place-bill would only substitute occult for overt influence.' The constitution, he says in a later speech, would not survive five triennial elections even to the wrecks of it.' 2 To the end of his life he denied that any sensible grievance had arisen from the want of symmetry in the constitution. When did you hear in Great Britain,' he asks in his 'Reflections,' of any province suffering from the inequality of its representation; what district from having no representation at all?' The demand for such reforms was not as yet threatening. The Wilkes' agitation seemed to indicate that the balance was tottering in the opposite direction. Reforms were demanded, not to save the House of Commons from dependence upon the king, but to preserve its dependence upon the constituents. By declaring Wilkes incapable of re-election, the Commons seemed to be asserting a power of self-election. They were usurping, as Burke said, the power of legislation by the simple vote of the House. The circumstance of having no appeal from their jurisdiction is made to imply that they have no rule in the exercise of it.' The danger, indeed, that the House of Commons should ever have formed itself into an oligarchy seems to be chimerical enough; and, perhaps, Burke's language exaggerates this particular risk.

109. The true meaning of the struggle, as he clearly saw, was of a different kind. The House of Commons would have no chance of emancipating itself from the control of its constituents, except by falling under the influence of the Crown. George III., though a man of more courage than Charles I., had little chance of founding a despotism; and the Norths and Seckers were but feeble representatives of the Straffords and Lauds. The references to possible Hampdens and Cromwells were equally premature. But it was possible, as to some extent it actually happened, that the Crown should rule by corrupt influence, that the great families should become mere squabblers for place, and that government should be carried on by a system of personal cliques. Parliament might become a close corporation, with all the charac

Burke, ii. 319 et seq., Present Discontents.'

2 Ib. x. 81, 'Duration of Parliament.'

* Ib. v. 336, 'Reflections.'

Ib. ii. 303, Present Discontents.'

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 apprehends 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

110. The fervid panegyrics which close the 'Present Discontents' and the 'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' are eloquent 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.' 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

'Burke, ii. 246, Present Discontents.'

2 Ib. ii. 246, ib.

Ib. ii. 260, ib.

Ib. ii. 258, ib.

Ib. iii. 197, 'Sheriffs of Bristol.'

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.' 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

III. 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 1 Burke, iii. 232, Economical Reform.' 2 Ib. iii. 284, ib.

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 Tom 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 social contract of 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. When 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

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

2 Burke, ix. 167.

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