out with, that "their representatives are a control for the people, and not upon the people; and that the virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consist in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation." (Ibid. 288.)* It may be superfluous to add, that one so deeply imbued with the soundest principles of a free constitution must always have regarded the Bourbon rulers with singular dislike, while he saw in the English government the natural ally of Liberty, wheresoever she was struggling with her chains. Accordingly, in the same famous work, he exclaims, "Such was the conquest of Corsica, by the professed enemies of the freedom of mankind, in defi

* “A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy; an anxious care of public money; an openness, approaching towards facility, to public complaint; these seem to be the true characteristics of a House of Commons. But an addressing House of Commons and a petitioning nation; a House of Commons full of confidence, when the nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost harmony with ministers whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence; who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments; who are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account; who in all disputes between the people and the administration pronounce against the people; who punish their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into the provocations to them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in the constitution. Such an assembly may be a great, wise, awful senate; but it is not to any popular purpose a House of Commons."-(Ib. 289.) VOL. I.

K

ance of those who were formerly its professed defenders." (Ibid. 272.)

Although it cannot be denied that a considerable portion of the deference which Mr. Burke's later and more celebrated opinions are entitled to command is thus taken away, and, as it were, shared by the conflicting authority of his earlier sentiments, his disciples may, nevertheless, be willing to rest his claims to a reverent, if not an implicit observance upon the last, as the maturest efforts of his genius. Now, it appears evident that, in this extraordinary person, the usual progress of the faculties in growth and decline was in some measure reversed; his fancy became more vivid,-it burnt, as it were, brighter before its extinction; while age, which had only increased that light, lessened the power of profiting from it, by weakening the judgment as the imagination gained luxuriance and strength. Thus, his old age resembled that of other men in one particular only; he was more haunted by fears, and more easily became the dupe of imposture as well as alarm.

It is quite vain now to deny that the unfavourable decision which those feelings led him to form of the French Revolution was, in the main, incorrect and exaggerated. That he was right in expecting much confusion and mischief from the passions of a whole nation let loose, and influenced only by the various mobs of its capital, literary and

any

political, in the assemblies, the club-rooms, the theatres, and the streets, no one can doubt; and his apprehensions were certainly not shared by the body of his party. But beyond this very scanty and not very difficult portion of his predictions, it would be hard to show any signal instance of their fulfilment. Except in lamenting the excesses of the times of terror, and in admitting them to form a large deduction from the estimate of the benefits of the Revolution, it would be no easy matter to point out a single opinion of his which rational and moderate man of the present day will avow. Those who claim for Mr. Burke's doctrines in 1790 the praise of a sagacity and foresight hardly human, would do well to recollect his speech on the Army Estimates of that year. It is published by himself, corrected, and its drift is to show the uselessness of a large force, because "France must now be considered as expunged out of the system of Europe;" it expresses much doubt if she can ever resume her station "as a leading power;" anticipates the language of the rising generation-Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus; and decides that, at all events, her restoration to anything like a substantive existence must, under a republic, be the work of much time. Scarce two years elapsed before this same France, without any change whatever in her situation, except the increase of the anarchy * Works, vol. v. p. 1.

that had expunged her from the map, declared war on Austria, and in a few months more carried her conquests so much farther than Louis XIV. had done, when the firmness and judgment of King William opposed him, that Mr. Burke now said a universal league was necessary to avert her universal dominion, and that it was a question whether she would suffer any one throne to stand in Europe. The same eulogists of Mr. Burke's sagacity would also do well to recollect those yearly predictions of the complete internal ruin which for so long a period alternated with alarms at the foreign aggrandisement of the Republic; they all originated in his famous work-though it contains some prophecies too extravagant to be borrowed by his most servile imitators. Thus he contends that the population of France is irreparably diminished by the Revolution, and actually adopts a calculation which makes the distress of Paris require above two millions sterling for its yearly relief; a sum sufficient to pay each family above seventeen pounds, or to defray its whole expenditure in that country.

But on these grounds a further allowance is made, and a new deduction introduced, from the sum total of the deference paid to his authority. It is said that the sagacity and penetration which we are bid to reverence were never at fault, unless on points where strong feelings interfered. The proposition must be admitted, and without any qualification.

But it leads not to an abatement merely-it operates a release of the whole debt of deference and respect. For one clever man's opinion is just as good as another's, if both are equally uninfluenced by passions and feelings of every kind. Nor must it be forgotten that on another subject as well as the French Revolution Mr. Burke's prejudices warped his judgment. When strongly interested he was apt to regard things in false colours and distorted shape. The fate of society for many years hung upon Hastings's Impeachment; during that period he exhausted as much vituperation upon the East Indians in this country as he afterwards did on the Jacobins; and he was not more ready to quarrel with Mr. Fox on a difference of opinion about France, than he had been a year before to attack Mr. Erskine with every weapon of personal and professional abuse, upon a slighter difference about the Abating of the Impeachment. Nay, after the Hastings question might have been supposed forgotten, or merged in the more recent controversy on French affairs, he deliberately enumerates among the causes of alarm at French principles, the prevalence of the East India interest in England; ranks "Nabobs" with the Diplomatic Body all over Europe, as naturally and incurably Jacobin; and warns this country loudly and solemnly against suffering itself to be overthrown by a Bengal junto."

66