. But their 
 public service, though, from their abilities unquestionably 
 of more value than mine, in its quantity and in its dura- 
 tion was not to be mentioned with it. But I never could lo 
 drive a hard bargain in my life, concerning any matter 
 whatever ; and least of all do I know how to haggle and 
 huckster with merit. Pension for myself I obtained none ; 
 nor did I solicit any. Yet I was loaded with hatred for 
 everything that was withheld, and with obloquy for 15 
 everything that was given. I was thus left to support the 
 grants of a name ever dear to me, and ever venerable to 
 the world, in favor of those, who were no friends of mine 
 or of his, against the rude attacks of those who were at that 
 time friends to the grantees, and their own zealous parti- 20 
 sans. I have never heard the Earl of Lauderdale com- 
 plain of these pensions. He finds nothing wrong till he 
 comes to me. This is impartiality, in the true modern 
 revolutionary style. 
 
 Whatever I did at that time, so far as it regarded order 25 
 and economy, is stable and eternal ; as all principles must 
 be. A particular order of things may be altered ; order 
 itself cannot lose its value. As to other particulars, they 
 are variable by time and by circumstances. Laws of 
 regulation are not fundamental laws. The public exigen- 30 
 cies are the masters of all such laws. They rule the laws, 
 and are not to be ruled by them. They who exercise the 
 legislative power at the time must judge. 
 
 It may be new to his Grace, but I beg leave to tell him 
 
24 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 that mere parsimony is not economy. It is separable in 
 theory from it ; and in fact it may or it may not be a part 
 of economy, according to circumstances. Expense, and 
 great expense, may be an essential part in true economy. 
 5 If parsimony were to be considered as one of the kinds 
 of that virtue, there is, however, another and a higher 
 economy. Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists, 
 not in saving, but in selection. Parsimony requires no 
 providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no 
 
 10 comparison, no judgment. Mere instinct, and that not 
 an instinct of the noblest kind, may produce this false 
 economy in perfection. The other economy has larger 
 views. It demands a discriminating judgment, and a 
 firm, sagacious mind. It shuts one door to impudent 
 
 15 importunity, only to open another, and a wider, to unpre- 
 suming merit. If none but meritorious service or real 
 talent were to be rewarded, this nation has not wanted, 
 and this nation will not want, the means of rewarding all 
 the service it ever will receive, and encouraging all the 
 
 20 merit it ever will produce. No state, since the foundation 
 of society, has been impoverished by that species of 
 profusion. Had the economy of selection and proportion 
 been at all times observed, we should not now have had 
 an overgrown Duke of Bedford, to oppress the industry 
 
 25 of humble men, and to limit, by the standard of his own 
 conceptions, the justice, the bounty, or, if he pleases, the 
 charity of the crown. 
 
 His Grace may think as meanly as he will of my 
 deserts in the far greater part of my conduct in life. It 
 
 30 is free for him to do so. There will always be some 
 difference of opinion in the value of political services. 
 But there is one merit of mine which he, of all men 
 living, ought to be the last to call in question. I have 
 supported with very great zeal, and I am told with some 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 25 
 
 degree of success, those opinions, or, if his Grace likes 
 another expression better, those old prejudices, which 
 buoy up the ponderous mass of his nobility, wealth, and 
 titles. I have omitted no exertion to prevent him and 
 them from sinking to that level, to which the meretricious s 
 French faction, his Grace at least coquets with, omit no 
 exertion to reduce both. I have done all I could to 
 discountenance their inquiries into the fortunes of those 
 who hold large portions of wealth without any apparent 
 merit of their own. I have strained every nerve to keep lo 
 the Duke of Bedford in that situation which alone makes 
 him my superior. Your lordship has been a witness of 
 the use he makes of that preeminence. 
 
 But be it, that this is virtue ! Be it, that there is virtue 
 in this well selected rigor ; yet all virtues are not equally 1 5 
 becoming to all men and at all times. There are crimes, 
 undoubtedly there are crimes, which in all seasons of our 
 existence, ought to put a generous antipathy in action ; 
 crimes that provoke an indignant justice, and call forth a 
 warm and animated pursuit. But all things, that concern, 20 
 what I may call, the preventive police of morality, all 
 things merely rigid, harsh and censorial, the antiquated 
 moralists, at whose feet I was brought up, would not have 
 thought these the fittest matter to form the favorite 
 virtues of young men of rank. What might have been 25 
 well enough, and have been received with a veneration 
 mixed with awe and terror, from an old, severe, crabbed 
 Cato, would have wanted something of propriety in the 
 young Scipios, the ornament of the Roman nobility, in the 
 flower of their life. But the times, the morals, the 30 
 masters, the scholars have all undergone a thorough 
 revolution. It is a vile illiberal school, this new French 
 academy of sans culottes. There is nothing in it that is 
 fit for a gentleman to learn. 
 
26 EDMUXD BURKE. 
 
 Whatever its vogue may be, I still flatter myself, that 
 the parents of the growing generation will be satisfied 
 with what is to be taught to their children in Westminster, 
 in Eton, or in Winchester : I still indulge the hope that 
 S no grown gentleman or nobleman of our time will think of 
 finishing at Mr. Thelwall's lecture whatever may have 
 been left incomplete at the old universities of his country. 
 I would give to Lord Grenville and Mr. Pitt for a motto, 
 what was said of a Roman censor or praetor (or what was 
 10 he), who in virtue of a Senatus consultum shut up certain 
 academies, 
 
 " Cludere ludum impudentias jussit." 
 
 Every honest father of a family in the kingdom will 
 rejoice at the breaking up for the holidays, and will pray 
 
 1 5 that there may be very long vacations in all such schools. 
 
 The awful state of the time, and not myself or my own 
 
 justification, is my true object in what I now write ; or in 
 
 what I shall ever write or say. It little signifies to the 
 
 world what becomes of such things as me, or even as the 
 
 2o Duke of Bedford. What I say about either of us is 
 nothing more than a vehicle, as you, my Lord, will easily 
 perceive, to convey my sentiments on matters far more 
 worthy of your attention. It is when I stick to my 
 apparent first subject that I ought to apologize, not when 
 
 25 I depart from it. I therefore must beg your Lordship's 
 pardon for again resuming it after this very short digres- 
 sion ; assuring you that I shall never altogether lose sight 
 of such matter as persons abler than I am may turn to 
 some profit. 
 
 3° The Duke of Bedford conceives that he is obliged to 
 call the attention of the House of Peers to his Majesty's 
 grant to me, which he considers as excessive and out of 
 all bounds. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 27 
 
 I know not how it has happened, but it really seems, 
 that, whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered 
 censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep. Homer 
 nods, and the Duke of Bedford may dream; and as 
 dreams (even his golden dreams) are apt to be ill-pieced 5 
 and incongruously put together, his Grace preserved his 
 idea of reproach to me, but took the subject-matter from 
 the crown grants to his own family. This is "the stuif of 
 which his dreams are made." In that way of putting 
 things together his Grace is perfectly in the right. The 10 
 grants to the house of Russell were so enormous as not 
 only to outrage economy, but even to stagger credibility. 
 The Duke of Bedford is the leviathan among all the 
 creatures of the crown. He tumbles about his unwieldy 
 bulk, he plays and frolics in the ocean of the royal bounty. 15 
 Huge as he is, and whilst "he lies floating many a rood," 
 he is still a creature. His ribs, his fins, his whalebone, 
 his blubber, the very spiracles through which he spouts a 
 torrent of brine against his origin, and covers me all over 
 with the spray, everything of him and about him is from 20 
 the throne. Is it for him to question the dispensation of 
 the royal favor ? 
 
 I really am at loss to draw any sort of parallel between 
 the public merits of his Grace, by which he justifies the 
 grants he holds, and these services of mine, on the favor- 25 
 able construction of which I have obtained what his Grace 
 so much disapproves. In private life, I have not at all 
 the honor of acquaintance with the noble Duke ; but I 
 ought to presume, — and it costs me nothing to do so, — 
 that he abundantly deserves the esteem and love of all 30 
 who live with him. But as to public service, why, truly, 
 it would not be more ridiculous for me to compare myself, 
 in rank, in fortune, in splendid descent, in youth, strength, 
 or figure, with the Duke of Bedford, than to make a 
 
28 EDMUND BUKKE. 
 
 parallel between his services and my attempts to be useful 
 to my country. It would not be gross adulation, but un- 
 civil irony, to say that he has any public merit of his own 
 to keep alive the idea of the services by which his vast 
 
 5 landed pensions were obtained. My merits, whatever they 
 are, are original and personal : his are derivative. It is 
 his ancestor, the original pensioner, that has laid up this 
 inexhaustible fund of merit which makes his Grace so very 
 delicate and exceptious about the merit of all other gran- 
 
 lo tees of the crown. Had he permitted me to remain in 
 quiet, I should have said, "'T is his estate : that's enough. 
 It is his by law : what have I to do with it or its history ? " 
 He would naturally have said, on his side, "'Tis this man's 
 fortune. He is as good now as my ancestor was two 
 
 15 hundred and fifty years ago. I am a young man with 
 very old pensions ; he is an old man with very young 
 pensions — that 's .all." 
 
 Will his Grace, by attacking me, force me reluctantly to 
 compare my little merit with that which obtained from 
 
 20 the crown those prodigies of profuse donation by which 
 he tramples on the mediocrity of humble and laborious 
 individuals ? I would willingly leave him to the herald's 
 college, which the philosophy of the sans culottes, (prouder 
 by far than all the garters, and Norroys and Clarencieux, 
 
 25 and rouge dragons that ever pranced in a procession of 
 what his friends call aristocrats and despots) will abolish 
 with contumely and scorn. These historians, recorders, 
 and blazoners of virtues and arms, differ wholly from 
 that other description of historians, who never assign any 
 
 30 act of politicians to a good motive. These gentle histo- 
 rians, on the contrary, dip their pens in nothing but the 
 milk of human kindness. They seek no further for merit 
 than the preamble of a patent, or the inscription on a 
 tomb. With them every man created a peer is first an 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 29 
 
 hero ready made. They judge of every man's capacity 
 for office by the offices he has filled ; and the more offices 
 the more ability. Every general officer with them' is a 
 Marlborough; every statesman a Burleigh ; every judge a 
 Murray or a Yorke. They, who alive, were laughed at or 5 
 pitied by all their acquaintance, make as good a figure as 
 the best of them in the pages of Guillim, Edmondson, and 
 Collins. To these recorders, so full of good nature to the 
 great and prosperous, I would willingly leave the first 
 Baron Russell, and Earl of Bedford, and the merits of his 10 
 grants. But the aulnager, the weigher, the meter of 
 grants, will not suffer us to acquiesce in the judgment of 
 the prince reigning at the time when they were made. 
 They are never good to those who earn them. Well then ; 
 since the new grantees have war made on them by the 15 
 old, and that the word of the sovereign is not to be taken, 
 let us turn our eyes to history, in which great men have 
 always a pleasure in contemplating the heroic origin of 
 their house. 
 
 The first peer of the name, the first purchaser of the 20 
 grants, was a Mr. Russell, a person of an ancient gentle- 
 man's family, raised by being a minion of Henry the 
 Eighth. As there generally is some resemblance of char- 
 acter to create these relations, the favorite was in all likeli- 
 hood much such another as his master. The first of 25 
 those immoderate grants was not taken from the ancient 
 demesne of the crown, but from the recent confiscation 
 of the ancient nobility of the land. The lion, having 
 sucked the blood of his prey, threw the offal carcass to 
 the jackal in waiting. Having tasted once the food of 3° 
 confiscation, the favorites became fierce and ravenous. 
 This worthy favorite's first grant was from the lay nobility. 
 The second, infinitely improving on the enormity of the 
 first, was from the plunder of the church. In truth, his 
 
30 ED.MUXD BURKE. 
 
 Grace is somewhat excusable for his dislike to a grant 
 like mine, not only in its quantity, but in its kind, so 
 different from his own. 
 
 Mine was from a mild and benevolent sovereign ; his 
 5 from Henry the Eighth. 
 
 Mine had not its fund in the murder of any innocent 
 person of illustrious rank,^ or in the pillage of any body 
 of unoffending men. His grants were from the aggregate 
 and consolidated funds of judgments iniquitously legal, 
 
 10 and from possessions voluntarily surrendered by the law- 
 ful proprietors with the gibbet at their door. 
 
 The merit of the grantee whom he derives from was 
 that of being a prompt and greedy instrument of a levelling 
 tyrant, who oppressed all descriptions of his people, but 
 
 1 5 who fell with particular fury on everything that was great 
 and noble. Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every 
 man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in 
 defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of 
 confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or con- 
 
 20 fiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, 
 avarice, and envy. 
 
 The merit of the original grantee of his Grace's pen- 
 sions was in giving his hand to the work, and partaking 
 the spoil, with a prince who plundered a part of the 
 
 25 national church of his time and country. Mine was in 
 defending the whole of the national church of my own 
 time and my own country, and the whole of the national 
 churches of all countries, from the principles and the 
 examples which lead to ecclesiastical pillage, thence to a 
 
 ^ See history of the melancholy catastrophe of the Duke of Buck- 
 ingham. Temp. Hen. 8. 
 
 King Henry gave to his favorite the manor of Amersham, in 
 Bucks, part of the estate of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, 
 attainted in 1521. [Ed.] 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 31 
 
 contempt of all prescriptive titles, tlience to the pillage of 
 all property, and thence to universal desolation. 
 
 The merit of the origin of his Grace's fortune was in 
 being a favorite and chief adviser to a prince who left no 
 liberty to their native country. My endeavor was to ob- 5 
 tain liberty for the municipal country in which I was born, 
 and for all descriptions and denominations in it. Mine 
 was to support with unrelaxing vigilance every right, every 
 privilege, every franchise, in this my adopted, my dearer, 
 and more comprehensive country ; and not only to pre- 10 
 serve those rights in this chief seat of empire, but in every 
 nation, in every land, in every climate, language, and 
 religion, in the vast domain that still is under the protec- 
 tion, and the larger that was once under the protection, 
 of the British crown. ts 
 
 His founder's merits were, by arts in which he served 
 his master and made his fortune, to bring poverty, wretch- 
 edness, and depopulation on his country. Mine were 
 under a benevolent prince, in promoting the commerce, 
 manufactures, and agriculture of his kingdom, — in which 20 
 his Majesty shows an eminent example, who even in his 
 amusement is a patriot, and in hours of leisure an improver 
 of his native soil. 
 
 His founder's merit was the merit of a gentleman raised 
 by the arts of a court and the protection of a Wolsey to 25 
 the eminence of a great and potent lord. His merit in 
 that eminence was, by instigating a tyrant to injustice, to 
 provoke a people to rebellion. My merit was, to awaken 
 the sober part of the country, that they might put them- 
 selves on their guard against any one potent lord, or any 30 
 greater number of potent lords, or any combination of 
 great leading men of any sort, if ever they should attempt 
 to proceed in the same courses, but in the reverse order, 
 — that is, by instigating a corrupted populace to rebellion, 
 
32 EDMUXD BUKKE. 
 
 and, through that rebellion, introducing a tyranny yet 
 worse than the tyranny which his Grace's ancestor sup- 
 ported, and of which he profited in the manner we behold 
 in the despotism of Henry the Eighth. 
 5 The political merit of the first pensioner of his Grace's 
 house, was that of being concerned as a counsellor of 
 state in advising, and in his person executing the condi- 
 tions of a dishonorable peace with France ; the surren- 
 dering the fortress of Boulogne, then our out-guard on the 
 
 10 continent. By that surrender, Calais, the key of France, 
 and the bridle in the mouth of that power, was, not many 
 years afterwards, finally lost. My merit has been in 
 resisting the power and pride of France, under any form 
 of its rule; but in opposing it with the greatest zeal and 
 
 1 5 earnestness, when that rule appeared in the worst form it 
 could assume ; the worst indeed which the prime cause 
 and principle of all evil could possibly give it. It was 
 my endeavor by every means to excite a spirit in the 
 House, where I had the honor of a seat, for carrying 
 
 2o on with early vigor and decision, the most clearly just 
 and necessary war, that this or any nation ever carried 
 on ; in order to save my country from the iron yoke of 
 its power, and from the more dreadful contagion of its 
 principles; to preserve, while they can be preserved, pure 
 
 25 and untainted, the ancient, inbred integrity, piety, good 
 nature, and good humor of the people of England, 
 from the dreadful pestilence which beginning in France, 
 threatens to lay waste the whole moral, and in a great 
 degree the whole physical world, having done both in the 
 
 30 focus of its most intense malignity. 
 
 The labors of his Grace's founder merited the curses, 
 not loud but deep, of the Commons of England, on whom 
 he and his master had effected a complete Parliamentary 
 reform, by making them in their slavery and humiliation, 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 33 
 
 the true and adequate representatives of a debased, 
 degraded, and undone people. My merits were, in having 
 had an active, though not always an ostentatious share, in 
 every one act, without exception, of undisputed constitu- 
 tional utility in my time, and in having supported on all 5 
 occasions, the authority, and efficiency, and the privileges 
 of the Commons of Great Britain. I ended my services by 
 a recorded and fully reasoned assertion on their own 
 journals of their constitutional rights, and a vindication 
 of their constitutional conduct. I labored in all things 10 
 to merit their inward approbation, and (along with the 
 assistance of the largest, and greatest, and best of my 
 endeavors) I received their free, unbiassed, pubHc, and 
 solemn thanks. 
 
 Thus stands the account of the comparative merits 15 
 of the Crown grants which compose the Duke of Bed- 
 ford's fortune as balanced against mine. In the name of 
 common sense, why should the Duke of Bedford think 
 that none but of the House of Russell are entitled to the 
 favor of the Crown. Why should he imagine that no 20 
 king of England has been capable of judging of merit but 
 King Henry the Eighth ? Indeed, he will pardon me, he 
 is a little mistaken : all virtue did not end in the first 
 Earl of Bedford ; all discernment did not lose its vision 
 when his creator closed his eyes. Let him remit his 25 
 rigor on the disproportion between merit and reward in 
 others, and they will make no inquiry into the origin of 
 his fortune. They will regard with much more satisfac- 
 tion, as he will contemplate with infinitely more advantage, 
 whatever in his pedigree has been dulcified by an exposure 30 
 to the influence of heaven in a long flow of generations 
 from the hard, acidulous, metallic tincture of the spring. 
 It is little to be doubted that several of his forefathers in' 
 that long series have degenerated into honor and virtue. 
 
34 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Let the Duke of Bedford (I am sure he will) reject with 
 scorn and horror, the counsels of the lecturers, those 
 wicked panders to avarice and ambition, who would 
 tempt him in the troubles of his country, to seek another 
 5 enormous fortune from the forfeitures of another nobility, 
 and the plunder of another church. Let him (and I 
 trust that yet he will) employ all the energy of his youth, 
 and all the resources of his wealth, to crush rebellious 
 principles which have no foundation in morals, and re- 
 
 10 bellious movements, that have no provocation in tyranny. 
 Then will be forgot the rebellions, which, by a doubtful 
 priority in crime, his ancestor had provoked and extin- 
 guished. On such a conduct in the noble Duke, many of 
 his countrymen might, and with some excuse might, give 
 
 15 way to the enthusiasm of their gratitude, and in the 
 dashing style of some of the old declaimers, cry out, 
 that if the fates had found no other way in which 
 they could give a ^Duke of Bedford and his opulence as 
 props to a tottering world, then the butchery of the Duke 
 
 20 of Buckingham might be tolerated ; it might be regarded 
 even with complacency, whilst in the heir of confiscation 
 they saw the sympathizing comforter of the martyrs, who 
 suffer under the cruel confiscation of this day ; whilst they 
 beheld with admiration his zealous protection of the 
 
 25 virtuous and loyal nobility of France, and his manly 
 support of his brethren, the yet standing nobility and 
 gentry of his native land. Then his Grace's merit would 
 be pure and new, and sharp, as fresh from the mint of 
 honor. As he pleased he might reflect honor on his 
 
 30 predecessors, or throw it forward on those who were to 
 succeed him. He might be the propagator of the stock 
 of honor, or the root of it, as he thought proper. 
 
 Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of 
 1 At si non aliam ventiiro fata Neroni, etc. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LOUD. 35 
 
 succession, I should have been, according to my medioc- 
 rity and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of 
 founder of a family : I should have left a son, who, in all 
 the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in 
 science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honor, in S 
 generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment and 
 every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown 
 himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of 
 those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon 
 would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that lo 
 provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He 
 would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symme- 
 trized every disproportion. It would not have been for 
 that successor to resort to any stagnant, wasting reservoir 
 of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a 15 
 salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every 
 day he lived he would have repurchased the bounty of 
 the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had 
 received. He was made a public creature, and had no 
 enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. 20 
 At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not 
 easily supplied. 
 
 But a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist, 
 and whose wisdom it behooves us not at all to dispute, 
 has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my 25 
 querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The 
 storm has gone over me ; and I lie like one of those old 
 oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. 
 I am stripped of all my honors, I am torn up by the 
 roots, and lie prostrate on the earth. There, and pros- 3° 
 trate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine 
 justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I 
 humble myself before God, I do not know that it is for- 
 bidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate 
 
36 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of 
 the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he sub- 
 mitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But 
 even so I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and 
 5 with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill- 
 natured neighbors of his who visited his dunghill to read 
 moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. 
 I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the 
 gate. Indeed, my lord, I greatly deceive myself if in this 
 
 10 hard season I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all 
 that is called fame and honor in the world. This is the 
 appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it 
 is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we 
 are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to 
 
 IS shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an 
 instinct ; and under the direction of reason, instinct is 
 always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They 
 who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. 
 They who should have been to me as posterity are in the 
 
 20 place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which 
 ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety which he 
 would have performed to me : I owe it to him to show 
 that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would 
 have it, from an unworthy parent. 
 
 25 The Crown has considered me after long service : the 
 Crown has paid the Duke of Bedford by advance. He 
 has had a long credit for any service which he may per- 
 form hereafter. He is secure, and long may he be secure, 
 in his advance, whether he performs any services or not. 
 
 30 But let him take care how he endangers the safety of that 
 Constitution which secures his own utility or his own 
 insignificance, or how he discourages those who take up 
 even puny arms to defend an order of things which, like 
 the sun of heaven, shines alike on the useful and the 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 37 
 
 worthless. His grants are engrafted on the public law of 
 Europe, covered with the awful hoar of innumerable ages. 
 They are guarded by the sacred rules of prescription 
 found in that full treasury of jurisprudence from which 
 the jejuneness and penury of our municipal law has by 5 
 degrees been enriched and strengthened. This prescrip- 
 tion I had my share (a very full share) in bringing to its 
 perfection.' The Duke of Bedford will stand as long as 
 prescriptive law endures — as long as the great, stable 
 laws of property, common to us with all civilized nations, 10 
 are kept in their integrity, and without the smallest 
 intermixture of the laws, maxims, principles, or precedents 
 of the grand Revolution. They are secure against all 
 changes but one. The whole Revolutionary system, 
 institutes, digest, code, novels, text, gloss, comment, are 15 
 not only not the same, but they are the very reverse, and 
 the reverse fundamentally, of all the laws on which civil 
 life has hitherto been upheld in all the governments of 
 the world. The learned professors of the rights of man 
 regard prescription not as a title to bar all claim set up 20 
 against old possession, but they look on prescription as 
 itself a bar against the possessor and proprietor. They 
 hold an immemorial possession to be no more than a 
 long-continued, and therefore an aggravated injustice. 
 
 Such are their ideas, such their religion, and such their 25 
 law. But as to our country, and our race, as long as the 
 well-compacted structure of our church and state, the 
 sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended 
 by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and 
 a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British 30 
 Sion — as long as the British monarchy, not more limited 
 than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the 
 proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of propor- 
 ' Sir George Sa%'ile's Act, called the Nullum Tempus Act. 
 
3S EVMUND BURKE. 
 
 tion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and 
 coeval towers — as long as this awful structure shall 
 oversee and guard the subjected land, so long the mounds 
 and dikes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing 
 
 5 to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France. 
 As long as our sovereign lord the king, and his faithful 
 subjects, the lords and commons of this realm, — the 
 triple cord which no man can break, — the solemn, sworn, 
 constitutional frank-pledge of this nation, the firm guar- 
 
 10 antees of each other's being and each other's rights, the 
 joint and several securities, each in its place and order, 
 for every kind and ever}' quality of property and of dignity, 
 — as long as these endure, so long the Duke of Bedford 
 is safe, and we are all safe together, the high from the 
 
 IS blights of envy and the spoliations of rapacity, the low 
 from the iron hand of oppression and the insolent spurn 
 of contempt. Amen ! and so be it, and so it will be, — 
 
 Dum domus .iEnes Capitoli immobile saxum 
 Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit. 
 
 20 But if the rude inroad of GaUic tumult, with its sophistical 
 rights of man to falsify the account, and its sword as a 
 make-weight to throw into the scale, shall be introduced 
 into our city by a misguided populace, set on by proud, 
 great men, themselves blinded and intoxicated by a frantic 
 
 25 ambition, we shall all of us perish and be overwhelmed in 
 a common ruin. If a great storm blow on our coast, it 
 will cast the whales on the strand, as well as the peri- 
 winkles. His Grace will not survive the poor grantee he 
 despises — no, not for a twelvemonth. If the great look 
 
 30 for safety in the services they render to this Gallic cause, 
 it is to be foolish even above the weight of privilege 
 allowed to wealth. If his Grace be one of those whom 
 they endeavor to proselytize, he ought to be aware of the 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 39 
 
 character of the sect whose doctrines he is invited to 
 embrace. With them insurrection is the most sacred of 
 revolutionary duties to the state. Ingratitude to bene- 
 factors is the first of revolutionary virtues. Ingratitude 
 is, indeed, their four cardinal virtues compacted and 5 
 amalgamated into one ; and he will find it in everything 
 that has happened since the commencement of the philo- 
 sophic Revolution to this hour. If he pleads the merit of 
 having performed the duty of insurrection against the 
 order he lives in, — God forbid he ever should ! — the 10 
 merit of others will be to perform the duty of insurrection 
 against him. If he pleads — again God forbid he should! 
 and I do not suspect he will — his ingratitude to the 
 crown for its creation of his family, others will plead their 
 right and duty to pay him in kind. They will laugh, 15 
 indeed they will laugh, at his parchment and his wax. 
 His deeds will be drawn out with the rest of the lumber 
 of his evidence-room, and burnt to the tune of Qa ira in 
 the courts of Bedford (then Equality) House. 
 
 Am I to blame, if I attempt to pay his Grace's hostile 20 
 reproaches to me with a friendly admonition to himself ? 
 Can I be blamed, for pointing out to him in what manner 
 he is like to be affected, if the sect of the cannibal philoso- 
 phers of France should proselytize any considerable part 
 of this people, and, by their joint proselytizing arms, 25 
 should conquer that government, to which his Grace 
 does not seem to me to give all the support his own 
 security demands ? Surely it is proper, that he, and that 
 others like him, should know the true genius of this sect ; 
 what their opinions are ; what they have done ; and to 3° 
 whom ; and what (if a prognostic is to be formed from 
 the dispositions and actions of men) it is certain they 
 will do hereafter. He ought to know, that they have 
 sworn assistance, the only engagement they ever will 
 
40 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 keep, to all in this country, who bear a resemblance to 
 themselves, and who think as such, that The whole duty 
 of man consists in destruction. They are a misallied 
 and disparaged branch of the house of Nimrod. They 
 5 are the Duke of Bedford's natural hunters, and he is 
 their natural game. Because he is not very profoundly 
 reflecting, he sleeps in profound security: they, on the 
 contrary, are always vigilant, active, enterprizing, and 
 though far removed from any knowledge, which makes 
 
 10 men estimable or useful, in all the instruments and 
 resources of evil, their leaders are not meanly instructed, 
 or insufficiently furnished. In the French revolution 
 everything is new; and, from want of preparation to 
 meet so unlooked-for an evil, everything is dangerous. 
 
 15 Never, before this time, was a set of literary men, con- 
 verted into a gang of robbers and assassins. Never 
 before, did a den of bravoes and banditti, assume the 
 garb and tone of an academy of philosophers. 
 
 Let me tell his Grace, that an union of such characters, 
 
 20 monstrous as it seems, is not made for producing despi- 
 cable enemies. But if they are formidable as foes, as 
 friends they are dreadful indeed. The men of property 
 in France confiding in a force, which seemed to be irre- 
 sistible, because it had never been tried, neglected to 
 
 25 prepare for a conflict with their enemies at their own 
 weapons. They were found in such a situation as the 
 Mexicans were, when they were attacked by the dogs, 
 the cavalry, the iron, and the gunpowder of a handful of 
 bearded men, whom they did not know to exist in nature. 
 
 30 This is a comparison that some, I think, have made ; 
 and it is just. In France they had their enemies within 
 their houses. They were even in the bosoms of many of 
 them. But they had not sagacity to discern their savage 
 character. They seemed tame, and even caressing. They 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 41 
 
 had nothing but douce humanite in their mouth. They 
 could not bear the punishment of the mildest laws on 
 the greatest criminals. The slightest severity of justice 
 made their flesh creep. The very idea that war existed 
 in the world disturbed their repose. Military glory was no 5 
 more, with them, than- a splendid infamy. Hardly would 
 they hear of self-defence, which they reduced within 
 such bounds, as to leave it no defence at all. All this 
 while they meditated the confiscations and massacres we 
 have seen. Had any one told these unfortunate noblemen 10 
 and gentlemen, how, and by whom, the grand fabric of the 
 French monarchy under which they flourished would be sub- 
 verted, they would not have pitied him as a visionary, but 
 would have turned from him as what they call a mauvais 
 plaisant. Yet we have seen what has happened. The 15 
 persons who have suffered from the cannibal philosophy 
 of France, are so like the Duke of Bedford, that nothing 
 but his Grace's probably not speaking quite so good 
 French, could enable us to find out any difference. A 
 great many of them had as pompous titles as he, and 20 
 were of full as illustrious a race : some few of them had 
 fortunes as ample ; several of them, without meaning the 
 least disparagement to the Duke of Bedford, were as 
 wise, and as virtuous, and as valiant, and as well edu- 
 cated, and as complete in all the lineaments of men of 25 
 honor as he is. And to all this they had added the 
 powerful out-guard of a military profession, which, in 
 its nature, renders men somewhat more cautious than 
 those, who have nothing to attend to but the lazy enjoy- 
 ment of undisturbed possessions. But security was their 30 
 ruin. They are dashed to pieces in the storm, and our 
 shores are covered with the wrecks. If they had been 
 aware that such a thing might happen, such a thing never 
 could have happened. 
 
42 EDMUXD BURKE. 
 
 I assure his Grace, that if I state to him the designs of 
 his enemies in a manner which may appear to him ludi- 
 crous and impossible, I tell him nothing that has not 
 exactly happened, point by point, but twenty-four miles 
 5 from our own shore. I assure him that the Frenchified 
 faction, more encouraged, than others are warned by what 
 has happened in France, look at him and his landed 
 possessions as an object at once of curiosity and rapacity. 
 He is made for them in every part of their double char- 
 
 10 acter. As robbers, to them he is a noble booty ; as specu- 
 latists, he is a glorious subject for their experimental 
 philosophy. He affords matter for an extensive analysis 
 in all the branches of their science, geometrical, physical, 
 civil, and political. These philosophers are fanatics. 
 
 15 Independent of any interest, which, if it operated alone, 
 would make them much more tractable, they are carried 
 with such a headlong rage towards every desperate trial, 
 that they would sacrifice the whole human race to the 
 slightest of their experiments. I am better able to enter 
 
 20 into the character of this description of men than the 
 noble Duke can be. I have lived long and variously in 
 the world. Without any considerable pretensions to litera- 
 ture in myself, I have aspired to the love of letters. 1 
 have lived for a great many years in habitudes with those 
 
 25 who professed them. I can form a tolerable estimate of 
 what is likely to happen from a character chiefly depend- 
 ent for fame and fortune on knowledge and talent, as well 
 in its morbid and perverted state as in that which is sound 
 and natural. Naturally men so formed and finished are 
 
 30 the first gifts of Providence to the world. But when they 
 have once thrown off the fear of God, which was in all 
 ages too often the case, and the fear of man, which is 
 now the case, and when in that state they come to under- 
 stand one another, and to act in corps, a more dreadful 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 43 
 
 calamity cannot arise out of hell to scourge mankind. 
 Nothing can be conceived more hard than the heart of a 
 thorough-bred metaphysician. It comes nearer to the 
 cold malignity of a wicked spirit than to the frailty and 
 passion of a man. It is like that of the Principle of Evil s 
 himself, incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defe- 
 cated evil. It is no easy operation to eradicate humanity 
 from the human breast. What Shakespeare calls the 
 "compunctious visitings of nature" will sometimes knock 
 at their hearts, and protest against their murderous specu- lo 
 lations. But they have a means of compounding with 
 their nature. Their humanity is not dissolved : they only 
 give it a long prorogation. They are ready to declare 
 that they do not think two thousand years too long a 
 period for the good that they pursue. It is remarkable 15 
 that they never see any way to their projected good but by 
 the road of some evil. Their imagination is not fatigued 
 with the contemplation of human suffering through the 
 wild waste of centuries added to centuries of misery and 
 desolation. Their humanity is at their horizon, and, like 20 
 the horizon, it always flies before them. The geome- 
 tricians and the chemists bring — the one from the dry 
 bones of their diagrams, and the other from the soot of 
 their furnaces — dispositions that make them worse than 
 indifferent about those feelings and habitudes which are 25 
 the supports of the moral world. Ambition is come upon 
 them suddenly ; they are intoxicated with it, and it has 
 rendered them fearless of the danger which may from 
 thence arise to others or to themselves. These philoso- 
 phers consider men in their experiments no more than 3° 
 they do mice in an air-pump, or in a recipient of mephitic 
 gas. Whatever his Grace may think of himself, they look 
 upon him, and everything that belongs to him, with no 
 more regard than they do upon the whiskers of that little, 
 
44 EVJIUiVV BURKE. 
 
 long-tailed animal that has been long the game of the 
 grave, demure, insidious, spring-nailed, velvet-pawed, green- 
 eyed philosophers, whether going upon two legs or upon 
 four. 
 5 His Grace's landed possessions are irresistibly inviting 
 to an agrarian experiment. They are a downright insult 
 upon the rights of man. They are more extensive than 
 the territory of many of the Grecian republics, and they 
 are, without comparison, more fertile than most of them. 
 
 lo There are now republics in Italy, in Germany, and in 
 Switzerland which do not possess anything like so fair 
 and ample a domain. There is scope for seven philoso- 
 phers to proceed in their analytical experiments upon 
 Harrington's seven different forms of republics in the 
 
 15 acres of this one duke. Hitherto they have been wholly 
 unproductive to speculation, fitted for nothing but to 
 fatten bullocks, and to produce grain for beer, still more 
 to stupefy the dull English understanding. Abbd Sieyfes 
 has whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions ready 
 
 20 made, ticketed, sorted, and numbered, suited to every 
 season and every fancy ; some with the top of the pattern 
 at the bottom, and some with the bottom at the top ; some 
 plain, some flowered ; some distinguished for their sim- 
 plicity, others for their complexity ; some of blood color, 
 
 25 some of boue de Paris ; some with directories, others with- 
 out a direction ; some with councils of elders and councils 
 of youngsters, some without any council at all ; some 
 where the electors choose the representatives, others 
 where the representatives choose the electors ; some in 
 
 30 long coats, some in short cloaks ; some with pantaloons, 
 some without breeches ; some with five-shilling qualifica- 
 tions, some totally unqualified. So that no constitution- 
 fancier may go unsuited from his shop, provided he loves 
 a pattern of pillage, oppression, arbitrary imprisonment, 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 45 
 
 confiscation, exile, revolutionary judgment, and legalized, 
 premeditated murder, in any shapes into which they can 
 be put. What a pity it is that the progress of experi- 
 mental philosophy should be checked by his Grace's 
 monopoly ! Such are their sentiments, I assure him ; 5 
 such is their language, when they dare to speak ; and 
 such are their proceedings, when they have the means 
 to act. 
 
 Their geographers, and geometricians, have been some 
 time out of practice. It is some time since they have 10 
 divided their own country into squares. That figure 
 has lost the charms of its novelty. They want new 
 lands for new trials. It is not only the geometricians 
 of the republic that find him a good subject, the 
 chemists have bespoke him after the geometricians 15 
 have done with him. As the first set have an eye on 
 his Grace's lands, the chemists are not less taken with 
 his buildings. They consider mortar as a very anti- 
 revolutionary invention in its present state ; but prop- 
 erly employed, an admirable material for overturning all 20 
 establishments. They have found that the gunpowder 
 of rums is far the fittest for making other ruins, and 
 so ad infinitum. They have calculated what quantity of 
 matter convertible into nitre is to be found in Bedford 
 House, in Woburn Abbey, and in what his Grace and 25 
 his trustees have still suffered to stand of that foolish 
 royalist Inigo Jones, in Covent Garden. Churches, play- 
 houses, coffee-houses, all alike are destined to be mingled, 
 and equallized, and blended into one common rubbish ; 
 and well sifted, and lixiviated, to crystallize into true 30 
 democratic explosive insurrectionary nitre. Their acad- 
 emy del Cimento (per antiphrasin) with Morveau and Has- 
 senfrats at its head, have computed that the brave sans 
 culottes may make war on all the aristocracy of Europe 
 
-If. EVMUND BURKE. 
 
 for a twelvemonth, out of the rubbish of the Duke o± 
 Bedford's buildings.^ 
 
 While the Morveaux and Priestleys are proceeding with 
 these experiments upon the Duke of Bedford's houses, the 
 S Sieyfes, and the rest of the analytical legislators, and 
 constitution-venders, are quite as busy in- their trade of 
 decomposing organization, in forming his Grace's vassals 
 into primary assemblies, national guards, first, second 
 and third requisitioners, committees of research, conduc- 
 
 10 tors of the travelling guillotine, judges of revolutionary 
 tribunals, legislative hangmen, supervisors of domiciliary 
 visitation, exactors of forced loans, and assessors of the 
 maximum. 
 
 The din of all this smithery may some time or other 
 
 15 possibly wake this noble Duke, and push him to an 
 
 1 There is nothing, on which the leaders of the republic, one and 
 indivisible, value themselves, more than on the chemical operations, 
 by which, through science, they convert the pride of the aristocracy 
 to an instrument of its own destruction — on the operations by 
 which they reduce the magnificent ancient country seats of the 
 nobility, decorated with the feudal titles of Duke, Marquis, or Earl, 
 into magazines of what they call revolutionary gunpowder. They 
 tell us, that hitherto things " had not yet been properly and in a 
 revolutionary manner explored." "The strong chateaus, those feudal 
 fortresses, that were ordered to be demolished, attracted next the 
 attention of your committee. Nature there had secretly regained 
 her rights, and had produced saltpetre for the purpose, as it should 
 seem, of facilitating the executioti of your decree by preparing the 
 means of destruction. From these ruins, which still frown on the 
 liberties of the republic, we have extracted the means of producing 
 good; and those piles, which have hitherto glutted the pride of 
 despots, and covered the plots of La Vendee will soon furnish where- 
 withal to tame the traitors, and to overwhelm the disaffected." — 
 " The rebellious cities also, have afforded a large quantity of salt- 
 petre. Commune Affranchie, (that is, the noble city of Lyons reduced 
 in many parts to an heap of ruins) and Toulon will pay a second 
 tribute to our artillery." Report, ist February, 1794. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 47 
 
 endeavor to save some little matter from their experi- 
 mental philosophy. If he pleads his grants from the 
 Crown, he is ruined at the outset. If he pleads he has 
 received them from the pillage of superstitious corpora- 
 tions, this indeed will stagger them a little, because 5 
 they are enemies to all corporations, and to all religion. 
 However, they will soon recover themselves, and will tell 
 his Grace, or his learned council, that all such property 
 belongs to the nation; and that it would be more wise for 
 him, if he wishes to live the natural term of a citizen, (that 10 
 is, according to Condorcet's calculation, six months on an 
 average) not to pass for an usurper upon the national 
 property. This is what the Serjeants at law of the rights 
 of man, will say to the puny apprentices of the common 
 law of England. 15 
 
 Is the genius of philosophy not yet known ? You may 
 as well think the garden of the Tuilleries was well 
 protected with the cords of ribbon insultingly stretched 
 by the national assembly to keep the sovereign canaille 
 from intruding on the retirement of the poor king of the 20 
 French, as that such flimsy cobwebs will stand between 
 the savages of the revolution and their natural prey. 
 Deep philosophers are no triflers ; brave sans culottes are 
 no formalists. They will no more regard a Marquis of 
 Tavistock than an Abbot of Tavistock; the Lord of 25 
 Woburn will not be more respectable in their eyes than the 
 Prior of Woburn ; they will make no difference between 
 the superior of a Covent Garden of nuns and of a Covent 
 Garden of another description. They will not care a 
 rush whether his coat is long or short ; whether the color 30 
 be purple or blue and buff. They will not trouble their 
 heads, with what part of his head, his hair is cut from ; 
 and they will look with equal respect on a tonsure and a 
 crop. Their only question will be that of their Legendre, 
 
4S EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 or some other of their legislative butchers, how he cuts 
 up ? How he tallows in the cawl, or on the kidneys ? 
 
 Is it not a singular phenomenon, that, whilst tlie sans 
 culottes carcass-butchers and the philosophers of the 
 5 shambles are pricking their dotted lines upon his hide, 
 and, like the print of the poor ox that we see in the shop 
 windows at Charing Cross, alive as he is, and thinking no 
 harm in the world, he is divided into rumps, and sirloins, 
 and briskets, and into all sorts of pieces for roasting, 
 10 boiling, and stewing, that all the while they are measuring 
 him, his Grace is measuring me — is invidiously comparing 
 the bounty of the Crown with the deserts of the defender 
 of his order, and in the same moment fawning on those who 
 have the knife half out of the sheath ? Poor innocent! — 
 
 15 " Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery food, 
 
 And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood." 
 
 No man lives too long who lives to do with spirit and 
 suffer with resignation what Providence pleases to com- 
 mand or inflict ; but, indeed, they are sharp incommodities 
 
 20 which beset old age. It was but the other day, that, on 
 putting in order some things which had been brought- 
 here, on my taking leave of London forever, I looked 
 over a number of fine portraits, most of them of persons 
 now dead, but whose society, in my better days, made this 
 
 35 a proud and happy place. Amongst these was the picture 
 of Lord Keppel. It was painted by an artist worthy of 
 the subject, the excellent friend of that excellent man 
 from their earliest youth, and a common friend of us both, 
 with whom we lived for many years without a moment of 
 
 30 coldness, of peevishness, of jealousy, or of jar, to the day 
 of our final separation. 
 
 I ever looked on Lord Keppel as one of the greatest 
 and best men of his age ; and I loved, and cultivated him 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 49 
 
 accordingly. He was much in my lieart, and I believe I 
 was in his to the very last beat. It was after his trial at 
 Portsmouth that he gave me this picture. With what zeal 
 and anxious affection I attended him through that his 
 agony of glory, what part my son took in the early flush 5 
 and enthusiasm of his virtue, and the pious passion with 
 which he attached himself to all my connections, with 
 what prodigality we both squandered ourselves in courting 
 almost every sort of enmity for his sake, I believe he felt, 
 just as I should have felt such friendship on such an 10 
 occasion. I partook indeed of this honor, with several of 
 the first, and best, and ablest in the kingdom, but I was 
 behindhand with none of them ; and I am sure, that if to 
 the eternal disgrace of this nation, and to the total anni- 
 hilation of every trace of honor and virtue in it, things 15 
 had taken a different turn from what they did, I should 
 have attended him to the quarter-deck with no less good 
 will and more pride, though with far other feelings than 
 I partook of the general flow of national joy that attended 
 the justice that was done to his virtue. 20 
 
 Pardon, my lord, the feeble garrulity of age, which 
 loves to diffuse itself in discourse of the departed great. 
 At my years, we live in retrospect alone, and, wholly 
 unfitted for the society of vigorous life, we enjoy — the 
 best balm to all wounds — the consolation of friendship, 25 
 in those only whom we have lost forever. Feeling the 
 loss of Lord Keppel at all times, at no time did I feel it 
 so much as on the first day when I was attacked in the 
 House of Lords. 
 
 Had he lived, that reverend form would have risen in 30 
 its place, and, with a mild, parental reprehension to his 
 nephew, the Duke of Bedford, he would have told him 
 that the favor of that gracious Prince who had honored 
 his virtues with the government of the navy of Great 
 
so EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Britain, and with a seat in the hereditary great council of 
 his kingdom, was not undeservedly shown to the friend 
 of the best portion of his life, and his faithful companion 
 and counsellor under his rudest trials. He would have 
 5 told him, that, to whomever else these reproaches might 
 be becoming, they were not decorous in his near kindred. 
 He would have told him, that when men in that rank 
 lose decorum, they lose everything. 
 
 On that day I had a loss in Lord Keppel ; but the 
 
 10 public loss of him in this awful crisis — ! I speak from 
 much knowledge of the person, he never would have 
 listened to any compromise with the rabble rout of this 
 sans culotterie of France. His goodness of heart, his 
 reason, his taste, his public duty, his principles, his preju- 
 
 15 dices, would have repelled him forever from all connection 
 with that horrid medley of madness, vice, impiety, and 
 crime. 
 
 Lord Keppel had two countries, one of descent, and 
 one of birth. Their interest and their glory are the same, 
 
 20 and his mind was capacious of both. His family was 
 noble, and it was Dutch ; that is, he was of the oldest and 
 purest nobility that Europe can boast, among a people 
 renowned above all others for love of their native land. 
 Though it was never shown in insult to any human being, 
 
 25 Lord Keppel was something high. It was a wild stock 
 of pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted 
 the milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility ; and he 
 was not disinclined to augment it with new honors. He 
 valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse for 
 
 30 inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. 
 He considered it' as a sort of cure for selfishness and a 
 narrow mind ; conceiving that a man born in an elevated 
 place, in himself was nothing, but everything in what went 
 before, and what was to come after him. Without much 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 51 
 
 speculation, but by the sure instinct of ingenuous feelings, 
 and by the dictates of plain unsophisticated natural under- 
 standing, he felt, that no great Commonwealth could by 
 any possibility long subsist, without a body of some kind 
 or other of nobility, decorated with honor, and fortified 5 
 by privilege. This nobility forms the chain that connects 
 the ages of a nation, which otherwise (with Mr. Paine) 
 would soon be taught that no one generation can bind 
 another. He felt that no political fabric could be well 
 made without some such order of things as might, through 10 
 a series of time, afford a rational hope of securing unity, 
 coherence, consistency, and stability to the state. He 
 felt that nothing else can protect it against the levity of 
 courts, and the greater levity of the multitude. That to 
 talk of hereditary monarchy without anything else of 15 
 hereditary reverence in the commonwealth, was a low- 
 minded absurdity ; fit only for those detestable " fools 
 aspiring to be knaves," who began to forge in 1789, the 
 false money of the French constitution. — That it is 
 one fatal objection to all new fancied and new fabricated 20 
 republics, (among a people, who, once possessing such 
 an advantage, have wickedly and insolently rejected it), 
 that \h& prejudice of an old nobility is a thing that cannot 
 be made. It may be improved, it may be corrected, 
 it may be replenished : men may be taken from it, or 25 
 aggregated to it, but the thing itself is matter of inveterate 
 opinion, and therefore cannot be matter of mere positive 
 institution. He felt, that this nobility, in fact does not 
 exist in wrong of other orders of the state, but by them, 
 and for them. 3° 
 
 I knew the man I speak of ; and, if we can divine the 
 future, out of what we collect from the past, no person 
 living would look with more scorn and horror on the 
 impious parricide committed on all their ancestry, and 
 
52 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 on the desperate attainder passed on all their posterity, 
 by the Orleans, and tlie Rochefoucaults, and the Fay- 
 ettes, and the Viscomtes de Noailles, and the false Peri- 
 gords, and the long et catera of the perfidious sans 
 
 5 culottes of the court, who like demoniacs, possessed with a 
 spirit of fallen pride, and inverted ambition, abdicated 
 their dignities, disowned their families, betrayed the most 
 sacred of all trusts, and by breaking to pieces a great 
 link of society, and all the cramps and holdings of the 
 
 10 state, brought eternal confusion and desolation on their 
 country. For the fate of the miscreant parricides them- 
 selves he would have had no pity. Compassion for the 
 myriads of men, of whom the world was not worthy, who 
 by their means have perished in prisons, or on scaffolds, 
 
 15 or are pining in beggary and exile, would leave no room 
 in his, or in any well-formed mind, for any such sensa- 
 tion. We are not made at once to pity the oppressor and 
 the oppressed. 
 
 Looking to his Batavian descent, how could he bear to 
 
 20 behold his kindred, the descendants of the brave nobility 
 of Holland, whose blood, prodigally poured out, had, 
 more than all the canals, meers, and inundations of their 
 country, protected their independence, to behold them 
 bowed in the basest servitude to the basest and vilest of 
 
 25 the human race — in servitude to those who in no respect 
 were superior in dignity, or could aspire to a better place 
 than that of hangman to the tyrants to whose sceptred pride 
 they had opposed an elevation of soul that surmounted 
 and overpowered the loftiness of Castile, the haughtiness 
 
 30 of Austria, and the overbearing arrogance of France ! 
 
 Could he with patience bear, that the children of that 
 nobility, who would have deluged their country and given 
 it to the sea, rather than submit to Louis XIV. who was 
 then in his meridian glory, when his arms were conducted 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 53 
 
 by the Turennes, by the Luxembourgs, by the Boufflers ; 
 when his councils were directed by the Colberts, and the 
 Louvois ; when his tribunals were filled by the Lamoig- 
 nons and the Daguesseaus — that these should be given 
 up to the cruel sport of the Pichegrus, the Jourdans, 5 
 the Santerres, under the Rollands, and Brissots, and 
 Gorsas, and Robespierres, the Reubels, the Carnots, and 
 Talliens, and Dantons, and the whole tribe of regicides, 
 robbers, and revolutionary judges, that, from the rotten 
 carcass of their own murdered country, have poured 10 
 out innumerable swarms of the lowest, and at once the 
 most destructive of the classes of animated nature, which 
 like columns of locusts, have laid waste the fairest part 
 of the world. 
 
 Would Keppel have borne to see the ruin of the virtu- 15 
 ous patricians, that happy union of the noble and the 
 burgher, who, with signal prudence and integrity, had 
 long governed the cities of the confederate republic, the 
 cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying com- 
 merce to themselves, made it flourish in a manner unex- 20 
 ampled under their protection ? Could Keppel have borne 
 that a vile faction should totally destroy this harmonious 
 construction in favor of a robbing democracy founded on 
 the spurious rights of man ? 
 
 He was no great clerk, but he was perfectly well versed 25 
 in the interests of Europe ; and he could not have heard 
 with patience that the country of Grotius, the cradle of 
 the law of nations, and one of the richest repositories of 
 all law, should be taught a new code by the ignorant 
 flippancy of Thomas Paine, the presumptuous foppery of 30 
 La Fayette, with his stolen rights of man in his hand, the 
 wild, profligate intrigue and turbulency of Marat, and the 
 impious sophistry of Condorcet in his insolent addresses 
 to the Batavian Republic. 
 
54 EDMUND BURKE. 
 
 Could Keppel, who idolized the House of Nassau, who 
 was himself given to England along with the blessings of 
 the British and Dutch Revolutions, with revolutions of 
 stability, with revolutions which consolidated and married 
 5 the liberties and the interests of the two nations forever — 
 could he see the fountain of British liberty itself in servi- 
 tude to France ? Could he see with patience a Prince of 
 Orange expelled as a sort of diminutive despot, with 
 every kind of contumely, from the country which that 
 
 10 family of deliverers had so often rescued from slavery, and 
 obliged to live in exile in another country, which owes its 
 liberty to his house ? 
 
 Would Keppel have heard with patience, that the con- 
 duct to be held on such occasions was to become short 
 
 1 5 by the knees to the faction of the homicides, to entreat 
 them quietly to retire ? or if the fortune of war should 
 drive them from their first wicked and unprovoked inva- 
 sion, that no security should be taken, no arrangement 
 made, no barrier formed, no alliance entered into for the 
 
 20 security of that, which under a foreign name is the most 
 precious part of England ? What would he have said, if 
 it was even proposed that the Austrian Netherlands (which 
 ought to be a barrier to Holland, and the tie of an alli- 
 ance, to protect her against any species of rule that might 
 
 25 be erected, or even be restored in France) should be formed 
 into a republic under her influence, and dependent upon 
 her power ? 
 
 But, above all, what would he have said if he had heard 
 it made a matter of accusation against me by his nephew, 
 
 30 the Duke of Bedford, that I was the author of the war ? 
 Had I a mind to keep that high distinction to myself (as 
 from pride I might, but from justice I dare not), he would 
 have snatched his share of it from my hand, and held it 
 with the grasp of a dying convulsion to his end. 
 
A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD. 55 
 
 It would be a most arrogant presumption in me to 
 assume to myself the glory of what belongs to his Majesty, 
 and to his ministers, and to his Parliament, and to the far 
 greater majority of his faithful people ; but, had I stood 
 alone to counsel, and that all were determined to be s 
 guided by my advice, and to follow it implicitly, then I 
 should have been the sole author of a war. But it should 
 have been a war on my ideas and my principles. How- 
 ever, let his Grace think as he may of my demerits with 
 regard to the war with Regicide, he will find my guilt lo 
 confined to that alone. He never shall, with the smallest 
 color of reason, accuse me of being the author of a peace 
 with Regicide. But that is high matter, and ought not to 
 be mixed with anything of so little moment as what may 
 belong to me, or even to the Duke of Bedford. 15 
 
 I have the honor to be, &c., 
 
 Edmund Burke. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 3 1. To a Noble Lord. Earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833) was the 
 nobleman to whom this letter was addressed. He was nephew and 
 heir to the Marquis of Rockingham (from whom he inherited ^^40,000 
 a year), and was one of the largest landholders in Ireland. He was a 
 Whig grandee, a traditional leader of that party of which Charlemont 
 and Gratton were the representatives in Ireland. He conveyed most 
 delicately to Eurke, in a letter written immediately after his uncle's 
 death, July 3, 1782, Lord Rockingham's desire that all Burke's indebt- 
 edness to him should be cancelled : " I must recollect myself. It was 
 my duty to have informed you that certain bonds are cancelled by a 
 codicil of his will. He felt merit as he ought to have done, and he 
 never did an action in his life more acceptable to your sincere friend, 
 
 Fitzwilliam." 
 
 3 3. Duke of Bedford. For the history of the Duke of Bedford 
 and the House Of Russell, see the Introduction. 
 
 3 4. Earl of Lauderdale. James Maitland, eighth Earl of Lauder- 
 dale, was born at Hatton House in the parish of Ratho, Midlothian, 
 Jan. 26, 1759. H^ ^^^ educated at the high school and the University 
 of Edinburgh, spent one term at Trinity College, Oxford, and another 
 at Glasgow, and entered at Lincoln's Inn, Feb. 26, 1777. He was 
 elected to Parliament for Newport, Cornwall. His maiden speech (Feb. 
 26, 17S1) was in support of the second reading of Burke's bill for the 
 regulation of the civil list establishments. In August, 1792, he visited 
 France, accompanied by Dr. John Moore, the author of " Zeluco." He 
 witnessed the attack on the Tuilleries, and made the acquaintance of 
 Jean Pierre Brissot. He is said to have assumed " the rough costume 
 of Jacobinism." He was violent, eccentric, and spoke with a Scotch 
 accent. He was imposed upon by the Ireland forgeries of Shakespeare 
 and signed the attestation in their favor. He married, Aug. 15, 17S2, 
 Eleanor, only child of Anthony Todd, and had four sons, who died un- 
 
58 A-Q I'ES. 
 
 married. The second son, Anthony Maitland, tenth Earl of Lauder, 
 dale, died in 1863, and with him the English barony of Lauderdale 
 became extinct, but the Scotch earldom devolved on a cousin, Thomas 
 Maitland. 
 
 A daughter of James Maitland was married to James Balfour, and 
 the distinguished statesman Arthur James Balfour is her grandson. 
 See James Robertson, " Lady Blanche Balfour, a Reminiscence," Edin- 
 burgh and London, 1897. 
 
 3 9. The New Sect : the body of persons holding the doctrines of 
 the French revolutionists, whether speaking English or French. 
 
 3 13. Duke of Orleans (1747-93). Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of 
 Orleans, married the only daughter and heiress of the Duke of Pen- 
 thievre, grand admiral of France. With her enormous wealth, which 
 made him the richest man in France, he lived a life of cynical de- 
 bauchery. He visited London and introduced m Paris a fondness for 
 English sports, particularly horse racing (see Cowper's " Task," bk. ii, 
 11. 250-285). In various ways he displayed his liberalism. He 
 headed the minority of forty-seven noblemen who seceded from their 
 own estate and joined the Tiers fitat. The "gold of Orleans " was 
 said to be the cause of the taking of the Bastille. He accepted the 
 title of Citoyen figalite, conferred on him by the Commune of Paris, 
 and was elected deputy for Paris to the Convention. He voted for the 
 death of the king. Suspicion fell upon him, and he was guillotined 
 during the Reign of Terror (Nov. 6, 1793). 
 
 3 14. Jean Pierre Brissot (1754-93) was the author of certain 
 works on the philosophy of law. He was a disciple of Rousseau, and 
 was continually occupied with humanitarian schemes which he pro- 
 moted in pamphlets and journals. As an agent of the " Society of the 
 Friends of the Blacks," he visited America, but returned to France at 
 the outbreak of the Revolution. In the National Assembly he was a 
 Girondist or Brissotin. He was guillotined Oct. 31, 1793. 
 
 3 25. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the Unitarian philosopher and 
 scientist, was a native of the West Riding of Yorkshire. He dwelt 
 upon speculative theology, compiled a " History of the Corruptions of 
 Christianity," and engaged in polemic controversy at the same time 
 that he was making chemical experiments and enjoying, in Birming- 
 ham, the friendship of the Lunar Society or Soho Circle — of Watt 
 and Boulton and Darwin. He discovered oxygen and investigated the 
 nature of gases. His open and hearty sympathy with the French revo- 
 lutionists made him unpopular, and in 1791, upon the anniversary of 
 the fall of the Bastille, a mob destroyed his chapel and house. His 
 
NOTES. 59 
 
 last years were spent in Pennsylvania at Northumberland upon the 
 Susquehanna. 
 
 3 25. Thomas Paine (1736-1809), the author of "Rights of Man" 
 and " Age of Reason," was the son of a Quaker staymaker in Nor- 
 folk, and came to America with letters of introduction from Franklin. 
 His paper "The Crisis" restored courage to the fainting troops at 
 Valley Forge. His pamphlet entitled " Common Sense " " passed 
 through the continent like an electric spark. It everywhere flashed 
 conviction, and aroused a determined spirit, which resulted in the 
 Declaration of Independence upon the 4th of July ensuing. The name 
 of Paine was dear to every Whig heart, and had resounded throughout 
 Europe " (Elkanah Watson). " Rights of Man," dedicated to Wash- 
 ington, was an answer to Burke's " Reflections on the French Revolu- 
 tion." It had an enormous circulation, though the government tried 
 to suppress it. Paine was indicted for treason, but, being elected by 
 Calais to the French Convention, he was allowed to leave England 
 under sentence of outlawry. 
 
 4 6. William Wyndham Grenville (1759-1834), son of George 
 Grenville, first Lord of the Treasury (1763-65), was a cousin of Pitt and 
 a brother of the Marquis of Buckingham. He was successively 
 Speaker of the House of Commons (1789), Secretary of State (1789), 
 and Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1791)- He was a scholar and chan- 
 cellor of the University of Oxford. He edited the "Letters of the 
 Earl of Chatham to Thomas Pitt " {1804), and privately printed an 
 annotated edition of Homer and " Nugae Metricae " (1824). Lord 
 Grenville replied to the Duke of Bedford's attack, in the House of 
 Lords, and William Windham defended Burke in the Commons. 
 
 4 25. John Zisca, the military hero of the Hussites, or Moravians, 
 was bom near Budweis in Bohemia about 1360. He strongly fortified 
 Mount Tabor and won many victories over the Imperial troops. He 
 was blind of an eye, but was a resourceful, zealous leader. It is not the 
 only occasion upon which Burke alludes to him; in a speech in 1782 
 he compared Fox to Zisca. 
 
 4 34. Lord Verulam. For Francis Bacon's theory which Burke 
 refers to here, see "Novum Orgahum," bk. i, Aphorisms 79, 80; bk. ii, 
 17, 29; "Advancement of Learning,'' bk. ii ; and "De. Aug. Sci.," 
 bk. iii, ch. i. 
 
 5 7. Though hardly to be classed with the living. " His health, 
 though not intellectual powers, had been for some time in a declining 
 state, which terminated in such debility and loss of muscular energy as 
 to render motion and his usual exercise impracticable. To this state 
 
60 AOTES. 
 
 of unexpected if not premature decay, his habits of application, literary 
 pursuits, and former laborious Parliamentary exertions no doubt tended. 
 The stomach very imperfectly and painfully performed its office, and 
 emaciation ensued. . . . And when the loss of his son destroyed that 
 buoyancy of hope so long and fondly entertained of witnessing his suc- 
 cess in life, no active principle of vitality remained to counteract the 
 inroads of infirmity" (Prior, "Life of Burke," p. 448). 
 
 S 19. Unplumb the dead for bullets. That is, literally, " stripping 
 the dead of their leaden coffins after making them (not the dead, but 
 the coffins) into bullets — a circumstance perfectly notorious at the 
 time this ' Letter ' was written." The real significance of the passage 
 seems to have been misunderstood, and certain errors of interpretation 
 furnished material for satire to the writers of the Anti-Jacobin. Thus 
 Robert Adair in an answer to Burke writes : " If Mr. Burke had been 
 content with unplumbing a dead Russell and hewing Him (observe — 
 not the coffin, but Him — the old dead Russell himself) into grape and 
 canister to sweep down the whole generation of his descendants," etc. 
 The comment of the editor of the Anti-Jacobin upon this extraordi- 
 nary criticism is that the writer " transmutes the illustrious Head of the 
 house of Russell into a metal to which it is not for us to say how near 
 or how remote his affinity may possibly have been" (•' Poetry of Anti- 
 Jacobin," p. 53, 2d ed., London, 1800). 
 
 5 24. Call up the prophetic dead : see I Sam. xxviii, 11-20. 
 
 63. A total retreat. Burke had announced his intention of leaving 
 the House of Commons as soon as he had brought to an end the prose- 
 cution of Hastings. He had hardly applied for the Chiltern Hundreds 
 when his son, Richard Burke, died (August, 1794). 
 
 6 18. Assuage the sorrows. Gillray published a caricature (Feb. 
 26, 1796) called, " Pity the sorrows of a poor old man," presenting a 
 view of the entrance to Bedford House, Bloomsbury. 
 
 6 27. The London Corresponding Society was an organization 
 founded by Thomas Hardy, the shoemaker, in 1792, to unite the scat- 
 tered forces of liberalism. 
 
 7 29. Old Palace Yard was southwest of the Houses of Parliament. 
 There the pillory stood, and there Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded. 
 In the southeast corner stood the house through which the Gunpowder 
 Plot conspirators carried their powder barrels into the vault, and on 
 this spot Guy Fawkes and three of his fellow conspirators were exe- 
 cuted (1606). New Palace Yard is the space enclosed within the gilded 
 railings in front of Westminster Hall. Here Perkin Warbeck was set 
 in the stocks, William Prynne and Leighton and Gates were pilloried. 
 
NOTES. 61 
 
 7 30. The Dukes and Earls of Brentford. The two kings of Brent- 
 ford appear in Buckingham's satiric farce, " The Rehearsal." They 
 enter hand in hand, smelling at the same nosegay, dance, sing, and 
 walk together, 'like Juno's swans coupled and inseparable.' "The 
 Rehearsal " is a composite work, largely written by George Villiers, 
 second Duke of Buckingham, who 
 
 In the course of one revolving moon 
 
 Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon. 
 
 Deyden. 
 
 8 8. Few and idle years. At this time the Duke of Bedford was 
 thirty years old. 
 
 8 10. Quantum meruit : " as much as he deserved." It is a legal 
 phrase, an action founded on an engagement that the defendant would 
 pay to the plaintiff " as much as his services should deserve." 
 
 8 11. Poor rich man. William Cobbett in his preface to the Ameri- 
 can edition of the " Letter to a Noble Lord," Philadelphia, 1796, writes : 
 " This Letter, besides its other merits, contains a most excellent lesson for 
 the ' poor rich men ' in this country. When I read of the Duke of Bedford 
 presiding at a revolutionary club, I am naturally led to compare him to 
 the poor rich merchants and others we sometimes see hoisted on town- 
 meeting stage, stirring up king mob to gut their stores and burn their 
 houses. These wealthy sans-culottes are here exactly what the Duke 
 of Bedford is in England. Like him, their all depends on the stability 
 of the government, and yet, like him, they are endeavoring to shake it 
 to the ground. Mr. Burke tells this poor innocent Duke, that the cut- 
 throat Philosophers would laugh at his parchment and his wax ; and 
 would they not do the same here ? . Take care then, you rich, 
 fat-brained, round-headed demagogues, you American Dukes of Bed- 
 ford ; take care, for you vrill be the first that will fall a sacrifice to the 
 principles you propagate." 
 
 8 25. Quantities incommensurable. Burke was at Beaconsfield 
 when he wrote this " Letter. " His friend Dr. French Laurence, one 
 of the most learned civilians of the day, superintended the publication 
 in London. " Some of the learned civilian's clients would not have 
 been pleased, on seeing him, in his old wig and gown, bending over his 
 papers in court, and, as they imagined, carefully watching over their 
 interests, if they had known that when he looked the gravest and 
 seemed most absorbed just before rising to speak, he was really correct- 
 ing a proof of the ' Letter to a Noble Lord,' or hurriedly writing a note 
 to Burke on the subject in order to be in time to save the post " (Mac- 
 Knight, " Life and Times of Edmund Burke," vol. iii, p. 653). 
 
62 NOTES. 
 
 Laurence's correspondence wilh Burke concerning changes and 
 corrections in the text has been published under the title " Epistolary 
 Correspondence of Edmund Burke and Dr. Laurence," London, 1827. 
 Laurence objected to the phrase " quantities incommensurable," which 
 he considered to be " a little mathematical inaccuracy " (" Correspond- 
 ence," p. 39). Burke accepted his friend's alteration, but added in explana- 
 tion, " Geometrically the term is proper enough — that is called simply 
 and without relation, an incommensurable quantity or line which has no 
 common measure or common aliquot part to measure it with some 
 other. Everything to be measured with another must certainly refer to 
 that to which it is to be measured, and this finds whether it be or be 
 not commensurable — but I am sure it is common to use the term alone 
 and absolute, because the usual reference is known, as the side of a 
 square is incommensurable with the diagonal. It was a relation of 
 course to the lines before spoken of. But it is perhaps less reconcilable 
 to moral than to geometrical propriety. However, arrogant as it may 
 seem, it is no way uncommon to say, that such or such a thing as I 
 do, for such or such a person, or on such or such a motive, is what no 
 money could make me undertake — or such as no money could com- 
 pensate to me " (" Correspondence," p. 42). 
 
 It will be seen that Burke had grasped the fundamental conceptions 
 of the mathematics, and had illustrated his thought by a theory of ser- 
 vices so continuous and so great as not to be measured by anything 
 divisible into aliquot parts. In the thirteenth edition the reading is : 
 " Between money and service of this kind (I said it long since when I 
 was not myself concerned) there is no common measurer." 
 
 8 29. More than sufficient. In writing to Dr. Laurence, Burke said 
 that his " Letter " was in " discharge of the debt I think due to ray own 
 and to my son's memory, and to those who ought not to be considered 
 prodigal in giving me what is beyond my merits, but not beyond my 
 debts, as you know. The public — I won't dispute longer about it — 
 has overpaid me. I wish I could overpay my creditors. They eat deep 
 on what was designed to maintain me" ( "Correspondence, "p. 43). 
 
 9 4. One style to a gracious benefactor. Burke wrote " one lan- 
 guage for a gracious benefactor, another for a proud and insulting foe." 
 William Windham, Secretary-at-War, who, like Dr. Laurence, read 
 the proof-sheets, feared that the expression would be misunderstood. 
 He thought the Jacobins might say, " He is a man of a double tongue 
 with two opposite languages for the same thing.'' At Windham's request, 
 transmitted to Burke by Dr. Laurence, that the idea should be a little 
 more opened, Burke wrote, " Can anything in the world be more com- 
 
NOTES. 63 
 
 mon than to use disqualifying phrases with regard to your friends when 
 they are treating you with kindness, and to use the very contrary to 
 enemies that crush you ? — 'I don't deserve, my dear Laurence, that 
 you should take all this trouble for me in the midst of your pressing 
 business' — would this be a proper answer for those who should say 
 I was unworthy of having this done ? " ( " Correspondence," p. 42). 
 Burke, however (or Laurence for him), changed language to style. 
 Does the change relieve the passage of the fault that Windham 
 indicated ? 
 
 9 8. My conduct with regard to economy. Burke's participation 
 in Economical Reform in 1782 is thus described by the Earl of Stan- 
 hope : " A Message was brought down to both Houses from the 
 King recommending an effectual plan of retrenchment and economy, 
 to be carried through all branches of the Public Expenditure and to 
 include His Majesty's own Civil List. Lord Shelbume who moved the 
 Address of Thanks in the Peers, would undertake, he said, to pledge 
 himself, that the present was not as usual a mere Ministerial Addreste ; 
 ' it was the genuine language of the Sovereign himself, proceeding from 
 the heart.' In the House of Commons Burke was lavish of his 
 praises. ' This,' he cried, ' is the best of Messages to the best of 
 people from the best of Kings! ' But though Burke might be blamed 
 for the exuberance of his panegyric, he incurred far heavier censure 
 shortly afterwards by the curtailment of his Bill. When his measure 
 was brought in, it was found to spare several of those institutions 
 against which he had inveighed with the greatest energy two years 
 before. Thus, besides a host of smaller affairs, once denounced and 
 now reclaimed, both the Duchies of Cornwall and of Lancaster were 
 left wholly unreformed. Some of these modifications in his original 
 design might no doubt be prompted by Burke's own maturer thoughts ; 
 in others, it is probable that he was merely called on to fulfil the de- 
 cisions of the cabinet in which he had no share. Here was one of the 
 many evils of excluding that great genius from the Councils of the 
 State. 
 
 " Among the offices to be abolished by this bill was that of the third 
 Secretary of State, or of Secretary of State for the Colonies, which it 
 was thought useless to keep when the colonies themselves were gone. 
 The Lords of Trade and Plantations, the Lords of Police in Scotland, 
 the principal officers of the Great Wardrobe and of the Jewel Office, 
 the Treasurer of the Chambers, and the Cofferer of the Household, 
 and the six clerks of the Board of Green Cloth were, with other rub- 
 bish, swept away. It was promised that no pension exceeding three 
 
64 NOTES. 
 
 hundred pounds a year should be granted to any one person, — that 
 the whole amount of the pensions granted in any one year should not 
 exceed six hundred pounds, ■ — until the whole Pension I jst should be 
 reduced to ;£'90,ooo. There were also most praiseworthy regulations 
 to secure the Secret Service Money from abuses by limiting its amount 
 and imposing a strict oath on the Secretaries of State who dispensed it. 
 (It is to the difficulties with which Burke struggled in this bill that he 
 refers when he says, " I was loaded with hatred for everything that was 
 withheld, and with obloquy for everything that was given." — Ed.) To 
 Burke's high honor, we must add that he was far from sparing his 
 own office. On the contrary, he brought in a separate bill to regulate 
 the Paymaster's department and prevent enormous balances from 
 accumulating in his hands, as had often happened heretofore, to the 
 great profit of the holder of that place. . . . This measure, dignifying 
 and dignified by the great name of Burke, as it seems to a later age, 
 passed the House of Commons at the time certainly with little or no 
 resistance from his enemies, but with quite as little celebration from 
 his friends. In July it reached the Peers, where Lord Thurlow found 
 great fault with it, and again did his utmost to defeat his colleagues, ■ — 
 happily, however, in vain" (Lord Mahon's "History of England from 
 the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles," 3d ed., vol. vii, 
 pp. 163-165). 
 
 9 27. The retrenchments which the act effected, though curtailed, 
 amounted to upwards of ;^7 2,000 a year. The arrears upon the Civil 
 List at this time were about ;^300,ooo. 
 
 10 14. Astronomers have supposed. The comet referred to was 
 unquestionably that subsequently known as Halley's comet, the first 
 of all the clan of comets to have its periodic return predicted and 
 verified. Dr. Edmund Harvey, moved to a study of cometary orbits 
 by Newton's brilliant discovery of the law of gravitation, had found one 
 of the historic comets returning to visibility at least on five different 
 occasions after an interval of about seventy-five years. More remark- 
 able still, the inequality of this period — it being now less, and now 
 greater than that j ust stated — led Halley to consider the perturbative 
 action of the larger planets, and finally to venture a prediction of the 
 return of the same comet in the latter part of the year 1858. It was 
 of this comet, then known as the great comet of 1680, and whose 
 motions, disturbed by the attraction of Jupiter, had excited absorbing 
 interest, that Halley made the astonishing statement that its perihelion 
 distance had been only 590,000 miles, and that at the time of its crossing 
 the earth's orbit at descending node the comet was only distant a semi- 
 
NOTES. 65 
 
 diameter of the sun, or 440,000 miles, from the earth's path, and that if 
 the comet had been delayed thirty-one days (or had met the earth in 
 Cancer), it would h^ve been a philosophical question as to what might 
 have happened. 
 
 The careful and thoroughly scientific statements of Halley regarding 
 the comet of 1680 were, however, taken up by William Whiston, the 
 astronomical successor of Newton, and made the basis of several 
 theories now remarkable only for their absurdity and as emanating from 
 the Cambridge professor of astronomy. 
 
 Whiston attributed the deluge to a cometary collision, and invented 
 the conception that the erratic worlds known as comets were the 
 residence of the damned. According to this Whiston theory, a comet 
 was the awful prison-house in which the wretched tenants were alter- 
 nately wheeled into the remotest regions of cold and darkness and 
 into the very vicinity of the sun with its overpowering light and de- 
 vouring fire. It is this theory of Whiston that Burke hints at in the 
 closing phrase, and it is more than probable that it was from Whiston 
 that Burke absorbed the statement so curiously quoted. 
 
 10 19. From his horrid hair 
 
 Shakes pestilence and war. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," II, 710. 
 10 20. With fear of change 
 
 Perplexes monarchs. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," I, 59S. 
 
 10 26. Jacoblnized. The Jacobin Club was a society of French 
 revolutionists — gentlemen and men of letters — who met in 1789 in the 
 Jacobin Convent in Paris. The club was soon controlled by the more 
 violent and hysterical of the revolutionary leaders, with Robespierre 
 foremost. Similar societies were organized in the principal towns of 
 France. The club was suppressed in November, 1794. 
 
 10 28. Cf. Introduction, p. xix. 
 
 10 30. " Wild and savage insurrection." During the first week 
 of June, 1780, occurred the Lord George Gordon " No Popery" riots. 
 Lord George gave notice in the House of Commons May 26, 1780, that 
 on the second of June he would present a petition against toleration of 
 Roman Catholics, signed by a hundred thousand men who would 
 accompany him to the House. On Friday zd of June he harangued 
 a mob of forty thousand in St. George's Fields, after which, under the 
 name of the Protestant Association, they marched six abreast over Lon- 
 don Bridge and through the city to Old Palace Yard. Two Catholic 
 chapels were set on fire before the crowd dispersed at night. For 
 
W-) NOTES. 
 
 neaily six days the mob, crying " No popery," plundered and burnt. 
 Sir George Savile's and Lord Mansfield's houses were destroyed, and 
 Lord Sandwich was with difficulty rescued from the hands of the popu- 
 lace. Newgate Prison was burnt to the ground and the prisoners 
 released. Two attacks were made upon the Bank of England, but the 
 soldiers repulsed the mob. The loss of property was estimated at 
 ;^i8o,ooo. Two hundred and ten of the rioters were killed, and two 
 hundred and forty-eight wounded. Lord George Gordon was com- 
 mitted to the Tower and tried for high treason, but acquitted, as there 
 was sufficient evidence that he was, as Burke pronounces him here, a 
 madman. His pertinacious opposition to both parties in the House 
 gave rise to the saying that there were three parties in Parliament, — 
 the Ministry, the Opposition, and Lord George Gordon. 
 
 11 10. Death dance. During the Reign of Terror (1793-94) a Pied- 
 montese song and dance called the Carmagnole became popular. It 
 was "the death dance of democratic revolution." The bombastic style 
 cultivated by the pamphleteers of the Revolution was also called Car- 
 magnole. And the soldiers in the Revolutionary Army came to be 
 dubbed in the same manner. 
 
 11 18. National Convention. See H. Morse Stephens, " History of 
 the French Revolution," vol. ii, pp. 151 and 517. 
 
 11 26. Frederick North, second Earl of Guildford, better knovvn as 
 Lord North, was born April 13, 1732, educated at Eton and at Christ 
 Church, Oxford, and elected to Parliament for Banbury when twenty-two 
 years of age. On the fall of the first Rockingham ministry he was 
 made paymaster-general by the Duke of Grafton. His " wit and pleas- 
 antry " and his " delightful temper " made him popular with the House 
 and with the people. He succeeded the Duke of Grafton in the pre- 
 miership in March, 1770, and continued in office for twelve years. 
 " The English nation," says Leslie Stephen, " which had a Burke and 
 a Chatham amongst its statesmen, had to be governed by a North, in 
 humble submission to the gross stupidity of a. George III." The 
 king, who had acquired control over the great Whig families, needed a 
 minister who would unquestionably do his will. And such an one he 
 found in Lord North. After the surrender at Yorktown Lord North 
 resigned, but in April, 1783, formed a coalition with Fox and the Duke 
 of Portland. Fox's India Bill, which was really drawn by Burke, was 
 the cause of the overthrow of the coalition, and Lord North withdrew 
 from public life. He died August 5, 1792. 
 
 See " The Correspondence of George III with Lord North." Ed. 
 by W. Bodham Donne, 2 vols., 1867. 
 
NOTES. 67 
 
 12 4. Ipse diem. "jEneid,"iii, 201,202 : "Palinurus himself declared 
 that he could not distinguish night from day in the heavens, and that 
 he did not remember the course in the midst of the sea." 
 
 13 21. To forward those abilities: a reference to Charles James 
 Fox. 
 
 13 22. Undertaker : a projector or promoter. The word, like " cas- 
 ket," has unhappily taken on a peculiar and sombre meaning. Sir Wil- 
 liam Siemens (1823-83), a native of Hanover and ignorant of English, 
 visited an " undertaker " under the idea that he was the proper person 
 to take up and dispose of his invention. 
 
 13 25. In that period of difficulty. After a long digression upon 
 his habit and principle of deriving all aid from others Burke resumed 
 his immediate subject with — " In that period of difficulty and danger 
 then" etc. The word " then " seemed to Dr. Laurence too feeble 
 a reference and conviction. " I have put it," he writes, " more 
 pointedly, and to make it more so have introduced a word ' ever ' into 
 the preceding sentence." Notice the effect of this slight change in 
 recovering the thread of discourse. 
 
 16 10-19. This Ciceronian period is a good example of the style 
 that Burke admired and strove to attain. Sir Philip Francis, writing to 
 Lord Holland, says that Cicero was " the model on which he [Burke} 
 labored to form his own character, in eloquence, in policy, in ethics 
 and philosophy." See Dilke, " Papers of a Critic," p. 311. Compare 
 this sentence of Burke's with the following from Cicero's oration upon 
 Archias : " Nam ceterae neque temporum sunt neque aetatum omnium 
 neque locorum : haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, 
 secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant 
 domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusti- 
 cantur." 
 
 16 22. All monstrous, all prodigious things. " Paradise Lost," bk. 
 ii, 625. 
 
 Cuckoo-like. The cuckoo lays its eggs in other birds' nests. 
 
 For you know nuncle 
 
 The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long 
 
 That its had it head bit off by it young. 
 
 " King Lear," I, iv, 235. 
 
 16 24. These obscene harpies. " jEneid," vi, 289. 
 16 note. Tristius haud illis. "^Eneid," iii, 214-218. 
 
 So foul a plague for human crime 
 Ne'er issued from the Stygian slime, — 
 
68 NOTES. 
 
 A maid above, a bird below, 
 
 Noisome and foul the belly's flow, 
 
 The hands are taloned. Famine bleak 
 
 Sits ever ghastly on the cheek. 
 
 Conington's tfanslation. 
 
 17 4. " Hamlet," III, iv, 48-51. 
 
 Heaven's face doth glow. 
 Yea, this solidity and compound mass, 
 \A'ith tristful visage, as against the doom, 
 Is thought-sick at the act. 
 
 18 7. I heaved the lead. Notice the figure. Much of Burke's 
 nautical knowledge came from his acquaintance with Admiral Keppel. 
 
 19 16. Four and a half per cents. The Leeward Islands, from 
 ■whence the four and one-half per cent fund proceeded, had been first 
 granted to an Earl of Marlborough and they had afterwards become 
 the property of <t Lord Carlisle. Finally, a Lord Willoughby had 
 obtained leave to go out with settlers on payment to Lord Carlisle of 
 one-half of every profit that might be made. They came at last back 
 to the crown in consequence of a resignation from Lord Kinnoul, <t 
 successor of Lord Carlisle. So early as 1663 certain duties of four and 
 a half per cent were granted by the assemblies of inhabitants for the 
 first time for the defense and fortification of the islands. In 1701 an 
 inquiry took place in the House of Commons on the subject of the 
 misapplication of the product of that fund, grounded on a petition pre- 
 sented by the merchants and planters of Barbadoes and connected with 
 the other islands in question, and in consequence of an instruction from 
 a committee of the House, an address was moved to request her 
 Majesty to give orders to have the produce of the fund appropriated 
 to the original purposes ; an answer was received from Mr. Secretary 
 Vernon approving of the design, and an act was at length passed plac- 
 ing the fund upon its proper footing and limiting it to its proper 
 objects ("Parliamentary History," 32, 855). No pension had been set- 
 tled upon this fund until that of Lord Chatham. It was at one time 
 proposed to provide for Lord Auckland out of it, but the great seal 
 was never affixed to it. 
 
 19 33. My publications. In the " Advertisement to the Reader " 
 prefixed to vol. iv of the collected works of Edmund Burke (London, 
 1802) — being vol. i of the posthumous works — the editors write : 
 " The late Mr. Burke from a principle of unaffected humility, which they 
 who were the most intimately acquainted with his character, best know 
 10 have been in his estimation one of the most important moral duties, 
 
NOTES. 69 
 
 never himself made any collection of the various publications with 
 which during a period of forty years he adorned and enriched the litera- 
 ture of this country. When, however, the rapid and unexampled 
 demand for his ' Reflexions on the Revolution of France ' had un- 
 equivocally testified his celebrity as a writer, some of his friends so far 
 prevailed upon him, that he permitted them to put forth a regular 
 edition of his works. Accordingly three volumes in quarto appeared 
 under that title in 1792, printed for the late Mr. Dodsley." 
 
 ■ At his death Burke committed his papers to the care of Dr. F. 
 Laurence and Dr. W. King (Bishop of Rochester). The posthumous 
 works were completed in eight volumes in 1827. 
 
 20 15. St. Stephen's is sometimes used as a synonym for Parlia- 
 ment. It was a chapel built by King Stephen about 1133. After its 
 surrender to Edward VI about 1 548 it was applied to the uses of Par- 
 liament. Lord Lytton has a fine poem " St. Stephen's" (March, i860) 
 dedicated to Lord Lyndhurst. 
 
 21 7. Political economy did not originate in England, as Burke sup- 
 poses, but in Italy ; the first chair for the teaching of economy was 
 established at Naples. In the seventeenth century in England political 
 economy was little more than practical politics. Locke and his con- 
 temporaries in their discussion of questions of money developed what 
 might be called a mercantile school of political economy. The epoch- 
 making " Wealth of Nations " was published by Adam Smith in 1776. 
 Burke is referring to an earlier time when his own studies anticipated 
 those of Smith. " Burke," said Adam Smith, " is the only man I ever 
 knew who thinks on economic subjects exactly as I do without any 
 previous communication having passed between us " (Bisset, " Life of 
 Burke," vol. ii, 429). " In political knowledge Burke was a million- 
 naire" (Goldwin Smith, Cornhill Magazine, vol. Ixxiv, 21). 
 
 21 22. Nitor in adversum : I make my way against opposition. 
 
 Niter in adversum, nee me, qui caetera vincit 
 Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi. 
 
 Ovid, " Met.," ii, 72. 
 
 22 33. Barr^ and Dunning. In July, 1782, Lord Shelburne was put 
 at the head of the ministry. The Rockingham party resigned, and 
 Burke was succeeded by Colonel Barre, Fox by Thomas Townshend, 
 and Lord John Cavendish by William Pitt. A caricature by Sayer 
 entitled " Paradise Lost " represents Fox and Burke cast out of the 
 ministerial paradise, the gate of which is surmounted by the faces of 
 Shelburne, Barre, and Dunning. Under Lord Shelburne's adminis- 
 
70 NOTES. 
 
 tratioii, John Dunning (1731-83) accepted a pension of ;^400o a year; 
 Barre's pension of ;^30oo a year was the cause of much complaint by 
 the Tories, who compared it with the poor reward given to Rodney for 
 his victory (April 12, 1782) over DeGrasse. Sayer compared Barre to 
 
 Belisarius : 
 
 Rome's veteran fought her rebel foes 
 
 And thrice her empire saved ; 
 
 Vet through her streets, bow'd down with woes, 
 
 An humble pittance craved. 
 
 Our soldier fought a better fight, 
 Political contention ; 
 And grateful ministers requite 
 His service with a pension. 
 
 22 34. John Dunning was an attorney with a lucrative practice. He 
 was counsel for Wilkes. In 1776 his practice is said to have been 
 worth ;^io,ooo per annum. Shortly before his death he was promoted 
 to the peerage as Baron Ashburton. 
 
 While the Bill for Economical Reform was still pending " between 
 the proposition and the execution " of Burke's plan. Lord Rockingham 
 consented to grant the large pensions before mentioned to Lord Ash- 
 burton and Barre. This last was above ten times the amount " which 
 in Lord Rockingham's own judgment, as expressed in the new bill, 
 ought henceforth to be granted to any one person whatsoever!" Lord 
 Shelburne in the House of Peers produced a letter showing that the 
 first proposal of this enormous pension had come from Lord Rocking- 
 ham himself. This is the explanation of Burke's declaration : " I was 
 thus left to support the grants of a name ever dear to me," etc. 
 
 24 1. Parsimony is not economy. In 1780 Burke outlined his plan 
 of economical reform : " WhUe enforcing the necessity of frugality, and 
 recommending to the minister the old and valuable Roman apothegm, 
 magnum vectigal est parsimonia, he made a false quantity, rendering the 
 second word vectigal. Lord North in a low tone corrected the error, 
 when the orator with his usual presence of mind, turned the mistake to 
 advantage. ' The Noble Lord,' said he, ' hints that I have erred in the 
 quantity of a principal word in my quotation ; I rejoice at it ; because 
 it gives me an opportunity of repeating the inestimable adage,' and with 
 increased energy he thundered forth — ' Magnum vect-i-gal est parsimo- 
 nia ' " (Prior, " Life of Burke," p. 184). 
 
 25 33. Sans-culottes : literally, " without breeches " ; the designa- 
 tion of the poor Parisians, in dirty and negligent attire, who took part 
 in the early stages of the Revolution. 
 
NOTES. 71 
 
 26 6. Mr. John Thelwall (1764-1834) was a political agitator and 
 intrepid democrat, who was tried with John -Home Tooke, the radical 
 candidate for Westminster, and Thomas Hardy, the founder of the 
 London Corresponding Society, for treason, and was acquitted, 1794. 
 He was a lecturer on elocution. His poems were unfavorably reviewed 
 by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review, ii, 1 97, and Thelwall replied 
 to the reviewer, — '*A Letter to Mr. Francis Jeffrey," Edinburgh, 1804. 
 
 Coleridge knew him well, and characterized him as "intrepid, elo- 
 quent, and honest." Coleridge showed him the romantic Alfoxden 
 glen, and said, " Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in ! " 
 " Nay ! Citizen Samuel," he replied, " it is rather a place to make a 
 man forget that there is any necessity for treason " ( Coleridge's 
 "Table Talk," July 26, 1830). 
 
 Thelwall published a reply to the " Letter to a Noble Lord," entitled 
 " Sober Reflections on the Seditious and Inflammatory Letter of the 
 Right Honorable Edmund Burke to a Noble Lord," London, 1796. 
 
 26 12. Cludere ludum impudentiae jussit. " At nunc adulescentuli 
 nostri deducuntur in scholas istoriim qui rhetores vocantur, quos paulo 
 ante Ciceronis tempora extitisSe nee placuisse maioribus nostris ex eo 
 manifestum est, quod Crasso et Domitio censoribus cludere, ut ait 
 Cicero, ludum impudentiae jussi sunt" (Tacitus, " Dialogus de Ora- 
 toribus," C. 35). 
 
 " L. Licinius Crassus, the orator and C n. Domitius Ahenobarbus were 
 censors in 92 B.C. This edict has also been preserved by Gellius and by 
 Suetonius " (Alfred Gudeman, Ed. ' Tacitus,' 1894). 
 
 Professor Gudeman also notes that the phrase ' ludum impudentiae ' 
 is cited from " Cic. de orat.," iii, 24, 93 ff., when Crassus justifies his 
 course in this affair at some length. 
 
 Bohn translates the lines of Tacitus : " On the other hand our modern 
 youth are sent to the mountebank schools of certain declaimers called 
 rhetoricians ; a set of men who made their first appearance in Rome a 
 little before the time of Cicero. And that they were by no means 
 approved by our ancestors plainly appears from their being enjoined 
 under the censorship of Crassus and Domitius to shut up their schools 
 of impudence as Cicero expresses it." 
 
 27 3. Homer sometimes nods. Horace, " Ars Poet.," 359. 
 
 Quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus 
 Verum operi longo fas est obrepere somnum. 
 
 [Sometimes even the good Homer nods. But in so long a work it is allowable 
 if there should be a drowsy interval or so.] 
 
72 A'OTES. 
 
 27 8. " Tempest," IV, i, 157. 
 
 We are such stuff 
 As dreams are made on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
 27 13. Leviathan: cf. Job xli, Isa. xxvii, i. 
 
 Wend we by sea ? the drad Leviathan 
 Turns upside-down the boyling ocean. 
 
 Sylvestek, trans, of Du Bartas. 
 
 That sea beast 
 Leviathan, which God of all his works 
 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. 
 
 " Paradise Lost," I, 201. 
 
 27 16. " Lay floating many a rood," " Paradise Lost," bk. i, 196. 
 The Duke of Bedford's friends sharply criticised this singular image of 
 the whale. They declared Burke's description to be inaccurate, and 
 " that the blubber and fins of a whale could not be correctly referred 
 to as being visible while the ponderous, creature was supinely floating in 
 the deep." Burke's friend Mrs. Crewe called upon Windham to estab- 
 lish the accuracy of Burke's description ; whereupon Burke wrote to her: 
 " As to you, you are in a worse situation than the dependants on insolent 
 great ladies. They swallow nothing but toads, but you who play court 
 to us scribblers must swallow whales, blubber and all. To a lady of 
 Greenland, however, this would be no penalty, ^'ou were in the right 
 to appeal to Windham. He is the only gentleman in England who 
 ever was on a whale fishery. He knows how to stick a harpoon in 
 their blubber better than any one. However, his stomach could not 
 stand the blubber-ship, and he got on shore in Norway" ("Corre- 
 spondence," vol. iv, p. 335). [Windham accompanied Mulgrave's 
 Expedition to Greenland — Nelson was with the same fleet, a midship- 
 man on the Carcass — but was taken sea-sick and landed in Norway. — 
 Ed.] 
 
 28 22. Herald's college, or college of arms, is a royal corporation 
 instituted and endowed by Richard III, 1483. Its privileges were 
 enlarged and confirmed by letters-patent, 1554. The college has an 
 earl-marshal, three kings-at-arms (namely Garter, Clarencieux, and 
 Norroy), six heralds (Richmond, Lancaster, Chester, Windsor, Somer- 
 set, and York), four pursuivants, and two extra heralds. Its chief 
 business is the granting of coats-of-arms and the tracing of genealogies. 
 The earl-marshal of England, the eighth great officer of state, is the 
 Duke of Norfolk. 
 
NOTES. 73 
 
 28 24. The Garter King-at-arms is the principal king ; the other 
 two are called provincial kings, — their duties being confined to the 
 provinces, — ClarencieiDC, the second royal herald, officiating south of 
 the Trent, and Norroy's jurisdiction lying to the north. The Claren- 
 cieux was originally herald to the Duke of Clarence. Norroy is derived 
 from nord, north, and roy, king. 
 
 Rouge Dragon, one of the pursuivants of the herald's college, so 
 called from the arms of Henry VII. The other three pursuivants are 
 the Rouge Croix (from the red cross of St. George), Blue-Mantle (in 
 allusion to the robes of the Order of the Garter), and the Portcullis (so 
 called from his distinctive badge). 
 
 28 28. Blazoner is a herald who explains the arms or bearings upon 
 ^ shield. 
 
 28 32. Milk of human kindness. " Macbeth," I, v, i8. 
 
 29 4. John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), the victor 
 of Blenheim. William Cecil, Lord Burleigh (1520-98), minister to 
 Queen Elizabeth. William Murray, Earl of Mansfield (1705-93), the 
 founder of English mercantile law. Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hard- 
 wicke (1690-1764), "One of the greatest Judges that ever sat in West- 
 minster Hall," says Lord Elden. 
 
 29 7. John Guillim (1565-1621), Rouge-Croix pursuivant of arms 
 (1617-21). He published and added to Barcham's "Display of 
 Heraldry," London, i6io. 
 
 Joseph Edmondson was appointed Mowbray-Herald Extraordinary in 
 1764. He published several large volumes of heraldry and genealogy, 
 notably "A Complete Body of Heraldry," 1780, 2 vols. ff. He died in 1786. 
 
 Arthur Collins (1682-1760) compiled a "Peerage of England," ist 
 ed., London, 1709, which was augmented and continued to 1812 by 
 Sir Egerton Brydges. He compiled huge genealogical collections of 
 the noble families of England. 
 
 29 11. Aulnager, or ainager, a sworn ofificer appointed to examine 
 and attest the measurement and quality of woolen goods (Murray). 
 
 29 20. The first peer of the name. For the history of John Russell, 
 see the Introduction. John Russell may have been " a person of an 
 ancient gentleman's family"; but, although much labor has been ex- 
 pended in tracing the pedigree, it still lacks historic proof. See J. H. 
 Wiffen, " Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell," 2 vols., London, 
 1833, and " The Great Governing Families of England," vol. ii, 
 Edinburgh, 1865. 
 
 32 9. Boulogne was taken by Henry VIII, Sept. 14, 1544, but re- 
 stored for a consideration in 1 550. Calais was taken by the Duke of 
 
74 NOTES. 
 
 Guise, Jan. 7, 1558. Queen Mary, who died November 17 of the 
 same year, is reported to have said, "When I am dead Calais will be 
 found written on my heart." 
 32 32. Curses not loud but deep. " Macbeth," V, iii, 27. 
 
 34 note. Fata Neroni : 
 
 Quod si non aliam venture fata Neroni 
 
 Invenere viam, magnoque aeterna parantur 
 
 Regna Deis, caelumque sue servire Tonanti 
 
 Non nisi saevorum potuit post bella gigantum ; 
 
 Jam nihil, Superi, querimur : Scelera ipsa, ne fasque 
 
 Hac merce.de placent. 
 
 LucAN, " Pharsalia," i, 33. 
 
 But if our Fates severely have decreed 
 
 No way but this for Nero to succeed ; 
 
 K only thus our Heroes can be Gods, 
 
 And Earth must pay for their divine Abodes ; 
 
 If Heav'n could not the Thunderer obtain, 
 
 'Till Giants' Wars made room for Jove to reign, 
 
 'T is just, ye Gods, nor ought we to complain. 
 
 Nicholas Rowe's translatioQ, 1753. 
 
 35 9. All unfortunate souls 
 
 That trace him in his line. 
 
 " Macbeth," IV, i, 153. 
 
 35 23-32. The perfect melody, solemn cadences, and tear-compelling 
 pathos of this passage — no whit undervalued to tried gold — place it 
 among the masterpieces of prose construction. 
 
 36 8. I am alone. " A calamity now overtook him of the most 
 grievous as well as unexpected description, which all his religion and 
 philosophy were in vain exerted to surmount, and which fell with ad- 
 ditional weight from being so shortly preceded by the loss of his brother. 
 This was the death of his son, Mr. Richard Burke, on the 2d of August, 
 1794, at the early age of thirty-six" (Prior, " Life of Burke," p. 395). 
 Burke's grief was extreme. His bodily powers rapidly declined. "He 
 never afterwards could bear to look toward Beaconsfield Church, the 
 place of interment ; nor was this beloved son for any length of time 
 ever absent from his mind excepting when engaged in literary composi- 
 tion, which therefore became rather a relief than labor " (Prior, p. 404). 
 
 36 10. In this hard season. " There was no period of our history 
 at which there was greater distress or greater difficulty and dismay than 
 in 1795. ^^ ^'^^ period there was published by Mr. Burke, a gentle- 
 man of no ordinary or doubtful authority, a book, every point and sen- 
 
NOTES. 75 
 
 tence of which was questioned at the time, but the truth of which was 
 subsequently most fully established " (Canning, " On Country Banks," 
 Feb. 13, 1821). The work referred to was " Thoughts and Details on 
 Scarcity," November, 1795. 
 
 37 6. This ptescription. Burke's political philosophy rested upon 
 Prescription as " the most solid of all titles, not only to property, but 
 what is to secure that property, to government." Prescription is "ac- 
 companied with another ground of authority in the constitution of the 
 human mind. Presumption," that is, in favor of an established order. 
 
 37 15. Novels. In civil law a novel is a new or supplemental con- 
 stitution or decree ; one of the novel constitutions of certain Roman 
 emperors, so called because they appeared after the authentic publica- 
 tions of law made by these emperors ("Century"). The body of law 
 called Justinian is formed of novels together with the institute, code, 
 and digest. 
 
 37 29. " Templum in modum arcis " : said by Tacitus (" Hist.," bk. v) 
 of the temple at Jerusalem, — " The temple itself was in the nature of 
 a citadel." 
 
 37 31. Sion or Zion, the holy hill of Jerusalem, the center of 
 Hebrew worship. Always written Sion by Milton and Burke. 
 
 38 4. " The great Bedford Level, which comprises upwards of 
 300,000 acres and extends into six counties, with its principal area in 
 Cambridgeshire, is the largest tract of fen land in the kingdom. It is 
 divided by the farmers into two parts — the marsh land and the fen land. 
 By marsh lands are meant low tracts gained from the sea, either by the 
 gradual silting up of estuaries, or by embankments artificially raised for 
 the double purpose of encouraging reclamation by the process of warp- 
 ing, and of protecting from the sea the lands enclosed within them. 
 By fen land is meant land rich in alluvial deposit, reclaimed from its 
 former state of moor and morass by drainage, by protection from the 
 sea by means of banks, and by the embankment of its rivers. On the 
 maps the great level of the Fens looks like an enlargement of the 
 Wash ; in reality, it more closely resembles a sea of land lying 
 between the Wash and the irregular coast-line which seems to be 
 formed round it by highlands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Hunts, 
 Northampton, and Lincoln " (Duke of Bedford, " The Story of a great 
 Agricultural Estate," p. 34). 
 
 38 9. Frank-pledge, or frithborh : a Saxon pledge or surety for the 
 good behavior of freemen ; specifically an early English system by which 
 ten men, the members of each tithing (or decennary) composed of ten 
 households, were associated in common responsibility for one another. 
 
76 NOTES. 
 
 38 18. " iEneid," ix, 44S, 449, — " While the house of jEiieas shall 
 occupy the immovable rock of the Capitol, and the Roman citizen 
 shall bear sway." 
 
 39 18. Ca ira, Fr., = " that shall go " ; these were the opening 
 words of a popular song of the French Revolution. So Thackeray 
 writes in the "Four Georges" of the "French Revolutionists whose 
 ragged legions . . . are trampling down the old world to the tune of 
 Qa ira." To those who in Paris came to lament with him over the 
 misery of the American troops at Valley Forge, Benjamin Franklin 
 cheerfully and happily replied, " <^a. ira, Qa ira" (it will all come right 
 at last). These words were cherished in the memory of Frenchmen 
 and made world-famous in the Revolution. 
 
 39 19. Bedford House. The whole north side of Bloomsbury Square 
 was formerly occupied by Southampton House, built after the designs 
 of Inigo Jones by the Earl of Southampton. It changed its name to 
 Bedford House upon the marriage of William Russell to Lady Rachael 
 Wriothesley, coheiress of Thomas Wriothesley, last Earl of Southamp- 
 ton. Lord William Russell passed this house on the way to the scaffold 
 and was for a moment unmanned by the recollection of his domestic 
 happiness. Recovering himself, he said, " The bitterness of death is now 
 past." The house was destroyed in 1800. The old Bedford House 
 Strand, on the site of the present Southampton Street, was pulled down 
 in 1704. 
 
 40 4. Nimrod. Burke's allusion is a twofold one, to Nimrod as 
 " a mighty hunter before the Lord," and as the founder of Babel 
 (Gen. X, 8-10). Milton in "Animadversions" writes: " Onr just 
 parliament will deliver you from your Ephesian beasts, your cruel Nim- 
 rods with whom we shall be ever fearless to encounter." 
 
 41 1. Douce humaniW : human kindness. 
 41 14. Mauvais plaisaut : a practical joker. 
 
 41 30. 
 
 And you all know, security 
 
 Is mortal's chiefest enemy. 
 
 " Macbeth," III, v, 32. 
 
 42 22. Pretensions to literature : notice Burke's characteristic mod- 
 esty. Cf. p. 21, 1. 14. 
 
 43 6. Dephlegmated : refined ; rectified, as an acid or spirit. 
 Defecated : unmixed, unmitigated, ^ — " The Penal colonies have been 
 
 the seats of simple defecated crime " (Hare, " Guesses at Truth," vol. i, 
 p. 92). 
 43 9. " Compunctious visitings of Nature." " Macbeth," I, v, 46. 
 
NOTES. 77 
 
 43 13. Prorogation. The figure is, of course, derived from the 
 " prorogation " of Parliament. 
 
 44 14. James Harrington (1611-77) was the author of " Oceana," a 
 work on the theory of the state, in which after the fashion of the time 
 he seeks to describe an ideal commonwealth — perfect and immortal — 
 in the manner of Plato's "Republic " and Bacon's " New Atlantis " and 
 More's " Utopia." Harrington's work was at first suppressed by order 
 of Cromwell, but finally appeared in 1656 dedicated to the Protector. 
 It exhibits a plan of republican government, with excessive admiration 
 for the republic of Venice. Burke probably refers to it in this connection 
 because of its recommendation of an agrarian law limiting the portion 
 of land held by any one person to that yielding a revenue of ;^20oo. 
 
 44 18. Emmanuel Joseph Sieyfes (1748-1836) received his educa- 
 tion from the Jesuits, and was appointed Vicar-general by the Bishop 
 of Chartres. He prepared a sensational thesis upon the Third Estate 
 in which he constructed, single-handed and at once, a programme for 
 the Revolution. In 1789 he was a representative to the States-general. 
 In the Reign of Terror he abjured his priestly title and declared that he 
 would have no religion but love of country and of man, and no worship 
 but liberty and equality. His constitutional views made him invaluable 
 to the Revolution and to Napoleon. "What Burke really taught — 
 taught with effect, and was b6rne out in teaching by the events of his 
 time — was the weakness of paper constitutions. He is the antidote to 
 Sieyes " (Goldwin Smith). 
 
 44 25. " Boue de Paris " : Paris mud. 
 
 44 31. " Without breeches " : see Sans-culottes. 
 
 45 11. The Constituent Assembly undertook to break up the old 
 provinces and to divide France into Departments consisting of squares 
 of equal size. Each Department was to be divided into nine districts 
 upon the same mathematical principle. The re-division of France into 
 Departments (the original proposition practically though not rigorously 
 carried out) was completed in 1790. 
 
 45 27. Inigo Jones was born about 1572. He studied art in Italy, 
 visited Denmark, where he is said to have designed two palaces, and 
 accompanied Anne of Denmark to England. He was architect to the 
 Queen and designed the decorations for court masques. He introduced 
 into England the Palladian style of architecture. After the Civil War 
 he was obliged to pay heavy fines as a " malignant courtier." He 
 died in poverty in 1651. 
 
 "Covent Garden." Among the rewards of John Russell, Earl of 
 Bedford, was the grant of Covent Garden (formerly Convent Garden) 
 
7S NOTES. 
 
 and the Seven Acres (now called Long Acre). After the dissolution 
 of the monasteries the " Garden of Westminster " was given by 
 Edward VI to his uncle, the Lord Protector Somerset, after whose 
 attainder it reverted to the crown, and then was granted to the Earl of 
 Bedford. One of the buildings erected by Inigo Jones for Francis, 
 fourth Earl of Bedford, was the church of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
 destroyed by fire in 1795. -^ mansion close by was built for the Earl 
 of Orford, another of the race of Russell, and who fought the battle of 
 La Hogue (May 19, 1692). 
 
 In Covent Garden were the celebrated coffee-houses ' Will's,' 
 ' Tom's,' and ' Button's.' Here, too, were the Covent Garden Theatre, 
 built in 1732, and the Drury Lane Theatre, opened in 1663. 
 
 45 30. Lixiviated : formed into lye. Latin, lixivium, lye. 
 
 45 31. " Academie del Cimento " : a celebrated Florentine Academy 
 founded in 1657 for the advancement of physical science, by Leopold 
 de Medicis. In 1667 the academy published the results of experiments 
 with projectiles. Here, of course, Burke is using the name antiphras- 
 tically, Cimento being equivalent to cement (mortar). 
 
 45 32. "Per antiplirasin " : by antiphrasis, a figure of speech by 
 which words are used in a sense opposite to their proper meaning. 
 
 Guyton de Morveau (1737-1816), a French chemist who had made 
 studies in phlogiston and crystallization, and who about the time 
 of the writing of this " Letter " was perfecting the processes for the 
 manufacture of gunpowder and saltpetre. 
 
 Jean Henri Hassenfrats (1755-1827), scientist and French revolu- 
 tionist. He was a carpenter who developed an unusual aptitude 
 for mathematics. He became an assistant to Lavoisier, in his labora- 
 tory, participated in the Revolution as a Jacobin, and in 1786 was made 
 professor in the School of Mines. His chief service was the reorganiza- 
 tion of the military schools. In the Reign of Terror he provided the 
 materials of war. 
 
 46 8. Primary assembly : an assembly in which all the citizens 
 have a right to be present and to speak, as distinguished from repre- 
 sentative parliaments. 
 
 National guard : an armed force identified with the French revo- 
 lutionary epoch, first formed in 1789, and csX^eA. garde bourgeoise. 
 
 46 9. Requisitioners : those who seize upon property for the use 
 of an army or the public service. 
 
 46 n. Domiciliary visitation is a visit to a private dwelling partic- 
 ularly for the purpose of searching it or inspecting it, under authority, 
 as in police supervision ("Century Diet."). 
 
NOTES. 79 
 
 45 12. Assessors of the maximum : the Law of the Maximum, fix- 
 ing a maximum price at which articles of prime necessity should be 
 sold, was passed by the National Convention May 3, 1793. ^^ ^^^ 
 actually put into operation in November, 1793, and was one of the 
 principal means of enforcing the Reign of Terror. The scale fixed was 
 too low to allow a profit, and the punishment of death was decreed, 
 Sept. 29, 1793, for any violation of the law. Burke was therefore justi- 
 fied in mentioning the Maximum side by side with the guillotine as an 
 engine of the Terror. The law was repealed Dec. 24, 1794. 
 
 47 11. Marquis de Condorcet, born in Picardy, 1743, was a many- 
 sided intellect attracted to philosophy and literature and mathematics 
 and social history. He was greatly admired by Turgot and Voltaire. 
 He married the translator of Adam Smith's " Theory of Moral Senti- 
 ments," a sister of Marshal Grouchy. He was an enthusiastic democrat, 
 and wrote many pamphlets and planned many constitutions. He was 
 one of the secretaries of the Legislative Assembly. He voted Louis 
 XVI guilty of conspiring against liberty, but stopped short of the death 
 penalty. In consequence of his denunciation of the arrest of the 
 Girondists, he was accused of conspiring against the Republic. He 
 was concealed for a while in the house of a Madam Bernet ; but 
 wandered out, was captured, and committed suicide in prison. His 
 essay, on the " Progress of the Human Spirit," was written while 
 hiding from Robespierre. 
 
 47 14. Apprentices in old English law were barristers of less than 
 sixteen years' standing. Sergeants were lawyers of high rank appointed 
 by writ or patent from the crown. 
 
 47 18. " Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all 
 as Sahara ; none entering save by ticket !• They shut their Gates, after 
 the Day of the Black Breeches ; a thing they had the liberty to do. 
 However, the National Assembly grumbled something about Terrace of 
 the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the back entrance 
 to their salle, and was partly National property ; and so now National 
 Justice has stretched a Tricolor riband athwart it, by way of boundary- 
 line, respected with splenetic strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there 
 that Tricolor boundary-line; carries 'satirical inscriptions on cards,' 
 generally in verse ; and all beyond this is called ' Coblentz,' and remains 
 vacant ; silent as a fateful Golgotha ; sunshine and umbrage alternating 
 on it in vain " (Carlyle, " French Revolution," vol. ii, p. 194). 
 
 47 19. Canaille : literally, pack of hounds, used to signify a rabble, 
 a low crowd, a mob. 
 
 47 24. The title " Marquis of Tavistock " has existed in the Russell 
 
80 .VOTES. 
 
 family since May ii, 1694, when William, the fifth Earl of Bedford, was 
 raised to the dignities of Marquis of Tavistock and Duke of Bedford. 
 
 47 34. Legendre, a mathematician of distinguished rank, born in 
 1752, was one of the three members of the council established to intro- 
 duce the decimal system, and he was a member of the commission 
 appointed to determine the length of the meter. He assisted in the for- 
 mation of the great French tables of logarithms of numbers, sines and 
 tangents, and natural sines. He died at Paris, Jan. lo, 1833. 
 
 48 3-14. One of the gravest faults of Burke's style is its occasional 
 descent into the vulgar and unclean. He also holds his figures too 
 long, and realizes them too completely. The quotation from Pope is 
 apt, and in the application of it there is humor and there is telling force. 
 But, not content with his success, Burke heaps upon it thegrossness of 
 the shambles, and exhibits the ducal rumps, sirloins, and briskets, and 
 inquires how the victim tallows in the cawl. It is lines like these that 
 caused the Duke of Leeds to style the " Letter " " Billingsgate in 
 buskins.'' 
 
 48 7. Charing Cross : the heart of London, where anciently stood 
 the village of Charing. 
 
 48 15. Pope, " Essay on Man," I, 83. 
 
 48 25. The portrait to which Burke refers was painted by Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds. It is now in the National Gallery. After the court-martial 
 Reynolds painted Keppel's portrait five times. 
 
 48 32. Augustus Keppel, Viscount Keppel {1725-86), the uncle of 
 the Duke of Bedford, entered the navy in 1735, "^^^ sent out as com- 
 modore to the Mediterranean to treat with the Dey of Algiers, and in 
 1754 to take command of the ships on the North American station. 
 He attached himself to the*political party of the Marquis of Rock- 
 ingham. In 1776, on the probability of war with France, "he was 
 asked by the king in person to undertake the command of the Channel 
 fleet." He was promoted to be admiral of the blue Jan. 29, 1778, and 
 made commander-in-chief of the grand fleet March 22, 1778. He 
 engaged the French fleet July 27, with results that caused him to be 
 charged with not marshalling his fleet, going into the fight in an un- 
 ofiicer-like manner, scandalous haste in quitting it, running away, and 
 not pursuing the flying enemy, — each charge a capital offense. He 
 was tried and the charge pronounced " malicious and ill-founded." 
 The popular enthusiasm over the vindication of Keppel as " a judicious, 
 brave, and experienced ofiicer " was so great that bonfires blazed, pub- 
 licans painted Keppel's head on their signs, and rioters tore down the 
 admiralty gates and smashed the windows of the ofiicial residences. 
 
NOTES. 81 
 
 He died Oct. 2, 1786, unmarried, and the titles Viscount Keppel and 
 Baron Elden became extinct. 
 
 SO 18. The first Earl of Albemarle (grandfather of Lord Keppel) 
 was Arnold Joost van Keppel, who was descended from Walter van 
 Keppel, Lord of Keppel in the low countries. He came to England 
 with William of Orange (1688) as a page of honor. 
 
 50 25. 
 
 We marry 
 A gentle scion to the wildest stock. 
 
 " Winter's Tale," IV, iv, 93. 
 
 51 17. " Fools aspiring to be knaves." Pope, " Epi. to Sat.," 1, 164. 
 
 52 2. Duke de la Rochefoucauld, known in his youth as Count de la 
 R., and from 1767 to 1783 as Duke de Liancourt, was a. French pub- 
 licist who was deputy to the assembly of notables in 1788, and to the 
 States-general in 1789. He presided over the constituent assembly in 
 the night of Aug. 4, 1789, when the abolition of titles of nobility was 
 voted. 
 
 52 3. Viscount de Noailles (1756-1804) was a brother-in-law of 
 Lafayette. He fought in the American War. He was elected in 1789 
 to the States-general and proposed the abolition of the privileges of 
 the nobility. He presided over the constituent assembly in 1791. 
 
 Charles Maurice Talleyrand de Perigord (1754-1838) entered the 
 States-general as one of its leaders. He successfully urged the clergy 
 to yield to the demands of the commons that the three estates should 
 meet together. Although an Abbe and Bishop of Autun, he attacked 
 the rights and privileges of the clergy, and proposed a scheme (Oct. 10, 
 1789) by which the landed property of the'church should be confiscated 
 by the state. He is therefore called by Burke " the false Perigord." 
 
 53 1. Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Viscomte de Turenne (1611- 
 75), a famous French general, who was created a marshal of France, 
 May 16, 1643. 
 
 Franpois Henri de Montmorency-Boutteville, Due de Luxembourg 
 (1628-95), was made marshal of France in 1675. He was the comrade 
 of the great Conde. 
 
 Louis Franfois, Due de Bouflers (1644-1711), served under Turenne 
 in Holland, and was raised to the rank of marshal of France in 1693. 
 
 53 a. Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) became in 1669 minister of 
 commerce, the colonies, and the King's palace, and worked great finan- 
 cial reforms in France. He established the French marine, naval and 
 mercantile. 
 
82 JVOTES. 
 
 53 3. Franfois Michel le Tellier, Marquis de Louvois (1641-91), 
 was secretary of war, and organizer, after the peace of Aix la Chapelle, 
 of the French army. 
 
 The Lamoignons are a Nivernaise family with many noble branches, 
 — the Basvilles, the Coursons, the Blancmesnils, and the Malesherbes. 
 They have held their iief of Lamoignon since the thirteenth century. 
 Guillaume de L. (1617-77) was advocate, counsellor, maitre des 
 requites, and president of the Fronde parliament. His great work 
 was the unification and coordination of the laws of France. His 
 son Nicolas (1648-1724) was a distinguished lawyer and pupil of 
 Colbert. 
 
 53 4. Henri Franyois D'Aguesseau (1668-1751) was chancellor of 
 France, and worked reforms in the execution of the laws that constitute 
 an epoch in the history of French jurisprudence. His father was coun- 
 cillor of state. 
 
 S3 5. Charles Pichegru (1761-1804), commander-in-chief of the 
 united armies of the Rhine and Moselle, conqueror of Holland, and a 
 leader of the extreme revolutionary party. 
 
 Jean Baptiste Jourdan (1762-1833), head of the army of Sambreet- 
 Meuse (1794) and marshal of France. 
 
 S3 6. Antoine Joseph Santerre (1752-1809), a French general and 
 violent revolutionist. 
 
 Barthelemi-Gabriel RoUand d'Erceville, a French magistrate, born 
 in 1734, executed April 20, 1794, at Paris. He was president of the 
 Chambre des requites. He was distinguished by his zealous prosecu- 
 tion of the Jesuits, and contributed greatly to the destruction of their 
 society. He was arrested during the Terror and condemned to death 
 by the revolutionary tribunal. 
 
 53 7. Antoine Joseph Gorsas, journalist and publicist, was born at 
 Limoges, March 24, 1752, and guillotined at Paris, Oct. 7, 1793. He 
 founded the " Courrier de Versailles," afterwards called " Courrier des 
 
 83 departements " (July 5, 1789-June 2, 1793), °ns °f *6 most vociferous 
 and vehement of the revolutionary journals, replete with anecdotes and 
 picturesque details. He was elected to the National Convention for the 
 department of Seine et Oise. He was an ardent partisan of Brissot. 
 
 Jean Francois Reubell (or Rewbell), born at Colmar, Oct. 8, 1747; 
 died at Colmar, Nov. 23, 1807. In 1789 he was chosen by the tiers 
 itat as deputy to the States-general. In 1791 he was president of the 
 National Assembly, and voted for the death of the King. 
 
 Lazare Nicolas Marguerite Carnot (1753-1823) was returned to the 
 National Assembly for the Pas de Calais in 1791, and he became a 
 
NOTES. 83 
 
 member of the Committee of Public Safety under Robespierre. He pro- 
 posed the seizure of the property of the church, and he proposed to 
 arm 30,000 sans-culottes with pilces, and to destroy all the citadels in 
 France, and voted for the overthrow of the nobility and the execution 
 of the King. In 1795 ^^ became one of the five directors of the 
 Republic, and projected a " Plan for the Invasion of England." He 
 pronounced himself as " the irreconcilable enemy of kings." 
 
 S3 8. Jean Lambert Tallien (1769-1820), the son of the cook of the 
 Marquis de Bercy, was educated by the generosity of the Marquis, and 
 became a lawyer's clerk. At the outbreak of the Revolution he en- 
 tered a printing office, and in 1791 was overseer of the composing-room 
 of the Moniteur. From January to May, 1791, he placarded twice a 
 week upon all the walls of Paris a large poster called " Ami des Cito- 
 yens." Aug. 10, 1792, he was appointed secretary to the revolutionary 
 commune of Paris. He announced the massacres of September in the 
 prisons. He was a vigorous Jacobin, defended Marat, voted for the 
 execution of the King, and was elected a member of the Committee of 
 General Security, Jan. 21, 1793. 
 
 George Jacques Danton (1759-94), a great revolutionary leader, 
 was a member of the Committee of Public Safety, and voted for the 
 death of the King. 
 
 S3 25. Great clerk ; see " Midsummer Night's Dream," V, i, 93. 
 
 S3 27. Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) was born at Delft of afamily which 
 had entered Holland from France, where it had been of noble history. 
 He was a great jurist, and more thoroughly studied the principles of 
 jurisprudence than any writer before him. 
 
 53 33. Condorcet drafted an appeal to Holland in 1792. Burke 
 errs in calling it an address to the " Batavian Republic," for the Repub- 
 lic did not exist until after the death of Condorcet, when it was formed 
 by Reubell and Sieyes, in the spring of 1795. ^^^ "^^ Revolution 
 Fran9aise en HoUande " [Le Grand], Paris, 1894. 
 
 54 7. Prince of Orange : William I of the Netherlands. 
 
 S4 12. His bouse. William IH, King of England {1688), had been 
 made by the Dutch Republic stadtholder of the Netherlands (1672). 
 
 S4 22. Austrian Netherlands. The provinces originally called the 
 Spanish Netherlands were ceded to Austria by the treaty of 17 13. They 
 were conquered by France in 1794. 
 
STANDARD ENGLISH CLASSICS 
 
 LiBt Malliag 
 price price 
 
 Addison and Steele's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. From The 
 Spectator. Edited by Mary E. Litchfield of Miss Folsom's 
 School, Boston S0.30 ^0-4° 
 
 Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord. Edited by Professor Albert H. 
 
 Smyth of the Central High School, Philadelphia 30 .35 
 
 Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited by Professor 
 
 Hammond Lamont, recently of Brown University 30 .40 
 
 Bums, Representative Poems, with Carlyle's Essay on Bums. 
 Edited by Charles L. Hanson of the Mechanic Arts High 
 School, Boston, Mass 30 .35 
 
 Carlyle's Essay on Bums. Edited by Charles L. Hanson of 
 
 the Mechanic Arts High School, Boston, Mass 25 .30 
 
 Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Edited by Professor L. R. Gibes of 
 
 the Territorial Normal School, Edmond, Oklahoma zo .25 
 
 Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. Edited by John B. Dunbar of 
 
 the Boys' High School, Brooklyn, N.Y 50 .65 
 
 De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars. Edited by Professor W. E. 
 
 SiMONDS of Knox College, Galesburg, 111 25 .30 
 
 Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. Edited by George E. Eliot, Jr., 
 
 of the Morgan School, Clinton, Conn 25 .30 
 
 George Eliot's Silas Mamer. Edited by R. Adelaide Witham 
 
 of the Latin High School, Somerville, Mass 30 .40 
 
 Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. Edited by D. H. Montgomery .30 .35 
 
 Irving's Sketch Book. (Complete.) Edited by Mary E. Litch- 
 field of Miss Folsom's School, Boston 60 .70 
 
 Macaulay's Essay on Milton. Edited by Herbert A. Smith, 
 
 formerly of Yale University 20 .25 
 
 Macaulay's Essay on Addison. Edited by Herbert A. Smith, 
 
 formerly of Yale University 25 .30 
 
 Macaulay's Essays on Addison and Milton. (In one volume.) 
 
 Edited by Herbert A. Smith, formerly of Yale University .30 .40 
 
 Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. Edited by M. Grant Daniell, 
 
 recently of Chauncy-Hall School, Boston .35 .40 
 
 Milton's L'AUegro, 11 Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. Edited 
 by TuLEY F. Huntington, recently of the Leland Stanford 
 Junior University 25 .30 
 
 Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I and II, and Lycidas. Edited by 
 
 Homer B. Sprague 30 .35 
 
 Pope's Translation of the Iliad, soo/is /, w, xxii, and xxiv. Edited 
 by William Tappan of the University School for Boys, 
 Baltimore, Md 25 .30 
 
 Scott's Lady of the Lake. Edited by Edwin Ginn 35 .40 
 
 Shakespeare's Macbeth. Edited by Henry N. Hudson .35 .40 
 
 Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Editedby Henry N. Hudson .35 .40 
 
 Tennyson's The Princess. Edited by Professor Albert S. Cook 
 
 of Yale University 30 .40 
 
 GINN & COMPANY Publishers 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 ATLANTA DALLAS COLUMBUS LONDON 
 
BOOKS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Alexander's Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning $i.oo 
 
 Athenaeum Press Series : 24 volumes now ready. 
 
 Baldwin's Inflections and Syntax of Malory's Morte d'Arthur 1.40 
 
 Bellamy's Twelve English Poets 75 
 
 Browne-'s Shakspere's Versification ^5 
 
 Corson's Primer of English Verse i.oo 
 
 Eaton's College Requirements in English. Third Series 75 
 
 Emery's Notes on English Literature i.oo 
 
 Garnett's Selections in English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria.. 1.50 
 
 Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature 1.50 
 
 Gayley and Scott's Literary Criticism 1.25 
 
 Gummere's Handbook of Poetics i.oo 
 
 Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols 4.00 
 
 Hudson's Classical English Reader i.oo 
 
 Hudson's Text-Book of Prose 1.25 
 
 Hudson's Text-Book of Poetry 1.25 
 
 Hudson's Essays on English, Studies in Shakespeare, etc 25 
 
 Kent's Shakespeare Note-Book 60 
 
 Lewis' Beginnings of English Literature 90 
 
 Litchfield's Spenser's Britomart 60 
 
 Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature 1.50 
 
 Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets 1.50 
 
 Phelps' Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement i.oo 
 
 Smith's Synopsis of English and American Literature 80 
 
 Standard English Classics : 22 volumes now ready. 
 
 Thayer's Best Elizabethan Plays 1.25 
 
 White's Philosophy of Americaiv Literature 30 
 
 White's Philosophy of English Literature i.oo 
 
 Winchester's Five Short Courses of Reading in English Literature .40 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers 
 
 Boston New York Chicago San Francisco 
 
 Atlanta Dallas Columbus London 
 
ENGLISH COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC 
 
 Text-books and works of reference for 
 high schools, academies, and colleges. 
 
 Baker's Principles of Argumentation 
 Bancroft's Method of English Composition 
 Cairns' Forms of Discourse 
 Cairns' Introduction to Rhetoric 
 Genung's Outlines of Rhetoric . 
 Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric . 
 
 Genung's Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis 
 
 Studies in style and invention, designed to accompany the 
 author's Practical Elements of Rhetoric. 
 
 Genung's Working Principles of Rhetoric 
 
 Gilmore's Outlines of the Art of Expression 
 
 Price 
 
 $1.12 
 
 •50 
 
 .90 
 1. 00 
 1.25 
 X.12 
 
 1.40 
 .60 
 
 Holyoake's Public Speaking and Debate i.oo 
 
 A Manual for Advocates and Agitators. 
 
 Lockwood's Lessons in English .... 
 Lockwood and Emerson's Composition and Rhetoric 
 Newcomer's Practical Course in English Composition 
 
 1. 12 
 
 I.oo 
 .80 
 ■ 15 
 
 Scott and Denney's Rhetoric Tablet .... 
 
 No. 1, white paper (ruled). No. 2, tinted paper (ruled). 
 Sixty sheets in each. 
 
 Tompkins' Science of Discourse i.oo 
 
 GINN & COMPANY Publishers 
 
 Boston 
 Atlanta 
 
 New York 
 Dallas 
 
 Chicago 
 Columbus 
 
 San Francisco 
 London 
 
THE ATHENAEUM PRESS SERIES 
 
 iBBtted nndflr the general editorship of 
 
 ProfeflBor GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE of Harvard TTnivereity, and 
 
 Professor C. T. WINCHESTER of WeBleyan University. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY: 
 
 Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. Edited by Professor 
 Hammond Lamont, recently of Brown University. 50 cents. 
 
 Burns : Selections from. Edited by the late John G. Dow, formerly 
 of the University of Wisconsin. 70 cents. 
 
 Carlyle's Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History. Edited 
 
 by Professor Archibald MacMechan of Dalhousie College, Halifax, N.S. 
 80 cents. 
 
 Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Edited by Professor Archibald Mac- 
 Mechan of Dalhousie College, Halifax, N.S. 80 cents. 
 Collins: Poems of. Edited by Professor -Walter C. Bronson of 
 
 Brown University. 60 cents. 
 Cowper : Selections from. Edited by the late Professor James O. 
 
 Murray, formerly of Princeton University. 60 cents. 
 De Quincey: Selections from. Edited by Professor Milton H. 
 
 Turk of Hobart College. 
 Elizabethan Lyrics. Edited by Professor F. E. Schelling of the 
 
 University of Pennsylvania. 75 cents. 
 Gibbon's Memoirs. Edited by Professor Oliver F. Emerson of 
 
 Western Reserve University. 75 cents. 
 
 Gray: Selections from the Works of. Edited by Professor Wm. L. 
 
 Phelps of Yale University. 60 cents. 
 
 Herrick: Selections from the Hesperides and the Noble Numbers. 
 
 Edited by Professor E. E. Hale, Jr., of Union University. 60 cents. 
 
 Jeffrey : Selections from the Essays of. Edited by Lewis E. Gates 
 
 of Harvard University. 60 cents. 
 
 Jonson's Timber ; or Discoveries. Edited by Professor F. E. Schel- 
 ling of the University of Pennsylvania. 80 cents. 
 
 Keats : Selections from. Edited by Professor Arlo Bates of the 
 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 60 cents. 
 
 Landor: Selections from. Edited by W. B. S. Clymer, formerly of 
 Harvard University. 60 cents. 
 
 Malory's Morte Darthur, Selections from. Edited by Professor Wil- 
 liam E. Mead of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. 80 cents. 
 
 Old English Ballads. Edited by Professor F. B. Gummeee of Haver- 
 ford College. 80 cents. 
 
 Pre-Shaksperean Drama, Specimens of. Edited by Professor John 
 
 M. Manly of University of Chicago. In three volumes. Vols. I. and II. now 
 ready. $1.25 each. 
 
 Seventeenth Century Lyrics. Edited by Professor F..E. Schelling 
 of the University of Pennsylvania. 75 cents. 
 
 Shelley: Selections from. Edited by W. J. Alexander of the Uni- 
 versity of Toronto, 80 cents. 
 Sidney's Defense of Poesy. Edited by Professor Albert S. Cook 
 
 of Yale University. 65 cents. 
 Steele : Selections from. Edited by Professor George R. Carpenter 
 of Columbia University. 60 cents. 
 
 Wordsworth : Selections from. Edited by Professor Edward Bowden 
 
 of the University of Dublin. 90 cents. 
 
 GINN 6 COMPANY Publishers 
 
COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC 
 
 By SARA E. H. LOCKWOOD and MARY ALICE EMERSON, 
 
 Head of the DeparUneni of Ettglisk in t/ie State Normal 
 School, Bridge^vater, Mass. 
 
 For introduction, $i.oo. 
 
 Three important characteristics which give this book a distinct indi- 
 viduality are (i) the Cumulative method of treatment shown in the 
 illustrative examples, in the text, and especially in the exercises ; 
 (2) the constant emphasis on the importance of the pupil's own 
 thinking and writing; and (3), in Parts III and IV, the correlation 
 of composition work with the study of the college requirements in 
 English. 
 
 The book has been prepared to meet adequately all the requirements 
 of secondary school work in composition and rhetoric. It makes a 
 close and natural connection between the writing required in the gram- 
 mar school and the more advanced work of composition. 
 
 The following is a brief summary of the most important features of 
 the book : 
 
 1 . It is logically arranged and carefully graded. 
 
 2. The review of English grammar is adequate and practical. 
 
 3. The discussions on the use of the dictionary, on translating into 
 EngUsh, on note-taking, on the writing of examination papers, and on 
 the use of the library are unique and helpful. 
 
 4. The discussions and exercises on the first steps in learning to write 
 gradually and logically unfold into complete and careful treatments of 
 the composition as a whole, the paragraph, and the sentence. 
 
 5. The treatment of the essay, oration, and debate aims to help the 
 student in his practical school work. 
 
 6. The chapters on the novel, the drama, poetic forms, and figures of 
 speech supplement the work in required literature. 
 
 7. Topical headings, summaries at the close of chapters, and engrav- 
 ings add to the teachableness of the book. 
 
 A TEACHERS' MANUAL 
 
 There is also a teachers' manual, which furnishes many additional exercises, 
 suggests methods of adapting the text-book to the requirements of diiferent 
 schools, and indicates practical methods of making the required literature sup- 
 plement the work in rhetoric and composition. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY Publishers 
 
 Boston New York Chicago San Francisco 
 
 Atlanta Dallas Columbus London 
 
HUDSON'S SHAKESPEARE 
 
 For School and Home Use. 
 
 By HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D., 
 
 Author of **The Life, Ari, ^w<=f Characters o/ Shakespeare *' 
 Editor of " The Harvard Shakespeare " etc. 
 
 Revised and enlarged Editions of twenty-three Plays. Carefully expurgated, 
 
 with explanatory Notes at the bottom of the page, and critical Notes at 
 
 the end of each volume. One play in each volume. 
 Square i6mo. Varying in size from 128 to 253 pages. Mailing price of each: 
 
 cloth, 50 cents; paper, 35 cents. Introduction price, cloth, 45 cents; 
 
 paper, 30 cents. Per set (in boxj, $zo.oo. 
 
 Why is Hudson's Shakespeare the standard in a majority of the best 
 schools where the greatest attention is paid to this subject ? Because 
 Dr. Hudson was the ablest Shakespearean scholar America has ever 
 known. His introductions to the plays of Shakespeare are well worth 
 the price of the volume. He makes the characters almost living flesh 
 and blood, and creates a great interest on the part of the student and a 
 love for Shakespeare's works, without which no special progress can be 
 made. Whoever can command the interest of the pupil in a great 
 author or his works is the person who renders the greatest service. 
 
 The list of plays in Hudson's School Shakespeare is as follows : 
 
 A Midsummer Night's Dretxm. Henry the Fourth, Part I. 
 
 The Merchant of Venice. 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 As You Li/ie It. 
 The Tempest. 
 King John. 
 Richard the Second. 
 Richard the Third. 
 
 Henry the Fourth, Part //. 
 Henry the Fifth. 
 Henry the Eighth. 
 Romeo and Juliet. 
 Juiius Ccesar. 
 Hamiet. 
 King Lear. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 
 
 Othello. 
 
 Cymbeiine. 
 
 Corlolanus. 
 
 Twelfth Night. 
 
 The Winter's Taie. 
 
 C. T. Winchester, Professor of En^-- 
 lish Literature^ Wesleyan University: 
 • The notes and comments in the school 
 edition are admirably fitted to the need of 
 the student, removing his difficulties by 
 stimulating his interest and quickening his 
 perception. 
 
 Hiram Corson, Professor of English 
 L iterature, Cornell University : I con- 
 sider them altogether excellent. The 
 notes give all the aid needed for an under- 
 standing of the text, without waste and 
 distraction of the student's mind. The 
 introductory matter to the several plays is 
 especially worthy of approbation. 
 
 IVe invite correspondence with all "who are interested in the 
 study of Shakespeare in the class-room. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 
 tSoston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Oaliai. 
 
THE HARVARD EDITION OF 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S COMPLETE WORKS 
 
 By henry N. HUDSON, LL.D., 
 
 Author of the "Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare,^^ 
 Editor of '^School Shakespeare" etc. 
 
 Id twenty volumes, duodecimo, two plays in each volume ; also in ten volumes, 
 of four plays each. 
 
 RETAIL PRICES: 
 
 ».vo.. edition {^'ojj^.ij; :«^|--| lo-voi. edition { ='°f„,-, ; • «»- 
 
 The Harvard Edition has been undertaken and the plan of it 
 shaped with a special view to making the Poet's pages pleasant and 
 attractive to general readers. A history of each play is given in its 
 appropriate volume. The plays are arranged in three distinct series : 
 Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies ; and the plays of each series pre- 
 sented, as nearly as may be, in the chronological order of the writing. 
 
 A special merit of this edition is, that each volume has two sets of 
 notes, — one mainly devoted to explaining the text, and placed at the 
 foot of the page, the other mostly occupied with matters of textual 
 comment and criticism, and printed at the end of each play. The 
 edition is thus admirably suited to the uses both of the general reader 
 and of the special student. 
 
 Horace Howard Furness: A noble edition, with liappy mingle of illustration, 
 explanation, and keen, subtle, sympathetic criticism. 
 
 Professor Dowden : Hudson's edition takes its place beside the best work of 
 English Shakespeare students. 
 
 Professor C. T. Winchester : It seems to me, without question, the best edition 
 now printed. 
 
 Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare 
 
 By HENRY N. HUDSON. 
 
 In two volumes. 
 i2mo. 1003 pages. Retail prices: cloth, $4.00; half calf, $8.00. 
 
 Edwin Booth, the great actor and eminent Shakespearean scholar, 
 once said that he received more real good from the original criticisms 
 and suggestive comments as given by Dr. Hudson in these two books 
 than from any other writer on Shakespeare. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 
 Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 
 
GAYLEY'S CLASSIC MYTHS 
 
 THE OLABSIC UYIBS IK ENSLISK LrTEKATURE. 
 
 Sued chiefly on Bulflncb's " Age of Fable " (1866). Accompanied by an 
 Interpretative and Illuatrative Commentary. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY, 
 
 Professor of the English Languag-e atid Literature in the 
 University of California. 
 
 X2mo. Half leather. 540 pages. Fully illustrated, together with 16 full- 
 page illustrations. For introduction, $1.50. 
 
 Attention is called to these special features of this book : 
 
 An introduction on the indebtedness of English poetry 
 to the literature of fable ; and on methods of teaching 
 mythology. 
 
 An elementary account of myth-making and of the prin- 
 cipal poets of mythology, and of the beginnings of the world,, 
 of gods and of men among the Greeks. 
 
 A thorough revision and systematization of Bulfinch's 
 Stories of Gods and Heroes : with additional stories, and 
 with selections from English poems based upon the myths. 
 
 Illustrative cuts from Baumeister, Roscher, and othei 
 standard authorities on mythology. 
 
 Certain necessary modifications in Bulfinch's treatment of 
 the mythology of nations other than the Greek and Roman. 
 
 Notes, following the text (as in the school editions of 
 Latin and Greek authors), containing an historical and 
 interpretative commentary upon certain myths, supplemen- 
 tary poetical citations, a list of the better known allusions 
 to mythological fiction, references to works of art, and hints 
 to teachers and students. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 
 Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas. 
 
REFERENCE BOOKS ON POETRY 
 
 A Book of Elizabethan Lyrics. Selected and edited by Professor 
 Felix E. Schelling of the University of Pennsylvania. 
 327 pages. List price, 75 cents; mailing price, 85 cents. 
 
 Old English Ballads. Selected and edited by Professor F. B. Gummere 
 of Haverford College. 380 pages. List price, 80 cents ; mailing 
 price, 90 cents. 
 
 Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning. By Professor William 
 J. Alexander of the University College, Toronto. 212 pages. 
 List price, ^i.oo ; mailing price, jSi.io. 
 
 Hudson's Text-Book of Poetry. By Henry N. Hudson. Selections 
 from Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Beattie, Goldsmith, and 
 Thomson. With Lives and Notes. Cloth. 704 pages. List 
 price, $1.25 ; mailing price, jSi.40. 
 
 Sidney's Defense of Poesy. Edited by Professor Albert S. Cook of 
 Yale University. 103 pages. List price, 65 cents ; mailing price, 
 75 cents. 
 
 'Shelley's Defense of Poetry. Edited by Professor Albert S. Cook 
 of Yale University. 86 pages. List price, 50 cents ; mailing 
 price, 60 cents. 
 
 Cardinal Newman's Essay on Poetry. With reference to Aristotle's 
 Poetics. Edited by Professor Albert S. Cook of Yale Uni- 
 versity. 36 pages. List price, 30 cents ; mailing price, 35 cents. 
 
 The Art of Poetry. The Poetical Treatises of Horace, Vida, and 
 Boileau, with the translations of Howes, Pitt, and Soame. Edited 
 by Professor Albert S. Cook of Yale University. 303 pages. 
 List price, ;Ji.i2 ; mailing price, S1.25. 
 
 Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost. Edited by Professor Albert 
 S. Cook of Yale University, xxiv + 200 pages. List price, 
 jSi.ooj mailing price, ^i.io. 
 
 What is Poetry? By Leigh Hunt. Edited by Professor Albert S. 
 Cook of Yale University. 98 pages. List price, 50 cents ; 
 mailing price, 60 cents. 
 
 A Primer of English Verse. By Professor Hiram Corson of Cornell 
 University. 232 pages. List price, jSi.oo; mailing price, Siio. 
 
 A Hand-Book of Poetics. By Professor F. B. Gummere of Haverford 
 College. 250 pages. List price, gi.oo; mailing price, ^i. 10. 
 
 Characteristics of the English Poets. From Chaucer to Shirley. By 
 William Minto. List price, $1.50; mailing price, jS 1.65. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY Publishers 
 
 Boston New York Chicago San Francisco 
 
 Atlanta Dallas Columbus London 
 
THE NEW CENTURY SPEAKER 
 
 SELECTED AND ADAPTED BY 
 
 HENRY ALLYN FRINK, 
 JLate Professor of Lo^ic^ Rhetoric, and Ptthlic Speaking in A mhersi College. 
 
 xztno. Cloth. 346 pages. For introduction, $1.00. 
 
 This is a fresh and notably interesting collection of 
 prose selections suitable for use as declamations. The 
 trite and hackneyed pieces that have worn themselves 
 threadbare in public service are omitted. We have 
 instead extracts from the greatest speeches- of such men 
 as Heniy W. Grady, Henry Cabot Lodge, Chauncey 
 M. ' Depew, Charles H. Parkhurst, James G. Blaine,, 
 James A. Garfield, George William Curtis, Henry Ward 
 Beecher, Joseph Parker, and others who represent the 
 best in modern oratory. The selections have been 
 tested in the author's rhetorical exercises, and each 
 possesses directness, force, and effectiveness. 
 
 Part I. consists of " drill pieces '' for the development 
 of power to gain and hold the attention of an audience 
 and later to persuade or convince it. The acquisition of 
 this ability, which so determines the success or failure 
 of a public speaker, is the main thought of the book. 
 
 In Part H. the leading orators are represented by a 
 group of selections which so fully illustrate each orator's 
 scope, method, and characteristics that the book will 
 prove useful in the study of American oratory during the 
 latter part of this century. The selections are brief, few 
 of them requiring more than five minutes for delivery. 
 
 GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, 
 
 Boston. New York. Chicago. San Francisco. 
 
 Atlanta. Dallas. Columbus. London. 
 
^ j.,!,-!l'ni ~ . . 'SI i a.): 
 
 PK ili|ipiiis||iiiB; 
 
 ■'It fB^^%l!!fe 
 
 Mil 
 
 ,9l|_