[898] See the long list of proscriptions in Burke's Works, vol. i. p. 604. And the principle of revenge is again advocated in a letter written in 1793, in Burke's Correspond. vol. iv. p. 183. And in 1794, he told the House of Commons that ‘the war must no longer be confined to the vain attempt of raising a barrier to the lawless and savage power of France; but must be directed to the only rational end it can pursue; namely, the entire destruction of the desperate horde which gave it birth.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xxxi. p. 427.
[899] Letters on a Regicide Peace, in Burke's Works, vol. ii. p. 291. In this horrible sentence, perhaps the most horrible ever penned by an English politician, the italics are not my own; they are in the text.
[900] ‘I know,’ said Burke, in one of those magnificent speeches which mark the zenith of his intellect,—‘I know the map of England as well as the noble lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment.’ Parl. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 1269.
[901] See, among many other instances, an extraordinary passage on ‘Jacobinism,’ in his Works, vol. ii. p. 449, which should be compared with a letter he wrote in 1792, respecting a proposed coalition ministry, Correspond. vol. iii. pp. 519, 520: ‘But my advice was, that as a foundation of the whole, the political principle must be settled as the preliminary, namely, “a total hostility to the French system, at home and abroad.”’
[902] The earliest evidence I have met with of the heart of George III. beginning to open towards Burke, is in August 1791; see in Burke's Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 278, an exquisitely absurd account of his reception at the levee. Burke must have been fallen, indeed, before he could write such a letter.
[903] ‘Said to have originated in the express wish of the king.’ Prior's Life of Burke, p. 489. Mr. Prior estimates these pensions at 3,700l. a-year; but if we may rely on Mr. Nicholls, the sum was even greater: ‘Mr. Burke was rewarded with two pensions, estimated to be worth 40,000l.’ Nicholls's Recollections, vol. i. p. 136. Burke was sixty-five; and a pension of 3,700l. a-year would not be worth 40,000l., as the tables were then calculated. The statement of Mr. Prior is, however, confirmed by Wansey, in 1794. See Nichols's Lit. Anec. of the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii. p. 81.
[904] Prior's Life of Burke, p. 460; Nichols's Lit. Anec. vol. iii. p. 81; Bisset's Life of Burke, vol. ii. p. 414.
[905] ‘It had been proposed to Sir Robert Walpole to raise the revenue by imposing taxes on America; but that minister, who could foresee beyond the benefit of the actual moment, declared it must be a bolder man than himself who should venture on such an expedient.’ Walpole's George III. vol. ii. p. 70. Compare Phillimore's Mem. of Lyttleton, vol. ii. p. 662; Bancroft's American Revolution, vol. i. p. 96; Belsham's Hist. of Great Britain, vol. v. p. 102.
[906] That some sort of rupture was unavoidable, must, I think, be admitted; but we are not bound to believe the assertion of Horace Walpole, who says (Mem. of George II. vol. i. p. 397) that in 1754 he predicted the American rebellion. Walpole, though a keen observer of the surface of society, was not the man to take a view of this kind; unless, as is hardly probable, he heard an opinion to that effect expressed by his father. Sir Robert Walpole may have said something respecting the increasing love of liberty in the colonies; but it was impossible for him to foresee how that love would be fostered by the arbitrary proceedings of the government of George III.
[907] The general proposition was introduced in 1764; the bill itself early in 1765. See Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. v. pp. 82, 85; and Grenville Papers, vol. ii. pp. 373, 374. On the complete change of policy which this indicated, see Brougham's Polit. Philos. part iii. p. 328.