1791 a short time before he quitted it. They are therefore placed in a dilemma, from which it would puzzle subtler dialecticians to escape. Either they or their idol-have changed either they have received a new light, or he is a changeling, god. They are either converts to a faith which, for so many years and during so many vicissitudes, they had, in their preaching and in their lives, held to be damnable or they are believers in a heresy, lightly taken up by its author, and promulgated to suit the wholly secular purposes of some particular seasons badgi97 129 2moinigo zid to buslase -We believe a very little examination of the facts will suffice to show that the believers have been more consistent than their oracle; and that, they escape from the charge of fickleness at the expense of the authority due to the faith last proclaimed from his altar. It would, indeed; be difficult to select one leading principle or prevailing sentiment in Mr. Burke's latest writings, to which something extremely adverse may not be found in his former, we can hardly say his early works excepting only on the subject of Parliamentary: Reform, to which, with all the friends of Lord Rockingham, he was from the beginning adverse; and in favour of which he found so very hesitating and lukewarm a feeling among Mr. Fox's supporters, as hardly amounted to a difference, certainly offered no inducements to compromise the opinions of his own

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party: Searching after the monuments of altered principles, we will not resort to his first works, in one of which he terms Damien a late unfortunate regicide," looking only at his punishment, and disregarding his offence; heither shall we look into his speeches, exceeding, as they did, the bounds which all other men, even in the bheat of debate, prescribed to themselves, in speaking now of the first magistrate of the country; while labouring under a calamitous visitation of Providence+now of kings generally But we may fairly take as the standard of his opinions, best weighed and most deliberately pronounced; the calmest of all his pro'ductions, and the most fully considered, given to the world when he had long passed the middle age of life, had filled a high station, and been for years eminent in parliamentary history. Although, in compositions of this kind, more depends upon the general tone of a work than on particular passages, because the temper of mind on certain points may be better gathered from that, than from any expressly stated propositions, yet we have but to open the book to see that his Thoughts in 1770 were very different from those which breathe through every page of his. Anti-Jacobin writings. And first of the Corinthian Capital of 1790—“ I am no

* The Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents was published in 1770-when Mr. B . Burke was above forty years old.

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friend" (says he in 1770) "to aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that word is usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on the supposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination." (Works, II. 246.) His comfort is derived from the consideration, "that the generality of peers are but too apt to fall into an oblivion of their proper dignity, and run headlong into an abject servitude." Next of "the Swinish Multitude". "When popular discontents have been very prevalent, it may well be affirmed and supported that there has been generally something found amiss in the constitution or in the conduct of government. The people have no interest in disorder. When they do wrong, it is their error, not their crime. But with the governing part of the state it is far otherwise;" and he quotes the saying of Sully: "Pour la populace, ce n'est jamais par envie d'attaquer qu'elle se soulève, mais par impatience de souffrir." (Ib. 224.) Again, of the people as "having nothing to do with the laws but to obey them' "I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the representatives, but the interposition of the body of the people itself, whenever it shall appear by * Ital. in orig.

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some flagrant and notorious act,-by some capital innovation-that these representatives are going to overleap the fences of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power. This interposition is a most unpleasant remedy. But if it be a legal remedy, it is intended on some occasion to be used; to be used then only when it is evident that nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles. It is not in Parliament alone that the remedy for parliamentary disorders can be completed; hardly indeed can it begin there. Until a confidence in government is re-established, the people ought to be excited to a more strict and detailed attention to the conduct of their representatives. Standards for judging more systematically upon their conduct ought to be settled in the meetings of counties and corporations. Frequent and correct lists of the voters in all important questions ought to be procured." (Ib. 324.) The reasons which called for popular interposition, and made him preach it at a season of unprecedented popular excitement, are stated to be "the immense revenue, enormous debt, and mighty establishments ;" and he requires the House of Commons "to bear some stamp of the actual disposition of the people at large;" adding, that "it would be a more natural and tolerable evil, that the House should be infected with every epidemical frenzy of the people, as this would indicate some consanguinity, some sympathy

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of nature with their constituents, than that they should in all cases be wholly untouched by the opinions and feelings of the people out of doors." Now let us step aside for a moment to remark, that the "immense revenue" was under 10 millions; the "enormous debt," 130; and the "mighty establishments" cost about 6 millions a-year. statesman who, on this account, recommended popular interference in 1770, lived to see the revenue 24 millions; the debt, 350; the establishment, 30; and the ruling principle of his latter days was the all-sufficiency of Parliament and the Crown, and the fatal consequence of according to the people the slightest share of direct power in the state.

His theoretical view of the constitution in those days was as different from the high monarchical tone of his latter writings. The King was then "the representative of the people," "so" (he adds) "are the Lords; so are the Judges; they are all trustees for the people, as well as the Commons, because no power is given for the sole sake of the holder; and although government certainly is an institution of divine authority, yet its forms, and the persons who administer it, all originate from the people." And then comes that immortal passage so often cited, and which ought to be blazoned in letters of fire over the porch of the Commons' House; illustrating the doctrine it sets