teristic vices of such bodies. Against this evil Burke protested emphatically, and his protest is justified, perhaps by rather too complex an exposition, in the 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.' 'I am no friend,' he says, 'to aristocracy, in the sense, at least, in which that word is usually understood ''-a sense which is explained by his criticism on the existing body. The danger which he apprehended is not of the 'austere and insolent domination of a body of independent nobles, but the degrading rule of a body of nobles reduced to abject servility.' 'Would to God that it were true,' he exclaims, 'that the fault of our peers were too much spirit!' He dreads a régime of courtiers and favourites; a cabinet of ministers not appointed on national grounds, but 'on the likings and jealousies, the intrigues and policies of a court.' The Court party, representing this demoralising influence, had gained power as the independent gentry had become more indifferent to politics. Favourites with the souls of valets had pushed aside the old high-spirited gentlemen; and the consequent weakening of the old party connections meant, for Burke, the weakening of independent principle.

2

,5

110. The fervid panegyrics which close the Present Discontents' and the 'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' are elequent expositions of his doctrine. In the way which they call party, I worship the constitution of your fathers; '5 and the party to which he belonged had redeemed the present age by grafting public principles on private honour.'s Party, therefore, was the true antithesis to clique; the proof that a healthy blood was circulating through the veins of the body politic. The quack medicines prescribed by demagogues would be pernicious, for they would stimulate corruption, instead of increasing the sense of responsibility. The true remedy was not to alter the distribution of power, but to take securities that it should be exercised under the pressure of public opinion, and therefore by means which would bear inspection. To Burke's energy was owing in great degree the system which forced Parliament to debate in presence of

the nation, instead of settling matters by private conversations; and that alteration in the libel law, afterwards carried out by his disciple Fox, which set free the rising power of the press. But his greatest effort was the plan for economical reform, which was carried in a mutilated shape by the coalition administration. The speech in which he introduced the measure is a most admirable specimen of lucid exposition. Its purpose is defined in the opening sentences. 'What, I confess, was uppermost with me; what I bent the whole force of my mind to, was the reduction of that corrupt influence, which is itself the perennial spring of all prodigality and of all disorder; which loads us more than millions of debt; which takes away vigour from our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.'1 The power of corruption enjoyed under the old system lay at the root of all our political evils. Why was it, he asks, that a previous scheme of economy failed, and that the public debt accumulated? 'It was because the king's turnspit was a member of Parliament. The king's domestic servants were all undone; his tradesmen remained unpaid and became bankrupt-because the turnspit of the king's kitchen was a member of Parliament. His Majesty's slumbers were interrupted; his pillow was stuffed with thorns, and his peace of mind utterly broken

-because the king's turnspit was a member of Parliament. The judges were unpaid; the justice of the kingdom bent and gave way; the foreign ministers remained inactive and unprovided; the system of Europe was dissolved; the chain of our alliance was broken; the wheels of government at home and abroad were stopped-because the king's turnspit was a member of Parliament.' 2

111. Such declamations in the mouths of democratic writers were intended to justify the inference that so rotten a system should be summarily destroyed. Burke would not have touched one recognised branch of the royal prerogative or have removed one privilege of the peerage. He would renovate and strengthen the old system. He would enable its practice to conform to its theory; and, by enforcing publicity and sweeping away the malpractices of backstairs 2 Ib. iii. 284, ib.

'Burke, iii. 232, Economical Reform.'

intrigue, would stimulate the leaders of the people to adopt an attitude worthy of their exalted position. He would cherish most tenderly every institution which tended to preserve the historical dignity of the constitution, whilst removing the morbid growths which had accumulated in darkness and stagnation. A different spirit, however, was beginning to stir the political surface; and the method by which Burke encountered it can best be expounded by his attitude towards the American and the French Revolutions. The influence of the American War of Independence upon European politics is an interesting subject, to which, perhaps, full justice has hardly been done. The early leaders of the French movement were undoubtedly stimulated by the American precedent. The names of Lafayette and Beaumarchais, of Franklin and Paine, of Priestley and Price, suggest different links of connection between the American outbreak and the advance of democracy in Europe. The philosophers for once saw what appeared to be a realisation of their dreams. A great nation was casting aside the relics of feudalism and monarchy, and founding a new constitution upon first principles. The socialcontract theory seemed to be translating itself into history. And yet the immediate causes of the struggle were in the oldfashioned English creed, rather than in any new development of doctrine. If men like Franklin and Jefferson sympathised with the French philosophy, Washington seemed to be an American reproduction of Hampden, and Hamilton and the Federalists were believers in Montesquieu, and ardent admirers of the British Constitution. The social order in America was democratic enough to satisfy the abstract theorists; but it had developed itself peacefully and imperceptibly; and the descendants of the Puritans could appeal to the immemorial privileges of British subjects. Thus two distinct forces were blended in the general result; and the views taken by the supporters of the Americans were characteristically different.

112. On the immediate questions at issue, indeed, there could be little room for dispute amongst men not blinded by the bigotry of patriotism. The essence of the dispute was simply that the English Government had managed the colonies in the 'shopkeeping' spirit, and yet were not shopkeepers enough to adopt Tucker's recommendation to treat

their customers civilly. The colonies were regarded as factories, whose trade was retained for English merchants by the elaborate system of navigation laws. No one thought of protesting against the system; and even the Americans acquiesced, until English statesmen proposed to tax them directly as well as to monopolise their trade. That they were justified in protesting was obvious even then to men who could think. With the two exceptions of Johnson and Gibbon,' says Wraxall, all the eminent and shining talents of the country led on by Burke were marshalled in support of the colonies.' The expensive and wicked blunder of the war was, of course, popular, like other such blunders, with the mass of the country. In 1777 Burke, writing to Lord Rockingham, reckons amongst the opponents of their views, 'the weight of King, Lords, and Commons,' nearly all the loungers, the chief part of the commercial and landed interests, and the whole Church 'in a manner,' besides the army and navy.2 The mass was decided by passion and by narrow prejudice; and the misfortune of the English people was its incapacity to take a view of affairs commensurate with its position. 'I think,' said Burke in 1788, 'I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their true bearings and relations.' Here, as in domestic politics, the governing classes from whom Burke expected so much were miserably contracted in their views. the rulers of a vast empire treated whole continents in the spirit of petty traders, it was no wonder if they had to write off enormous losses in their ledgers. In this case the attempt to inspire a new spirit by removing abuses was too late. Blunders all but irretrievable had already been committed; and the only hope was to persuade the legislature to retract whilst there was yet time. The abolition of the offensive taxes was of course necessary; but on what principles were the future relations of the empire to be adjusted? This was the problem with which Burke attempted to deal, and his

3

1 Wraxall's Historical Memoirs,' ii. 79.

2 Burke, ix. 167.

Ib. iv. 201, Nabob of Arcot's Debts.'

When

solution brought him into conflict with the other wing of the conciliatory party.

113. His first effort was to clear the whole discussion from the confusion imported into it by the theory of abstract rights. The endless wranglings upon these insoluble metaphysical questions entangled and embittered every part of the argument. Johnson and a host of other writers asserted the indefeasible right of England to govern America. Lyttelton, in the House of Lords, quoted the social compact to prove that the Americans had tacitly consented to the absolute rule of Parliament;1 Pownall inferred from the theory of 'essential and indefeasible rights' that the Americans ought to have representatives in the English Parliament; Chatham, the most weighty, but the most wayward, defender of the colonies, declared that the colonists had an absolute right to arrange their own internal taxation; but that the mothercountry had an absolute right to levy taxes for the regulation of commerce. And, meanwhile, Americans were rapidly learning that they had an absolute and indefeasible right to independence. Burke alone desired to sweep aside the whole controversy as so much frivolous logomachy. If only he could persuade men to see that the question was simply a question of expediency, it would answer itself. Men might wrangle till doomsday over the question of abstract right; nobody but a fool would support a policy of simple oppression, stripped bare of the delusive figment of abstract right.

114. On this ground Burke supported the Declaratory Act, passed by the Rockingham Ministry concurrently with the repeal of the Stamp Act. In a history of events, especially if it included the history of what might have been, it might be worth enquiring whether Chatham's policy would not have been better than that which Burke supported. Possibly the recognition of some right in the matter would have satisfied the popular instincts, when Burke's almost nervous desire to transfer the question from the ground of right to the ground of expediency exposed him to some misinterpretation. Indeed, the assertion of the absolute supremacy of the Imperial Government, coupled with an abandonment of the measures 'Phillimore's 'Life of Lyttelton,' p. 693.