by the fact, that the cardinal measure of the new administration was intrusted to his hands. What is commonly called Fox's India Bill, was in reality Burke's; and a tolerably fair account of it will be found in the present volume. Whether the odium attaching to the coalition ministers communicated itself to the bill which they now brought forward, or whether the really vicious principle of the bill completed the sum of their unpopularity; whether, in short, the bill destroyed the coalition, or the coalition the bill, is likely to remain a moot point for ever. We are inclined to believe that it was just six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. Whether the wisest measures could have reconciled the public mind to the origin of the Portland ministry, is perhaps more than doubtful. But the measure in question seemed studiously framed to bring out into bold relief exactly its worst points. The public was disgusted with the oligarchic and exclusive character of the Whig connection; and the proposed Indian government would be an oligarchy within an oligarchy. The public had been shocked at the violation of principle involved in the union between Fox and North. The confiscation of vested rights in the abolition of the company's charter, seemed only a further development of the same spirit of lawlessness. Every corporation in the empire trembled for its rights. And here, no doubt, lay the practically weak point of the entire bill. Whether the apprehensions of the municipalities were well founded or ill, they were most unmistakeably sincere; and enabled the opposition to point triumphantly to the country, and to appeal to a majority of the people. This cry it was that ruined the coalition. It gave the king courage to intrust that extraordinary credential to Lord Temple, and it made the nation blind to an exercise of prerogative, against which, however justifiable, they would at any other time have raised a tempest of obloquy. So fell this memorable coalition, which England did not love; and so succeeded to power that immortal minister whom it is still her pride to recollect.

Mr. Macknight's remarks on the whole transaction are moderate, and certainly plausible. He is bound to defend the India bill; and he naturally condemns the king. About the former we express no opinion, except that it was conceived, as might be expected from Burke, in too purely theoretical a spirit.

The propriety of the king's interference to ensure its refection in the Lords, by letting it be known that he should regard as his personal enemy every peer who voted for it, is a much more interesting question. Why, it may be asked, did the king adopt this particular mode of making his authority felt? Why not have refused his assent to the bill after it had passed through parliament? The reason no doubt was, independently of the hazardous nature of such an experiment, that it would not have ensured the mortification of the coalition ministers, or have given him a sufficient pretext for dismissing them from his counsels. By the plan which he employed, he placed them in collision with the upper branch of the legislature. By the other plan, he would only have placed himself in collision with both branches. The king saw that the country would gladly be rid of the coalition. Was he justified in doing informally, for the sake of that object, what, if done formally, might have failed to secure it? No rule can be laid down to meet such cases as these. Each must be judged upon its own merits. Doubtless, we may admit as a general principle, that it is better for the sovereign to use his legitimate influence through the channels appointed by the constitution, than through any irregular machinery. The amount of good to be obtained by a departure from this principle, can be the only measure of its wisdom. And we are on the whole inclined to think that in this case his majesty was right.

Burke drew up a long and formal remonstrance against this exercise of prerogative. But it came to nothing. While the overpowering majority returned at the ensuing election for the minister in whose favour it had been employed, shewed that the English people had, by the rough logic of common-sense, resolved that the offence was a virtue.

The next business of importance in which Burke was engaged, was the impeachment of Warren Hastings, with every stage of which our readers must be completely familiar through the splendid essay of Macaulay. Mr. Macknight's narrative is, however, extremely interesting; though we cannot read it without a feeling of melancholy, suggested by the situation of the chief actor. We do not believe that Hastings was rightly prosecuted; but we have no doubt that Burke was even passionately

in earnest, and his error was a génerous and noble one. He had no personal animosity towards Hastings, like his coadjutor Francis. He scarcely thought of the impeachment as a party move, like Fox. His whole soul was stirred with compassion for the sufferings of the Asiatic races, and his imagination, says Macaulay, was fired by the pomps, antiquities, and imposing traditions of the Indian monarchies. Such being his motives, it is distressing to find that he was deserted by his friends, and almost personally insulted by his enemies, in the discharge of what he considered to be this sacred duty. The neglect sunk deep into his heart, and embittered even his hours of relaxation. The taunts goaded him to fury, which by his libellers was spoken of as madness. But, if he was indeed mad, it was only as St. Paul was mad; and one of the greatest blemishes in a recent celebrated work, more remarkable, however, for the width than the depth of the author's acquisitions, is the resuscitation of this stupid old slander, which, originating as a mere joke among the Treasury underlings, gathered strength among credulous gossip-mongers, till it actually assumed something like a serious form, though not one that we should have thought could for a moment have imposed upon any man of ordinary common-sense, or accustomed to ordinary habits of investigation.

1

The intense labour of the Hastings prosecution, and the mortification which attended on its failure, were immediately followed up by all the exciting horrors of the French Revolution, and the murder of the royal family. At this point the interest of the biography deepens. Burke was at Beaconsfield when the news first reached him of the storming of the Bastile. To this outburst of popular feeling he did not refuse his sympathy, though he could not help an under-current of suspicion that all was not as well as it looked; and that the recent act of violence was rather characteristic of men stung to fury by oppression, than of statesmen with the necessary leisure and security to form a political constitution. Events soon shewed that these suspicions were not ungrounded. The invasion of Versailles by the mob followed four months afterwards; and the king and queen, after many insults, were carried back to Paris, the virtual prisoners

1 Mr. Buckle's "History of Civilisation."

of the populace. As the bloody drama unfolded itself with everaccelerating rapidity, Burke's sentiments on the subject gradually became stronger and firmer. At first, when urged by a young French correspondent to express his opinion of events, he had maintained a rigid silence. Before the year was out, however, the progress of the revolution in France, and the conduct of its friends in England, left no doubt in Burke's mind that he should be doing more good than harm by the publication of his own views. The reflections on the French Revolution, addressed in the form of a letter to M. Dupont, the young gentleman aforesaid, were commenced in October, 1789, but not published till the 1st of November in the ensuing year. It is not too much to say, that the book burst upon the European public like the voice of some ancient prophet. In England no other subject was talked of, and thirty thousand copies were sold before Christmas. Mr. Macknight has given us a very good analysis of this famous treatise, and he has, of course, a large majority on his side, when he pronounces "that in all the range of English prose it would be difficult to find any thing surpassing these pages of brilliant eloquence." Our own opinion does not coincide with this. In the description of Marie Antoinette, it is the sentiment rather than the language which has achieved so vast a popularity. That goes straight to the heart. The concluding sentences, indeed, which are an apostrophe to chivalry, and not to the fallen queen, Do merit Mr. Macknight's eulogy; and could not have been intended by Francis to come under the appellation of "foppery," which he bestowed on the earlier part of the celebrated passage.

But, whatever we may think of the style of this famous work, there can be no two opinions about its power. It seized on the fluctuating opinion of the English people, and fixed it in a lasting mould. While men were looking on at the revolution, astonished, uncertain, and alarmed, like Belshazzar and his lords, at the handwriting on the wall, Burke suddenly appeared like one inspired, to proclaim the meaning of the phenomena. There were a few recalcitrants-the majority in the highest places. But an overwhelming majority of the public bowed to the interpretation of the great statesman, and never again hesitated. The steadiness of the English mind during the trials

and terrors of the next five-and-twenty years; our single-handed defiance of half the continent; the victories of Nelson and Wellington; and the preservation of our oldest institutions-are, in our opinion, not remotely attributable to the eloquence of Edmund Burke.

The parliamentary result of this open declaration of opinion, so adverse to that of Fox and Sheridan, was a separation between Burke and Fox, to be followed shortly after by that schism in the Whig party which avenged all the former slights to which Burke had been exposed. The separation scenes between the two great Whig leaders are well described by Mr. Macknight; but they are so well known to all our readers that we shall not recapitulate them. Of the Whig party in general, about one hundred and fifty came over eventually to the side of Mr. Pitt, leaving Fox with a following that fluctuated variously between fifty and eighty.

It having been stated in the Morning Chronicle, that the Whigs of England had decided on the quarrel between Fox and Burke-that the former was judged to have maintained the pure Whig doctrine, and that consequently Mr. Burke was to retire from parliament-the latter statesman conceived that he was called upon to vindicate himself from the imputation, and to show what the true Whig doctrine really was. This was the object with which the "Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old" was written. The piece was composed for the most part during his residence at Margate, in the summer and autumn of 1791; and an interesting picture is afforded by Burke pacing the sands while he was rounding his periods, and then hurrying back to his lodgings to correct the last batch of proofs from London. The appeal is, in our opinion, the finest of all Burke's political writings; while, as a piece of English composition, we dissent from Mr. Macknight in ranking it second to the "Reflections,” as we consider it to be plainly the superior.

While Burke was at Margate, plying his pen in defence of his conduct and principles, his son Richard was at Coblentz, on a secret mission to the French princes. This whole transaction seems to have been singularly ill-judged upon Burke's part. It was not wonderful that the French princes, who had seen such astonishing effects produced in their own country by a few savans and