year earlier, before he had lost hope in England's treating her colonies justly. It is full of the spirit and the conviction of a man who is hastening to warn his country of impending danger.

In the Introduction to this edition Burke's speeches and writings are not discussed in chronological order, but collected into groups according to their subjects. This method enables the student to realize exactly what Burke accomplished for the causes which he championed. An effort is also made not merely to tell the names of his speeches, but to sum up in a sentence their main arguments. The Notes are rather full, giving all the information a student needs for a complete understanding of the speech. Theoretically it is better for a student to hunt up the information, but in practice nine-tenths of the students have neither time nor opportunity for this work. The text is that of Dodsley's second edition, 1775, except that the spelling has been made to conform to that of the other books of this series.

The editor wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the help he has received from E. J. Payne's edition of Burke's Select Works, F. G. Selby's edition of Burke's American Speeches, and from Professor C. A. Goodrich's British Eloquence; their notes are frequently quoted. He also gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Professor Cheesman A. Herrick and Professor Albert H. Smyth for practical advice, and to Dr. John L. Haney and David Wallerstein, Esq., for valuable criticisms of the Introduction and Notes. He hopes that this little book will help some students to appreciate the work and to honor the memory of Edmund Burke, the "Interpreter of English Liberty."

CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA

January 23, 1905

J. H. M.

INTRODUCTION

THE LIFE OF EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke was born in Dublin on January 12, 1729. His father was a lawyer with a large practice, so that he could afford to send Edmund to the good boarding school of Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker. There he formed a lasting friendship with the schoolmaster's son Richard, who was his chief correspondent for many years. In 1743 he was enrolled as a student in Trinity College, Dublin, from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1748. In addition to the work for the degree, he read a great deal in natural philosophy, logic, history, and poetry. He was in the habit of spending three hours each day in a public library reading miscellaneous books. Later in life, in a letter to his son, who was studying in France, Burke said: "Reading and much reading is good. But the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, and of applying it to every occasion that arises, is far better."

1

Early in his college course Burke had purposed to follow his father's wish that he should become a lawyer, and the two years after graduation were probably spent studying in his father's office. But in 1750 he went to London to complete his legal education at the Middle Temple.

Burke soon became convinced that the study of law was too narrowing and uninteresting for his life work, although in later years he said that law was one of the first and noblest of

1 Burke's Correspondence, London, 1844, I, 426,

human sciences; a science which does more to quicken and invigorate the understanding, than all the other kinds of learning put together; but it is not apt, except in persons very happily born, to open and to liberalize the mind exactly in the same proportion." He neglected law for politics, for the theater, and for literature. The consequence was that, early in 1755, his disappointed father stopped his allowance of £100 a year, and Burke was forced to turn to literature, not for pleasure as formerly, but for a livelihood.

Although Burke had probably been writing for newspapers and magazines before 1756, his first little book or pamphlet, called A Vindication of Natural Society, appeared anonymously in that year and was not acknowledged by him for a few months. Two years before, the works of Lord Bolingbroke, in which he had attempted to defend natural religion, had been posthumously published. Burke was fascinated by the clearness of the style, but saw the unsoundness of the reasoning. Bolingbroke had argued for natural against revealed religion, declaring that every man should work out his own individual system of religion. Burke pretended to agree with Bolingbroke, but in reality he showed the weakness of the method of reasoning, by proving that if it could be applied to religion, it could be applied also to society and every other institution of civilized men. So cleverly did Burke imitate Bolingbroke's style and argument that his work was received even by Bolingbroke's friends as an additional posthumous publication of Bolingbroke. This was a remarkable achievement, for Bolingbroke was considered a master of English prose.

A few months later Burke published A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which he had been preparing for seven years. This speculative work was one of the first essays in æsthetics in the English language,

1 See page 32.