[828] ‘The excursions of his genius are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation, and every walk of art.’ Works of Robert Hall, London, 1846, p. 196. So, too, Wilberforce says of him, ‘He had come late into Parliament, and had had time to lay in vast stores of knowledge. The field from which he drew his illustrations was magnificent. Like the fabled object of the fairy's favours, whenever he opened his mouth pearls and diamonds dropped from him.’ Life of Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 159.
[829] Lord Thurlow is said to have declared, what I suppose is now the general opinion of competent judges, that the fame of Burke would survive that of Pitt and Fox. Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 169. But the noblest eulogy on Burke was pronounced by a man far greater than Thurlow. In 1790, Fox stated in the House of Commons, ‘that if he were to put all the political information which he had learnt from books, all which he had gained from science, and all which any knowledge of the world and its affairs had taught him, into one scale, and the improvement which he had derived from his right hon. friend's instruction and conversation were placed in the other, he should be at a loss to decide to which to give the preference.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 363.
[830] Lord Campbell (Lives of the Chief-Justices, vol. ii. p. 443) says, ‘Burke, a philosophic statesman, deeply imbued with the scientific principles of jurisprudence.’ See also, on his knowledge of law, Butler's Reminiscences, vol. i. p. 131; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. i. p. 230.
[831] Barry, in his celebrated Letter to the Dilettanti Society, regrets that Burke should have been diverted from the study of the fine arts into the pursuit of politics, because he had one of those ‘minds of an admirable expansion and catholicity, so as to embrace the whole concerns of art, ancient as well as modern, domestic as well as foreign.’ Barry's Works, vol. ii. p. 538, 4to, 1809. In the Annual Register for 1798, p. 329, 2nd edit., it is stated that Sir Joshua Reynolds ‘deemed Burke the best judge of pictures that he ever knew.’ See further Works of Sir J. Reynolds, Lond. 1846, vol. i. p. 185; and Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 257. A somewhat curious conversation between Burke and Reynolds, on a point of art, is preserved in Holcroft's Memoirs, vol. ii. pp. 276, 277.
[832] See a letter from Winstanley, the Camden Professor of Ancient History, in Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. pp. 390, 391, and in Prior's Life of Burke, p. 427. Winstanley writes, ‘It would have been exceedingly difficult to have met with a person who knew more of the philosophy, the history, and filiation of languages, or of the principles of etymological deduction, than Mr. Burke.’
[833] Adam Smith told Burke, ‘after they had conversed on subjects of political economy, that he was the only man who, without communication, thought on these topics exactly as he did.’ Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 429; and see Prior's Life of Burke, p. 58; and on his knowledge of political economy, Brougham's Sketches of Statesmen, vol. i. p. 205.
[834] ‘Politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.’ Observations on a late State of the Nation, in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 113. Hence the distinction he had constantly in view between the generalizations of philosophy, which ought to be impregnable, and those of politics, which must be fluctuating; and hence in his noble work, Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents, he says (vol. i. p. 136), ‘No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. They are a matter incapable of exact definition.’ See also p. 151, on which he grounds his defence of the spirit of party; it being evident that if truth were the prime object of the political art, the idea of party, as such, would be indefensible. Compare with this the difference between ‘la vérité en soi’ and ‘la vérité sociale,’ as expounded by M. Rey in his Science Sociale, vol. ii. p. 322, Paris, 1842.
[835] In 1780 he plainly told the House of Commons that ‘the people are the masters. They have only to express their wants at large and in gross. We are the expert artists; we are the skilful workmen, to shape their desires into perfect form, and to fit the utensil to the use. They are the sufferers, they tell the symptoms of the complaint; but we know the exact seat of the disease, and how to apply the remedy according to the rules of art. How shocking would it be to see us pervert our skill into a sinister and servile dexterity, for the purpose of evading our duty, and defrauding our employers, who are our natural lords, of the object of their just expectations!’ Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 254. In 1777, in his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (Works, vol. i. p. 216), ‘In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community,—is the true end of legislature.’ In his Letter on the Duration of Parliament (vol. ii. p. 430), ‘It would be dreadful, indeed, if there was any power in the nation capable of resisting its unanimous desire, or even the desire of any very great and decided majority of the people. The people may be deceived in their choice of an object. But I can scarcely conceive any choice they can make to be so very mischievous, as the existence of any human force capable of resisting it.’ So, too, he says (vol. i. pp. 125, 214), that when government and the people differ, government is generally in the wrong: compare pp. 217, 218, 276, vol. ii. p. 440. And to give only one more instance, but a very decisive one, he, in 1772, when speaking on a Bill respecting the Importation and Exportation of Corn, said, ‘On this occasion I give way to the present Bill, not because I approve of the measure in itself, but because I think it prudent to yield to the spirit of the times. The people will have it so; and it is not for their representatives to say nay. I cannot, however, help entering my protest against the general principles of policy on which it is supported, because I think them extremely dangerous.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 480.
[836] The effect which Burke's profound views produced in the House of Commons, where, however, few men were able to understand them in their full extent, is described by Dr. Hay, who was present at one of his great speeches; which, he says, ‘seemed a kind of new political philosophy.’ Burke's Correspond. vol. i. p. 103. Compare a letter from Lee, written in the same year, 1766, in Forster's Life of Goldsmith, vol. ii. pp. 38, 39; and in Bunbury's Correspond. of Hanmer, p. 458.
[837] Burke was never weary of attacking the common argument, that, because a country has long flourished under some particular custom, therefore the custom must be good. See an admirable instance of this in his speech on the power of the attorney-general to file informations ex officio; where he likens such reasoners to the father of Scriblerus, who ‘venerated the rust and canker which exalted a brazen pot-lid into the shield of a hero.’ He adds: ‘But, sir, we are told that the time during which this power existed, is the time during which monarchy most flourished: and what, then, can no two things subsist together but as cause and effect? May not a man have enjoyed better health during the time that he walked with an oaken stick, than afterwards, when he changed it for a cane, without supposing, like the Druids, that there are occult virtues in oak, and that the stick and the health were cause and effect?’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. pp. 1190, 1191.