Commons the remonstrance of the General Assembly of New York, but it was not accepted. His last effort to offer conciliation was on November 16, 1775. Soon after this many of the Whigs, who were in the minority, felt that their efforts to restrain penal acts against America were ineffective and served only to irritate the ministry to greater repressive measures. Consequently Burke and some of his associates stayed away from the sessions of the House of Commons. Burke defended this action in A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in which he criticised the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in the colonies. He also denounced the government for hiring 12,000 Hessians to fight against the colonists. In 1779 Burke proposed a motion censuring the ministry for advising General Burgoyne to employ Indians as allies. This ended Burke's efforts to influence American affairs, although he continued to take an active part in opposition to the ministry. Of the speeches on American Taxation and on Conciliation with America, Professor C. A. Goodrich says: "After all that has been written on the origin of our Revolution, there is nowhere else to be found so admirable a summation of the causes which produced it. . . . His standpoint in the first was England. His topics were the inconsistency and folly of the ministry in their 'miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients for raising a revenue in America. His object was to recall the House to the original principles of the English colonial system — that of regulating the trade of the colonies, and making it subservient to the interests of the mother country, while in other respects she left them ' every characteristic mark of a free people in all their internal concerns.' His standpoint in the second speech was America. His topics were her growing population, agriculture, commerce, and fisheries; the causes of her fierce spirit of liberty; the impossibility of repressing it by force; and the consequent necessity of some concession on the part of England. His object was (waiving all abstract questions about the right of taxation) to show that Parliament ought to admit the people of the colonies into an interest in the constitution,' by giving them (like Ireland, Wales, Chester, and Durham) a share in the representation; and to do this, by leaving internal taxation to the colonial assemblies, since no one could think of an actual representation of America in Parliament at the distance of three thousand miles. The two speeches were equally diverse in their spirit. The first was in the strain of incessant attack, full of the keenest sarcasm, and shaped from beginning to end for the purpose of putting down the ministry. The second, like the plan it proposed, was conciliatory; temperate and respectful toward Lord North; designed to inform those who were ignorant of the real strength and feelings of America; instinct with the finest philosophy of man and of social institutions; and intended, if possible, to lead the House, through Lord North's scheme, into a final adjustment of the dispute on the true principles of English liberty." Referring again to American Taxation, Goodrich says: "No speech had ever been delivered in the Parliament of Great Britain so full at once of deep research, cogent reasoning, cutting sarcasm, graphic description, profound political wisdom, and fervid declamation." 1 FOR HIS PARTY AND HIS COUNTRY Burke supported his party not only by speeches in Parliament, but also by pamphlets. His first political pamphlet was published in 1766, A Short Account of a Late Short Administration; in this he briefly recapitulated the important measures passed by the Rockingham ministry. Three years later he defended his party against the criticisms of Grenville. 1 C. A. Goodrich's British Eloquence, New York, 1852, pp. 215, 241. In his Observations on the Present State of the Nation, Burke showed a remarkable comprehension of the principles and statistics of national commerce. Although Grenville was supposed to have the greatest statistical knowledge of the condition of the country, Burke very easily disclosed misstatements and contradictions in Grenville's pamphlet. Burke himself said: "The first session I sat in Parliament I found it necessary to analyze the whole commercial, constitutional, and foreign interests of Great Britain and its empire." 1 In 1770 Burke wrote a more important pamphlet, which embodied the principles of the Rockingham party. In Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, he traced all the national difficulties to the existence of a group, known as "the King's friends," which really directed the government in secret, although the ministry executed its plans publicly. Burke dubbed this system "the double cabinet." His suggested reform was to restore the government to the control of a political party composed of prominent noblemen and landowners. The pamphlet closed with a defense of the party form of government, which is almost the only defense that a statesman has made of what most men consider a necessary evil. Burke denied that all political connections are in their nature factions, and as such, ought to be destroyed. He insisted that when bad men combine, which they always will do to obtain their base purposes, the good men must associate. Party, he said, is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.2 Burke took such an active part in the opposition that he was supposed to be the author of the anonymous Junius' Letters, published in the Public Advertiser from 1768 to 1772, 1 Letter to a Noble Lord, Standard English Classics, p. 20. 2 Burke's Works, I, 530. which attacked the ministers in powerful but scurrilous language. Burke denied the authorship, and it now seems most probable that the Letters were written by (Sir) Philip Francis, who later was Burke's associate in the prosecution of Warren Hastings. Whenever his party thought it wise to make any public statement of importance, Burke was called upon to write it. In 1788-89, when George III was temporarily insane, Burke was kept busy preparing letters and addresses for the Prince of Wales, who hoped to be regent. Early in 1780 Burke proposed in the House of Commons his bill for Economical Reform, which was finally passed in 1782. It reduced the expenses of administration by abolishing the costly judicial and revenue systems of Wales, Lancaster, Chester, and Cornwall, which were separate from those of the rest of England; by abolishing certain lucrative and honorary offices of the royal household relics of feudalism such as the Royal Turnspit; by limiting the gross amount of pensions; and by reducing the salary of the Paymaster General. When his party came into power in 1782, Burke was appointed to this office of Paymaster General. He deserved a more important office, but did not receive it, probably because of his notoriously straitened circumstances, his ungoverned excesses of party zeal and political passion, and the unjust prejudice and clamor against him and his family that they were Roman Catholics and Irish adventurers,-" that hunt of obloquy which has ever pursued me with a full cry through life." Three months later Lord Rockingham died; Shelburne attempted to hold the ministry together, but was soon succeeded by the Coalition ministry, in which Fox and Burke joined with their former enemy, Lord North. But they were soon forced to resign by the defeat of Fox's East India Bill, and, with the exception of a few months, the Whigs were not in power again for half a century. In 1791 Burke had his great fight with his party, the Whigs. The year before had appeared his remarkable Reflections on the Revolution in France, and in every debate he opposed the Revolution in passionate terms. His party colleagues attempted to restrain him, and failing, urged him to withdraw from Parliament. Very soon he published a defense of his action, entitled An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. He proved that he had not been inconsistent in supporting the Americans in their struggle for liberty, and in opposing the French Revolution, for he loved a manly, moral, regulated liberty, and not the unrestricted freedom or anarchy which the French demanded. He declared that, although the sovereignty had originated with the people, they had granted it to an hereditary kingship; and that the aristocracy and leaders of the commons constitute the controlling power, and not the mere majority of citizens counted by the head. In 1794 Burke retired from active public life to his estate at Beaconsfield. He was very much alarmed the next spring to observe that all his wheat was blighted. In the fall the crop throughout the country was found to be very small, and the consequent high price of provisions caused great suffering among the poorer people. When Parliament assembled to discuss measures of relief, Burke felt compelled to write a pamphlet called Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. In it he counseled delay, declaring that the government could prevent much evil, but could not do much positive good, because the purpose of government was, not to support, but to control the people. Many superficial critics have tried to sum up Burke's public work by quoting Goldsmith's humorous poem, Retaliation: Here lies our good Edmund, whose genius was such, |