dealing with it. Tucker would, in our days, have been a sound Conservative, and at the same time an adherent of the Manchester school of foreign policy.

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92. His Treatise concerning Civil Government' is a vigorous, and often very shrewd, attack on the school of Rousseau, of which the chief English supporters, in his opinion, were Price and Priestley, and of which Locke was the intellectual ancestor. His object is to show that the 'social contract,' as understood by the 'Lockians,' implied that all government was unlawful, except so far as it rested on the voluntary consent of the governed, or that, in other words, it meant simply anarchy. As, however, he is not quite able to emancipate himself from the notion that some sort of contract was necessary, he invents the term 'quasi-contract;' which means simply that government is to be considered as a trust, but that the trustees cannot be dismissed at the arbitrary pleasure of the governed. He strikes some very shrewd blows at his adversaries, contrasts the real savage of the scalping-knife with the imaginary savage of Rousseau, and attacks the popular nostrums of parliamentary reformers as conducive to riot and corruption.3 He accepts the theory of the mixture of the three forms of government; and gives an antiquarian discussion of the origin of the English form of government by way of illustrating his views of its advantages, and the proper cure for its evils. He had, however, little hope of persuading his countrymen to take a sensible view of their condition. What would become, he asks, of a demagogue who should tell his best friends, the mob, that Gibraltar and Port Mahon are expensive and useless; that the ocean should be free to all mankind; that colonies had always been a useless drain, that they would only trade with the parent-country as much as their interests required, and would trade so much whether compelled or not; and that, consequently, money would be saved, jobs prevented, and undue influence limited by separating from them at once?—would not the preacher of such salutary truths be hooted as an apostate, and consequently try to gain favour by proposing-not to remedy real grievances-but to reform the king's kitchen or his dog-kennel? 5

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93. This is meant, of course, as a shrewd blow for Burke,

I must now approach the writings of that great man, incomparably the greatest man, indeed, who has ever given the whole force of his intellect to the investigation of political philosophy in England. But one remark may be premised. Doctrines, such as those expounded by Delolme and his like, had certain merits, too easily overlooked by political enthusiasts and men impatient of superficial formalities. The whole theory was barren enough, but it served to consecrate that system of compromise which has had its utility; to admit of gradual development in the sphere of practice, and to facilitate the transition to a sound historical method in the sphere of theory. On the other hand, its extreme weakness as a permanent creed may be estimated by attempting to oppose arguments of the Delolme variety to the demands which were being put forward through the mouth of Rousseau. It is a weakness of the whole school which descends from Montesquieu that they overlook the really strong passions of humanity. The very conception of a government which contemplates it as a machine to be put together by skilful devices, assumes that the materials of which it is composed are colourless and lifeless. They are mere draughts on the political chessboard, to be arranged by the fancy of the legislator. Loyalty, patriotism, and the fierce desire for equality or liberty, are disturbing elements to be left out of the calculation. These ingenious and old-fashioned statesmen were helpless when confronted by demands made in the name of justice and sympathy. Men complaining that they were naked, and starving, and oppressed were not to be pacified by the assurance that the machine of government was so delicately balanced that it might be expected to run on for ever. Some justification of the existing order resting on deeper principles and appealing to stronger passions was urgently needed; and the most prominent service of Burke in the eyes of his contemporaries was that he supplied that want when the whole constitutional framework seemed going to pieces. And yet, it is frequently said that his opposition to the French Revolution implies a radical inconsistency in his teaching. To understand his position, and to set forth his true doctrine, however incompletely, requires a somewhat full discussion.

IX. BURKE.

94. No English writer has received, or has deserved, more splendid panegyrics than Burke. To do justice to his multifarious activity, or to estimate accurately the influence which he exerted upon contemporary history, would involve a course of enquiry alien to the purpose of this book. I must try, however, to disengage his leading principles from the writing in which they are embedded, and to exhibit their relation to other systems of speculation. Considered simply as a master of English prose, Burke has not, in my judgment, been surpassed in any period of our literature. Critics may point to certain faults of haste; the evolution of his thought is sometimes too slow; his majestic march is trammelled by the sweep of his gorgeous rhetoric; or his imagination takes fire, and he explodes into fierce denunciations which shock the reader when the excitement which prompted them. has become unintelligible. But, whatever blemishes may be detected, Burke's magnificent speeches stand absolutely alone in the language. They are, literally speaking, the only English speeches which may still be read with profit when the hearer and the speaker have long been turned to dust. His pamphlets, which are written speeches, are marked by a fervour, a richness, and a flexibility of style which is but a worthy incarnation of the wisdom which they embody. It matters little if we dissent from his appreciations of current events, for it is easy to supply the corrective for ourselves. The charge of over-refinement sometimes brought against him is in great part nothing more than the unconscious testimony of his critics that he could see farther than themselves. To a certain degree it is, perhaps, well founded. His political strategy was a little too complex for the rough give-and-take of ordinary partisans. His keen perception of the tendencies of certain politics led him to impute motives to their advocates, for which their stupidity rather than their morality incapacitated them. When, for example, we are told that the Court party persecuted Wilkes in order to establish a precedent tending to show that the favour of the people was not so sure a road as the favour of a Court, even to popular

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honours and popular trusts,' we may prefer the simpler explanation founded on the blunt instincts of obtuse rulers. It was doing them too much honour to attribute to them any design beyond that of crushing an antagonist by the weapons readiest at hand. The keen intelligence which thus sometimes takes the form of excessive ingenuity is more frequently revealed by passages in which profound wisdom is concentrated in a single phrase. We should not ask how we got into the American difficulty was the cry of the hand-to-mouth politicians, but how we are to get out of it. That is to say, is Burke's comment, 'we are to consult our invention, and reject our experience.' 'Nobody will be argued into slavery '3 is another phrase from the same speech, which compresses into half-a-dozen words the confutation of the special pleading and pettifogging of antiquarian lawyers, which the so-called practical men mistook for statesmanlike reasoning. I know no method,' he says elsewhere, 'of drawing up an indictment against a whole people; '4 but lawyers thought that nothing was beyond the reach of their art. His later writings are equally fertile. 'Art is man's nature's sums up his argument against the Rousseau school of theorists; and here is another phrase which might serve as text for a political treatise. On occasions of this nature, he says, 'I am most afraid of the weakest reasonings, because they discover the strongest passions.' Not to multiply instances, I quote one more passage of great significance in regard to Burke's method. 'From this source,' he says, speaking of history, 'much political wisdom may be learnt; that is, learnt as habit, not as a precept, and as an exercise to strengthen the mind, not as a repertory of cases and precedents for a lawyer."

95. Such sayings, which occur in profusion, illustrate the most marked peculiarity of Burke's mind-the admirable combination of the generalising faculty with a respect for concrete facts. His theorising is always checked and verified by the

1 Burke's Works, ii. 294, Present Discontents.'

2 Ib. ii. 352, 'American Taxation.'

test of specific instances, and yet in every special case he always sees a general principle. He explains his method himself in a speech made in 1792. The professor, he says, deals simply with general principles; a statesman applies them to varying circumstances; without 'abstract ideas' all political reasoning would be a jumble, without facts a useless frivolity.' Burke was at one time suspected of being the author of 'Junius,' on the ground, not altogether devoid of plausibility, that he was the only living writer of the necessary capacity. Yet, if no other evidence were conclusive against the charge, the internal evidence derived from this characteristic would be convincing to those who have really studied the two writers. 'Junius' never deviates from personality into the higher regions of speculation, even when professedly advancing some general doctrine. Burke never condescends to mere personalities, even when his devotion to principles forces him to attack their assailants. He assails Hastings, or the Jacobins, as embodiments of evil tendencies, with fierce animosity, it is true, but with an animosity free from any stain of personal dislike; he attacks the king's friends, but instead of fastening, like 'Junius,' on hated individuals, scrupulously avoids giving countenance even to the popular cry against Lord Bute. And yet it is so much his habit to regard principles as embodied in concrete facts, that it is by no means easy to disentangle his speculative influence from the history of his share in current events. This is the specific quality which gives a unique character to his writings, and has led to frequent misunderstandings. Goldsmith's felicitous phrase indicates the nature of the difficulty. One party complained that so great a man

To party gave up what was meant for mankind;

for they could not conceive how a philosopher could care for the intrigues of Bedfords and Grenvilles. Another complained that

He went on refining,

And thought of convincing when they thought of dining ;

for they could not conceive how any political object, except

1 Burke, x. 41, 'Speech on Subscription.'