It would be difficult to select an example of a more lofty and
irreproachable character among the great statesmen of England than
Edmund Burke. He is not a puzzle, like Oliver Cromwell, although there
are inconsistencies in the opinions he advanced from time to time. He
takes very much the same place in the parliamentary history of his
country as Cicero took in the Roman senate. Like that greatest of Roman
orators and statesmen, Burke was upright, conscientious, conservative,
religious, and profound. Like him, he lifted up his earnest voice
against corruption in the government, against great state criminals,
against demagogues, against rash innovations. Whatever diverse opinions
may exist as to his political philosophy, there is only one opinion as
to his character, which commands universal respect. Although he was the
most conservative of statesmen, clinging to the Constitution, and to
consecrated traditions and associations both in Church and State, still
his name is associated with the most important and salutary reforms
which England made for half a century. He seems to have been sent to
instruct and guide legislators in a venal and corrupt age. To my mind
Burke looms up, after the lapse of a century, as a prodigy of thought
and knowledge, devoted to the good of his country; an unselfish and
disinterested patriot, as wise and sagacious as he was honest; a sage
whose moral wisdom shines brighter and brighter, since it was based on
the immutable principles of justice and morality. One can extract more
profound and striking epigrams from his speeches and writings than from
any prose writer that England has produced, if we except Francis Bacon.
And these writings and speeches are still valued as among the most
precious legacies of former generations; they form a thesaurus of
political wisdom which statesmen can never exhaust. Burke has left an
example which all statesmen will do well to follow. He was not a popular
favorite, like Fox and Pitt; he was not born to greatness, like North
and Newcastle; he was not liked by the king or the nobility; he was
generally in the ranks of the opposition; he was a new man, like Cicero,
in an aristocratic age,--yet he conquered by his genius the proudest
prejudices; he fought his way upward, inch by inch; he was the founder
of a new national policy, although it was bitterly opposed; and he died
universally venerated for his integrity, wisdom, and foresight. He was
the most remarkable man, on the whole, who has taken part in public
affairs, from the Revolution to our times. Of course, the life and
principles of so great a man are a study. If history has any interest or
value, it is to show the influence of such a man on his own age and the
ages which have succeeded,--to point out his contribution to
civilization.
Edmund Burke was born, 1730, of respectable parents in Ireland. He was
educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he made a fair proficiency,
but did not give promise of those rare powers which he afterwards
exhibited. He was no prodigy, like Cicero, Pitt, and Macaulay. He early
saw that his native country presented no adequate field for him, and
turned his steps to London at the age of twenty, where he entered as a
student of law in the Inner Temple,--since the Bar was then, what it was
at Rome, what it still is in modern capitals, the usual resort of
ambitious young men. But Burke did not like the law as a profession, and
early dropped the study of it; not because he failed in industry, for he
was the most plodding of students; not because he was deficient in the
gift of speech, for he was a born orator; not because his mind repelled
severe logical deductions, for he was the most philosophical of the
great orators of his day,--not because the law was not a noble field
for the exercise of the highest faculties of the mind, but probably
because he was won by the superior fascinations of literature and
philosophy. Bacon could unite the study of divine philosophy with
professional labors as a lawyer, also with the duties of a legislator;
but the instances are rare where men have united three distinct spheres,
and gained equal distinction in all. Cicero did, and Bacon, and Lord
Brougham; but not Erskine, nor Pitt, nor Canning. Even two spheres are
as much as most distinguished men have filled,--the law with politics,
like Thurlow and Webster; or politics with literature, like Gladstone
and Disraeli. Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Reynolds, the early friends of
Burke, filled only one sphere.
The early literary life of Burke was signalized by his essay on "The
Sublime and Beautiful," original in its design and execution, a model of
philosophical criticism, extorting the highest praises from Dugald
Stewart and the Abbé Raynal, and attracting so much attention that it
speedily became a text-book in the universities. Fortunately he was able
to pursue literature, with the aid of a small patrimony (about £300 a
year), without being doomed to the hard privations of Johnson, or the
humiliating shifts of Goldsmith. He lived independently of patronage
from the great,--the bitterest trial of the literati of the eighteenth
century, which drove Cowper mad, and sent Rousseau to attics and
solitudes,--so that, in his humble but pleasant home, with his young
wife, with whom he lived amicably, he could see his friends, the great
men of the age, and bestow an unostentatious charity, and maintain his
literary rank and social respectability.
I have sometimes wondered why Burke did not pursue this quiet and
beautiful life,--free from the turmoils of public contest, with leisure,
and friends, and Nature, and truth,--and prepare treatises which would
have been immortal, for he was equal to anything he attempted. But such
was not to be. He was needed in the House of Commons, then composed
chiefly of fox-hunting squires and younger sons of nobles (a body as
ignorant as it was aristocratic),--the representatives not of the people
but of the landed proprietors, intent on aggrandizing their families at
the expense of the nation,--and of fortunate merchants, manufacturers,
and capitalists, in love with monopolies. Such an assembly needed at
that day a schoolmaster, a teacher in the principles of political
economy and political wisdom; a leader in reforming disgraceful abuses;
a lecturer on public duties and public wrongs; a patriot who had other
views than spoils and place; a man who saw the right, and was determined
to uphold it whatever the number or power of his opponents. So Edmund
Burke was sent among them,--ambitious doubtless, stern, intellectually
proud, incorruptible, independent, not disdainful of honors and
influence, but eager to render public services.
It has been the great ambition of Englishmen since the Revolution to
enter Parliament, not merely for political influence, but also for
social position. Only rich men, or members of great families, have found
it easy to do so. To such men a pecuniary compensation is a small
affair. Hence, members of Parliament have willingly served without pay,
which custom has kept poor men of ability from aspiring to the position.
It was not easy, even for such a man as Burke, to gain admission into
this aristocratic assembly. He did not belong to a great family; he was
only a man of genius, learning, and character. The squirearchy of that
age cared no more for literary fame than the Roman aristocracy did for a
poet or an actor. So Burke, ambitious and able as he was, must bide
his time.
His first step in a political career was as private secretary to Gerard
Hamilton, who was famous for having made but one speech, and who was
chief secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Halifax.
Burke soon resigned his situation in disgust, since he was not willing
to be a mere political tool. But his singular abilities had attracted
the attention of the prime minister, Lord Rockingham, who made him his
private secretary, and secured his entrance into Parliament. Lord
Verney, for a seat in the privy council, was induced to give him a
"rotten borough."
Burke entered the House of Commons in 1765, at thirty-five years of age.
He began his public life when the nation was ruled by the great Whig
families, whose ancestors had fought the battles of reform in the times
of Charles and James. This party had held power for seventy years, had
forgotten the principles of the Revolution, and had become venal and
selfish, dividing among its chiefs the spoils of office. It had become
as absolute and unscrupulous as the old kings whom it had once
dethroned. It was an oligarchy of a few powerful whig noblemen, whose
rule was supreme in England. Burke joined this party, but afterwards
deserted it, or rather broke it up, when he perceived its arbitrary
character, and its disregard of the fundamental principles of the
Constitution. He was able to do this after its unsuccessful attempt to
coerce the American colonies.
American difficulties were the great issue of that day. The majority of
the Parliament, both Lords and Commons,--sustained by King George III.,
one of the most narrow-minded, obstinate, and stupid princes who ever
reigned in England; who believed in an absolute jurisdiction over the
colonies as an integral part of the empire, and was bent not only in
enforcing this jurisdiction, but also resorted to the most offensive
and impolitic measures to accomplish it,--this omnipotent Parliament,
fancying it had a right to tax America without her consent, without a
representation even, was resolved to carry out the abstract rights of a
supreme governing power, both in order to assert its prerogative and to
please certain classes in England who wished relief from the burden of
taxation. And because Parliament had this power, it would use it,
against the dictates of expediency and the instincts of common-sense;
yea, in defiance of the great elemental truth in government that even
thrones rest on the affections of the people. Blinded and infatuated
with notions of prerogative, it would not even learn lessons from that
conquered country which for five hundred years it had vainly attempted
to coerce, and which it could finally govern only by a recognition of
its rights.
Now, the great career of Burke began by opposing the leading opinions of
his day in reference to the coercion of the American colonies. He
discarded all theories and abstract rights. He would not even discuss
the subject whether Parliament had a right to tax the colonies. He took
the side of expediency and common-sense. It was enough for him that it
was foolish and irritating to attempt to exercise abstract powers which
could not be carried out. He foresaw and he predicted the consequences
of attempting to coerce such a people as the Americans with the forces
which England could command. He pointed out the infatuation of the
ministers of the crown, then led by Lord North. His speech against the
Boston Port Bill was one of the most brilliant specimens of oratory ever
displayed in the House of Commons. He did not encourage the colonies in
rebellion, but pointed out the course they would surely pursue if the
irritating measures of the Government were not withdrawn. He advocated
conciliation, the withdrawal of theoretic rights, the repeal of
obnoxious taxes, the removal of restrictions on American industry, the
withdrawal of monopolies and of ungenerous distinctions. He would bind
the two countries together by a cord of love. When some member remarked
that it was horrible for children to rebel against their parents, Burke
replied: "It is true the Americans are our children; but when children
ask for bread, shall we give them a stone?" For ten years he labored
with successive administrations to procure reconciliation. He spoke
nearly every day. He appealed to reason, to justice, to common-sense.
But every speech he made was a battle with ignorance and prejudice. "If
you must employ your strength," said he indignantly, "employ it to
uphold some honorable right. I do not enter upon metaphysical
distinctions,--I hate the very name of them. Nobody can be argued into
slavery. If you cannot reconcile your sovereignty with their freedom,
the colonists will cast your sovereignty in your face. It is not enough
that a statesman means well; duty demands that what is right should not
only be made known, but be made prevalent,--that what is evil should not
only be detected, but be defeated. Do not dream that your registers,
your bonds, your affidavits, your instructions, are the things which
hold together the great texture of the mysterious whole. These dead
instruments do not make a government. It is the spirit that pervades and
vivifies an empire which infuses that obedience without which your army
would be a base rabble and your navy nothing but rotten timber." Such is
a fair specimen of his eloquence,--earnest, practical, to the point, yet
appealing to exalted sentiments, and pervaded with moral wisdom; the
result of learning as well as the dictate of a generous and enlightened
policy. When reason failed, he resorted to sarcasm and mockery.
"Because," said he, "we have a right to tax America we must do it; risk
everything, forfeit everything, take into consideration nothing but our
right. O infatuated ministers! Like a silly man, full of his prerogative
over the beasts of the field, who says, there is wool on the back of a
wolf, and therefore he must be sheared. What! shear a wolf? Yes. But
have you considered the trouble? Oh, I have considered nothing but my
right. A wolf is an animal that has wool; all animals that have wool
are to be sheared; and therefore I will shear the wolf."
But I need not enlarge on his noble efforts to prevent a war with the
colonies. They were all in vain. You cannot reason with
infatuation,--_Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat_. The logic of
events at last showed the wisdom of Burke and the folly of the king and
his ministers, and of the nation at large. The disasters and the
humiliation which attended the American war compelled the ministry to
resign, and the Marquis of Rockingham became prime minister in 1782, and
Burke, the acknowledged leader of his party, became paymaster of the
forces,--an office at one time worth £25,000 a year, before the reform
which Burke had instigated. But this great statesman was not admitted to
the cabinet; George III. did not like him, and his connections were not
sufficiently powerful to overcome the royal objection. In our times he
would have been rewarded with a seat on the treasury bench; with less
talents than he had, the commoners of our day become prime-ministers.
But Burke did not long enjoy even the office of paymaster. On the death
of Lord Rockingham, a few months after he had formed the ministry, Burke
retired from the only office he ever held. And he retired to
Beaconsfield,--an estate which he had purchased with the assistance of
his friend Rockingham, where he lived when parliamentary duties
permitted, in that state of blended elegance, leisure, and study which
is to be found, in the greatest perfection, in England alone.
The political power of Burke culminated at the close of the war with
America, but not his political influence: and there is a great
difference between power and influence. Nor do we read that Burke, after
this, headed the opposition. That position was shared by Charles James
Fox, who ultimately supplanted his master as the leader of his party;
not because Burke declined in wisdom or energy, but because Fox had more
skill as a debater, more popular sympathies, and more influential
friends. Burke, like Gladstone, was too stern, too irritable, too
imperious, too intellectually proud, perhaps too unyielding, to control
such an ignorant, prejudiced, and aristocratic body as the House of
Commons, jealous of his ascendency and writhing under his rebukes. It
must have been galling to the great philosopher to yield the palm to
lesser men; but such has ever been the destiny of genius, except in
crises of public danger. Of all things that politicians hate is the
domination of a man who will not stoop to flatter, who cannot be bribed,
and who will be certain to expose vices and wrongs. The world will not
bear rebukes. The fate of prophets is to be stoned. A stern moral
greatness is repulsive to the weak and wicked. Parties reward mediocre
men, whom they can use or bend; and the greatest benefactors lose their
popularity when they oppose the enthusiasm of new ideas, or become
austere in their instructions. Thus the greatest statesman that this
country has produced since Alexander Hamilton, lost his prestige when
his conciliating policy became offensive to a rising party whose
watchword was "the higher law," although, by his various conflicts with
Southern leaders and his loyalty to the Constitution, he educated the
people to sustain the very war which he foresaw and dreaded. And had
that accomplished senator from Massachusetts, Charles Sumner, who
succeeded to Webster's seat, and who in his personal appearance and
advocacy for reform strikingly resembled Burke,--had he remained
uninjured to our day, with increasing intellectual powers and profounder
moral wisdom, I doubt whether even he would have had much influence with
our present legislators; for he had all the intellectual defects of both
Burke and Webster, and never was so popular as either of them at one
period of their career, while he certainly was inferior to both in
native force, experience, and attainments.
The chief labors of Burke for the first ten years of his parliamentary
life had been mainly in connection with American affairs, and which the
result proved he comprehended better than any man in England. Those of
the next ten years were directed principally to Indian difficulties, in
which he showed the same minuteness of knowledge, the same grasp of
intellect, the same moral wisdom, the same good sense, and the same
regard for justice, that he had shown concerning the colonies. But in
discussing Indian affairs his eloquence takes a loftier flight; he is
less conciliating, more in earnest, more concerned with the principles
of immutable obligations. He abhors the cruelties and tyranny inflicted
on India by Clive and Hastings. He could see no good from an
aggrandizement purchased by injustice and wrong. If it was criminal for
an individual to cheat and steal, it was equally atrocious for a nation
to plunder and oppress another nation, infidel or pagan, white or black.
A righteous anger burned in the breast of Burke as he reflected on the
wrongs and miseries of the natives of India. Why should that ancient
country be ruled for no other purpose than to enrich the younger sons of
a grasping aristocracy and the servants of an insatiable and
unscrupulous Company whose monopoly of spoils was the scandal of the
age? If ever a reform was imperative in the government of a colony, it
was surely in India, where the government was irresponsible. The English
courts of justice there were more terrible to the natives than the very
wrongs they pretended to redress. The customs and laws and moral ideas
of the conquered country were spurned and ignored by the greedy scions
of gentility who were sent to rule a population ten times larger than
that between the Humber and the Thames.
So Burke, after the most careful study of the condition of India, lifted
up his voice against the iniquities which were winked at by Parliament.
But his fierce protest arrayed against him all the parties that indorsed
these wrongs, or who were benefited by them. I need not dwell on his
protracted labors for ten years in behalf of right, without the
sympathies of those who had formerly supported him. No speeches were
ever made in the English House of Commons which equalled, in eloquence
and power, those he made on the Nabob of Arcot's debts and the
impeachment of Warren Hastings. In these famous philippics, he
fearlessly exposed the peculations, the misrule, the oppression, and the
inhuman heartlessness of the Company's servants,--speeches which
extorted admiration, while they humiliated and chastised. I need not
describe the nine years' prosecution of a great criminal, and the escape
of Hastings, more guilty and more fortunate than Verres, from the
punishment he merited, through legal technicalities, the apathy of men
in power, the private influence of the throne, and the sympathies which
fashion excited in his behalf,--and, more than all, because of the
undoubted service he had rendered to his country, if it _was_ a service
to extend her rule by questionable means to the farthermost limits of
the globe. I need not speak of the obloquy which Burke incurred from the
press, which teemed with pamphlets and books and articles to undermine
his great authority, all in the interests of venal and powerful
monopolists. Nor did he escape the wrath of the electors of Bristol,--a
narrow-minded town of India traders and Negro dealers,--who withdrew
from him their support. He had been solicited, in the midst of his
former éclat, to represent this town, rather than the "rotten borough"
of Wendover; and he proudly accepted the honor, and was the idol of his
constituents until he presumed to disregard their instructions in
matters of which he considered they were incompetent to judge. His
famous letter to the electors, in which he refutes and ridicules their
claim to instruct him, as the shoemakers of Lynn wished to instruct
Daniel Webster, is a model of irony, as well as a dignified rebuke of
all ignorant constituencies, and a lofty exposition of the duties of a
statesman rather than of a politician.
He had also incurred the displeasure of the Bristol electors by his
manly defence of the rights of the Irish Catholics, who since the
conquest of William III. had been subjected to the most unjust and
annoying treatment that ever disgraced a Protestant government. The
injustices under which Ireland groaned were nearly as repulsive as the
cruelties inflicted upon the Protestants of France during the reign of
Louis XIV. "On the suppression of the rebellion under Tyrconnel," says
Morley, "nearly the whole of the land was confiscated, the peasants were
made beggars and outlaws, the Penal Laws against Catholics were
enforced, and the peasants were prostrate in despair." Even in 1765 "the
native Irish were regarded by their Protestant oppressors with exactly
that combination of intense contempt and loathing, rage and terror,
which his American counterpart would have divided between the Indian and
the Negro." Not the least of the labors of Burke was to bring to the
attention of the nation the wrongs inflicted on the Irish, and the
impossibility of ruling a people who had such just grounds for
discontent. "His letter upon the propriety of admitting the Catholics to
the elective franchise is one of the wisest of all his productions,--so
enlightened is its idea of toleration, so sagacious is its comprehension
of political exigencies." He did not live to see his ideas carried out,
but he was among the first to prepare the way for Catholic emancipation
in later times.
But a greater subject than colonial rights, or Indian wrongs, or
persecution of the Irish Catholics agitated the mind of Burke, to which
he devoted the energies of his declining years; and this was, the
agitation growing out of the French Revolution. When that "roaring
conflagration of anarchies" broke out, he was in the full maturity of
his power and his fame,--a wise old statesman, versed in the lessons of
human experience, who detested sophistries and abstract theories and
violent reforms; a man who while he loved liberty more than any
political leader of his day, loathed the crimes committed in its name,
and who was sceptical of any reforms which could not be carried on
without a wanton destruction of the foundations of society itself. He
was also a Christian who planted himself on the certitudes of religious
faith, and was shocked by the flippant and shallow infidelity which
passed current for progress and improvement. Next to the infidel spirit
which would make Christianity and a corrupted church identical, as seen
in the mockeries of Voltaire, and would destroy both under the guise of
hatred of superstition, he despised those sentimentalities with which
Rousseau and his admirers would veil their disgusting immoralities. To
him hypocrisy and infidelity, under whatever name they were baptized by
the new apostles of human rights, were mischievous and revolting. And as
an experienced statesman he held in contempt the inexperience of the
Revolutionary leaders, and the unscrupulous means they pursued to
accomplish even desirable ends.
No man more than Burke admitted the necessity of even radical reforms,
but he would have accomplished them without bloodshed and cruelties. He
would not have removed undeniable evils by introducing still greater
ones. He regarded the remedies proposed by the Revolutionary quacks as
worse than the disease which they professed to cure. No man knew better
than he the corruptions of the Catholic church in France, and the
persecuting intolerance which that church had stimulated there ever
since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,--an intolerance so cruel
that to be married unless in accordance with Catholic usage was to live
in concubinage, and to be suspected of Calvinism was punishable by
imprisonment or the galleys. But because the established church was
corrupt and intolerant, he did not see the necessity for the entire and
wholesale confiscation of its lands and possessions (which had not been
given originally by the nation, but were the bequests of individuals),
thereby giving a vital wound to all the rights of property which
civilization in all countries has held sacred and inviolable. Burke knew
that the Bourbon absolute monarchy was oppressive and tyrannical,
extravagant and indifferent to the welfare of the people; but he would
not get rid of it by cutting off the head of the king, especially when
Louis was willing to make great concessions: he would have limited his
power, or driven him into exile as the English punished James II. He
knew that the nobles abused their privileges; he would have taken them
away rather than attempt to annul their order, and decimate them by
horrid butcheries. He did not deny the necessity of reforms so searching
that they would be almost tantamount to revolution; but he would not
violate both constitutional forms and usages, and every principle of
justice and humanity, in order to effect them.
To Burke's mind, the measures of the revolutionists were all mixed up
with impieties, sophistries, absurdities, and blasphemies, to say
nothing of cruelties and murders. What good could grow out of such an
evil tree? Could men who ignored all duties be the expounders of rights?
What structure could last, when its foundation was laid on the sands of
hypocrisy, injustice, ignorance, and inexperience? What sympathy could
such a man as Burke have for atheistic theories, or a social progress
which scorned the only conditions by which society can be kept together?
The advanced men who inaugurated the Reign of Terror were to him either
fools, or fanatics, or assassins. He did not object to the meeting of
the States-General to examine into the intolerable grievances, and, if
necessary, to strip the king of tyrannical powers, for such a thing the
English parliament had done; but it was quite another thing for _one
branch_ of the States-General to constitute itself the nation, and usurp
the powers and functions of the other two branches; to sweep away,
almost in a single night, the constitution of the realm; to take away
all the powers of the king, imprison him, mock him, insult him, and
execute him, and then to cut off the heads of the nobles who supported
him, and of all people who defended him, even women themselves, and
convert the whole land into a Pandemonium! What contempt must he have
had for legislators who killed their king, decimated their nobles,
robbed their clergy, swept away all social distinctions, abolished the
rites of religion,--all symbols, honors, and privileges; all that was
ancient, all that was venerable, all that was poetic, even to abbey
churches; yea, dug up the very bones of ancient monarchs from the
consecrated vaults where they had reposed for centuries, and scattered
them to the winds; and then amid the mad saturnalia of sacrilege,
barbarity, and blasphemy to proclaim the reign of "Liberty, Fraternity,
and Equality," with Marat for their leader, and Danton for their orator,
and Robespierre for their high-priest; and, finally, to consummate the
infamous farce of reform by openly setting up a wanton woman as the idol
of their worship, under the name of the Goddess of Reason!
But while Burke saw only one side of these atrocities, he did not close
his eyes to the necessity for reforms. Had he been a Frenchman, he would
strenuously have lifted up his voice to secure them, but in a legal and
constitutional manner,--not by violence, not by disregarding the
principles of justice and morality to secure a desirable end. He was
one of the few statesmen then living who would not do evil that good
might come. He was no Jesuit. There is a class of politicians who would
have acted differently; and this class, in his day, was made up of
extreme and radical people, with infidel sympathies. With this class he
was no favorite, and never can be. Conservative people judge him by a
higher standard; they shared at the time in his sympathies and
prejudices.
Even in America the excesses of the Revolution excited general
abhorrence; much more so in England. And it was these excesses, this
mode of securing reform, not reform itself, which excited Burke's
detestation. Who can wonder at this? Those who accept crimes as a
necessary outbreak of revolutionary passions adopt a philosophy which
would veil the world with a funereal and diabolical gloom. Reformers
must be taught that no reforms achieved by crime are worth the cost. Nor
is it just to brand an illustrious man with indifference to great moral
and social movements because he would wait, sooner than upturn the very
principles on which society is based. And here is the great difficulty
in estimating the character and labors of Burke. Because he denounced
the French Revolution, some think he was inconsistent with his early
principles. Not at all; it was the crimes and excesses of the Revolution
he denounced, not the impulse of the French people to achieve their
liberties. Those crimes and excesses he believed to be inconsistent with
an enlightened desire for freedom; but freedom itself, to its utmost
limit and application, consistent with law and order, he desired. Is it
necessary for mankind to win its greatest boons by going through a sea
of anarchies, madness, assassinations, and massacres? Those who take
this view of revolution, it seems to me, are neither wise nor learned.
If a king makes war on his subjects, they are warranted in taking up
arms in their defence, even if the civil war is followed by enormities.
Thus the American colonies took up arms against George III.; but they
did not begin with crimes. Louis XVI. did not take up arms against his
subjects, nor league against them, until they had crippled and
imprisoned him. He made even great concessions; he was willing to make
still greater to save his crown. But the leaders of the revolution were
not content with these, not even with the abolition of feudal
privileges; they wanted to subvert the monarchy itself, to abolish the
order of nobility, to sweep away even the Church,--not the Catholic
establishment only, but the Christian religion also, with all the
institutions which time and poetry had consecrated. Their new heaven and
new earth was not the reign of the saints, which the millenarians of
Cromwell's time prayed for devoutly, but a sort of communistic
equality, where every man could do precisely as he liked, take even his
neighbor's property, and annihilate all distinctions of society, all
inequalities of condition,--a miserable, fanatical dream, impossible to
realize under any form of government which can be conceived. It was this
spirit of reckless innovation, promulgated by atheists and drawn
logically from some principles of the "Social Contract" of which
Rousseau was the author, which excited the ire of Burke. It was license,
and not liberty.
And while the bloody and irreligious excesses of the Revolution called
out his detestation, the mistakes and incapacity of the new legislators
excited his contempt. He condemned a _compulsory_ paper currency,--not a
paper currency, but a compulsory one,--and predicted bankruptcy. He
ridiculed an army without a head,--not the instrument of the executive,
but of a military democracy receiving orders from the clubs. He made
sport of the legislature ruled by the commune, and made up not of men of
experience, but of adventurers, stock-jobbers, directors of assignats,
trustees for the sale of church-lands, who "took a constitution in hand
as savages would a looking-glass,"--a body made up of those courtiers
who wished to cut off the head of their king, of those priests who voted
religion a nuisance, of those lawyers who called the laws a dead letter,
of those philosophers who admitted no argument but the guillotine, of
those sentimentalists who chanted the necessity of more blood, of
butchers and bakers and brewers who would exterminate the very people
who bought from them.
And the result of all this wickedness and folly on the mind of Burke was
the most eloquent and masterly political treatise probably ever
written,--a treatise in which there may be found much angry rhetoric and
some unsound principles, but which blazes with genius on every page,
which coruscates with wit, irony, and invective; scornful and sad
doubtless, yet full of moral wisdom; a perfect thesaurus of political
truths. I have no words with which to express my admiration for the
wisdom and learning and literary excellence of the "Reflections on the
French Revolution" as a whole,--so luminous in statement, so accurate in
the exposure of sophistries, so full of inspired intuitions, so
Christian in its tone. This celebrated work was enough to make any man
immortal. It was written and rewritten with the most conscientious care.
It appeared in 1790; and so great were its merits, so striking, and yet
so profound, that thirty thousand copies were sold in a few weeks. It
was soon translated into all the languages of Europe, and was in the
hands of all thinking men. It was hailed with especial admiration by
Christian and conservative classes, though bitterly denounced by many
intelligent people as gloomy and hostile to progress. But whether liked
or disliked, it made a great impression, and contributed to settle
public opinion in reference to French affairs. What can be more just and
enlightened than such sentiments as these, which represent the spirit of
the treatise:--
"Because liberty is to be classed among the blessings of mankind, am I
to felicitate a madman who has escaped from the restraints of his cell?
There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom. Woe be
to that country that would madly reject the service of talents and
virtues. Nothing is an adequate representation of a State that does not
represent its ability as well as property. Men have a right to justice,
and the fruits of industry, and the acquisitions of their parents, and
the improvement of their offspring,--to instruction in life and
consolation in death; but they have no right to what is unreasonable,
and what is not for their benefit. The new professors are so taken up
with rights that they have totally forgotten duties; and without opening
one new avenue to the understanding, they have succeeded in stopping
those that lead to the heart. Those who attempt by outrage and violence
to deprive men of any advantage which they hold under the laws, proclaim
war against society. When, I ask, will such truths become obsolete among
enlightened people; and when will they become stale?"
But with this fierce protest against the madness and violence of the
French Revolution, the wisdom of Burke and of the English nation ended.
The most experienced and sagacious man of his age, with all his wisdom
and prescience, could see only one side of the awful political hurricane
which he was so eloquent in denouncing. His passions and his prejudices
so warped his magnificent intellect, that he could not see the good
which was mingled with the evil; that the doctrine of equality, if false
when applied to the actual condition of men at their birth, is yet a
state to which the institutions of society tend, under the influence of
education and religion; that the common brotherhood of man, mocked by
the tyrants which feudalism produced, is yet to be drawn from the Sermon
on the Mount; that the blood of a plebeian carpenter is as good as that
of an aristocratic captain of artillery; that public burdens which bear
heavily on the poor should also be shared equally by the rich; that all
laws should be abolished which institute unequal privileges; that taxes
should be paid by nobles as well as by peasants; that every man should
be unfettered in the choice of his calling and profession; that there
should be unbounded toleration of religious opinions; that no one should
be arbitrarily arrested and confined without trial and proof of crime;
that men and women, with due regard to the rights of others, should be
permitted to marry whomsoever they please; that, in fact, a total change
in the spirit of government, so imperatively needed in France, was
necessary. These were among the great ideas which the reformers
advocated, but which they did not know how practically to secure on
those principles of justice which they abstractly invoked,--ideas never
afterwards lost sight of, in all the changes of government. And it is
remarkable that the flagrant evils which the Revolution so ruthlessly
swept away have never since been revived, and never can be revived any
more than the oracles of Dodona or the bulls of Mediaeval Rome; amid the
storms and the whirlwinds and the fearful convulsions and horrid
anarchies and wicked passions of a great catastrophe, the imperishable
ideas of progress forced their way.
Nor could Burke foresee the ultimate results of the Revolution any more
than he would admit the truths which were overshadowed by errors and
crimes. Nor, inflamed with rage and scorn, was he wise in the remedies
he proposed. Only God can overrule the wrath of man, and cause melodious
birth-songs to succeed the agonies of dissolution. Burke saw the
absurdity of sophistical theories and impractical equality,--liberty
running into license, and license running into crime; he saw
pretensions, quackeries, inexperience, folly, and cruelty, and he
prophesied what their legitimate effect would be: but he did not see in
the Revolution the pent-up indignation and despair of centuries, nor did
he hear the voices of hungry and oppressed millions crying to heaven
for vengeance. He did not recognize the chastening hand of God on
tyrants and sensualists; he did not see the arm of retributive justice,
more fearful than the daggers of Roman assassins, more stern than the
overthrow of Persian hosts, more impressive than the handwriting on the
wall of Belshazzar's palace; nor could he see how creation would succeed
destruction amid the burnings of that vast funeral pyre. He foresaw,
perhaps, that anarchy would be followed by military despotism; but he
never anticipated a Napoleon Bonaparte, or the military greatness of a
nation so recently ground down by Jacobin orators and sentimental
executioners. He never dreamed that out of the depths and from the
clouds and amid the conflagration there would come a deliverance, at
least for a time, in the person of a detested conqueror; who would
restore law, develop industry, secure order, and infuse enthusiasm into
a country so nearly ruined, and make that country glorious beyond
precedent, until his mad passion for unlimited dominion should arouse
insulted nations to form a coalition which even he should not be
powerful enough to resist, gradually hemming him round in a king-hunt,
until they should at last confine him on a rock in the ocean, to
meditate and to die.
Where Burke and the nation he aroused by his eloquence failed in wisdom,
was in opposing this revolutionary storm with bayonets. Had he and the
leaders of his day confined themselves to rhetoric and arguments, if
ever so exaggerated and irritating; had they allowed the French people
to develop their revolution in their own way, as they had the right to
do,--then the most dreadful war of modern times, which lasted twenty
years, would have been confined within smaller limits. Napoleon would
have had no excuse for aggressive warfare; Pitt would not have died of a
broken heart; large standing armies, the curse of Europe, would not have
been deemed so necessary; the ancient limits of France might have been
maintained; and a policy of development might have been inaugurated,
rather than a policy which led to future wars and national humiliation.
The gigantic struggles of Napoleon began when France was attacked by
foreign nations, fighting for their royalties and feudalities, and
aiming to suppress a domestic revolution which was none of their
concern, and which they imperfectly understood.
But at this point we must stop, for I tread on ground where only
speculation presumes to stand. The time has not come to solve such a
mighty problem as the French Revolution, or even the career of Napoleon
Bonaparte. We can pronounce on the logical effects of right and
wrong,--that violence leads to anarchy, and anarchy to ruin; but we
cannot tell what would have been the destiny of France if the Revolution
had not produced Napoleon, nor what would have been the destiny of
England if Napoleon had not been circumvented by the powers of Europe.
On such questions we are children; the solution of them is hidden by the
screens of destiny; we can only speculate. And since we short-sighted
mortals cannot tell what will be the ultimate effect of the great
agitations of society, whether begun in noble aspirations or in depraved
passions, it is enough for us to settle down, with firm convictions, on
what we can see,--that crimes, under whatever name they go, are
eternally to be reprobated, whatever may be the course they are made to
take by Him who rules the universe. It would be difficult to single out
any memorable war in this world's history which has not been ultimately
overruled for the good of the world, whatever its cause or
character,--like the Crusades, the most unfortunate in their immediate
effects of all the great wars which nations have madly waged. But this
only proves that God is stronger than devils, and that he overrules the
wrath of man. "It must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man
by whom the offence cometh." There is only one standard by which to
judge the actions of men; there is only one rule whereby to guide
nations or individuals,--and that is, to do right; to act on the
principles of immutable justice.
Now, whatever were the defects in the character or philosophy of Burke,
it cannot be denied that this was the law which he attempted to obey,
the rule which he taught to his generation. In this light, his life and
labors command our admiration, because he _did_ uphold the right and
condemn the wrong, and was sufficiently clear-headed to see the
sophistries which concealed the right and upheld the wrong. That was his
peculiar excellence. How loftily his majestic name towers above the
other statesmen of his troubled age! Certainly no equal to him, in
England, has since appeared, in those things which give permanent fame.
The man who has most nearly approached him is Gladstone. If the
character of our own Webster had been as reproachless as his intellect
was luminous and comprehensive, he might be named in the same category
of illustrious men. Like the odor of sanctity, which was once supposed
to emanate from a Catholic saint, the halo of Burke's imperishable glory
is shed around every consecrated retreat of that land which thus far has
been the bulwark of European liberty. The English nation will not let
him die; he cannot die in the hearts and memories of man any more than
can Socrates or Washington. No nation will be long ungrateful for
eminent public services, even if he who rendered them was stained by
grave defects; for it is services which make men immortal. Much more
will posterity reverence those benefactors whose private lives were in
harmony with their principles,--the Hales, the L'Hôpitals, the Hampdens
of the world. To this class Burke undeniably belonged. All writers agree
as to his purity of morals, his generous charities, his high social
qualities, his genial nature, his love of simple pleasures, his deep
affections, his reverence, his Christian life. He was a man of sorrows,
it is true, like most profound and contemplative natures, whose labors
are not fully appreciated,--like Cicero, Dante, and Michael Angelo. He
was doomed, too, like Galileo, to severe domestic misfortunes. He was
greatly afflicted by the death of his only son, in whom his pride and
hopes were bound up. "I am like one of those old oaks which the late
hurricane has scattered about me," said he. "I am torn up by the roots;
I lie prostrate on the earth." And when care and disease hastened his
departure from a world he adorned, his body was followed to the grave by
the most illustrious of the great men of the land, and the whole nation
mourned as for a brother or a friend.
But it is for his writings and published speeches that he leaves the
most enduring fame; and what is most valuable in his writings is his
elucidation of fundamental principles in morals and philosophy. And here
was his power,--not his originality, for which he was distinguished in
an eminent degree; not learning, which amazed his auditors; not sarcasm,
of which he was a master; not wit, with which he brought down the
house; not passion, which overwhelmed even such a man as Hastings; not
fluency, with every word in the language at his command; not criticism,
so searching that no sophistry could escape him; not philosophy, musical
as Apollo's lyre,--but _insight_ into great principles, the moral force
of truth clearly stated and fearlessly defended. This elevated him to a
sphere which words and gestures, and the rich music and magnetism of
voice and action can never reach, since it touched the heart and the
reason and the conscience alike, and produced convictions that nothing
can stifle. There were more famous and able men than he, in some
respects, in Parliament at the time. Fox surpassed him in debate, Pitt
in ready replies and adaptation to the genius of the house, Sheridan in
wit, Townsend in parliamentary skill, Mansfield in legal acumen; but no
one of these great men was so forcible as Burke in the statement of
truths which future statesmen will value. And as he unfolded and applied
the imperishable principles of right and wrong, he seemed like an
ancient sage bringing down to earth the fire of the divinities he
invoked and in which he believed, not to chastise and humiliate, but to
guide and inspire.
In recapitulating the services by which Edmund Burke will ultimately be
judged, I would say that he had a hand in almost every movement for
which his generation is applauded. He gave an impulse to almost every
political discussion which afterwards resulted in beneficent reform.
Some call him a croaker, without sympathy for the ideas on which modern
progress is based; but he was really one of the great reformers of his
day. He lifted up his voice against the slave-trade; he encouraged and
lauded the labors of Howard; he supported the just claims of the
Catholics; he attempted, though a churchman, to remove the restrictions
to which dissenters were subjected; he opposed the cruel laws against
insolvent debtors; he sought to soften the asperities of the Penal Code;
he labored to abolish the custom of enlisting soldiers for life; he
attempted to subvert the dangerous powers exercised by judges in
criminal prosecutions for libel; he sought financial reform in various
departments of the State; he would have abolished many useless offices
in the government; he fearlessly exposed the wrongs of the East India
Company; he tried to bring to justice the greatest political criminal of
the day; he took the right side of American difficulties, and advocated
a policy which would have secured for half a century longer the
allegiance of the American colonies, and prevented the division of the
British empire; he advocated measures which saved England, possibly,
from French subjugation; he threw the rays of his genius over all
political discussions; and he left treatises which from his day to ours
have proved a mine of political and moral wisdom, for all whose aim or
business it has been to study the principles of law or government.
These, truly, were services for which any country should be grateful,
and which should justly place Edmund Burke on the list of great
benefactors. These constitute a legacy of which all nations should
be proud.