Maria Theresa had reached the age of sixty-three when the brave religious spirit, over which flattery had had no power, was waiting in pain and anguish but not in fear the hour of its release. The generous and open hand could no longer give; the heart so keenly sensitive to criticism was to dread it no more; the eyes that, as she had written to Marie Antoinette, had shed so many relieving tears were nevermore to need that relief. "You are all so timid," she said, "I am not afraid of death. I only pray to God to give me strength to the end." She did not forget Poland, she gratefully remembered Hungary, and then, with the cry, "To Thee! I am coming!" she sank back dead, in the arms of the son whom, as a little baby, she had held up in her brave arms to plead for the loyalty of the Hungarian nobles. The high imperial heart had ceased to beat, the house of Hapsburg had come to an end, and Joseph II., of the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine, was the sovereign ruler of Austria.[Back to Contents]
EDMUND BURKE[2]
By Dr. Heinrich Geffcken
(1730-1797)
Edmund Burke, the great British politician, and one of the greatest political philosophers that ever lived, was born at Dublin, January 1, 1730, as son of a petty attorney. Conformably to the wishes of his father, he began to study law in London, but found it so little attractive that, encouraged by eminent men, particularly by Johnson, he turned to literary pursuits. His first work, "Vindication of Natural Society" (1756), which at once won him fame, is a keen satire on Bolingbroke, showing that the attacks of that writer upon revealed religion might as well be turned against all social and political institutions. His reputation was still enhanced by the "Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful" (1757); and at the same time he showed, by publishing "Dodd's Annual Register," that he was equally gifted for politics. As a preliminary for practical activity in that domain, he became private secretary of Gerard Hamilton, the lieutenant-general's assistant for Ireland, but soon found that his chief's smart mediocrity only wanted to turn to advantage the secretary's scantily rewarded talent. He returned to London (1764), and at once entered upon the political career in which he was to play so eminent a part.
The Grenville ministry was dismissed and replaced by an administration of rather heterogeneous elements, under Lord Rockingham, not a great statesman, but combining unblemished character and solid gifts with rank and wealth. Burke became his private secretary and influential adviser, being at the same time elected a member for Wendover. Matters then were in a very critical state: while discontent was fast rising in America and commerce trembling for its colonial trade, two parties were fiercely opposed in Parliament. Pitt deemed it treason against the Constitution and to the colonies to tax America without its consent. Grenville declared it treason to crown and legislature to abandon that right. Burke, though in principle more inclining to Pitt, advised a middle course by redressing the grievances of the colonies, while maintaining the dignity of the crown. The government proposed (January, 1766) to repeal Grenville's Stamp Act, but to guard the constitutional rights of the mother-country by a "Declaratory Act." In the debate on these bills Burke made his maiden speech, which called forth universal admiration; a friend wrote to him, "You have made us hear a new eloquence." The bills passed, but the ministry, mined by both parties, soon afterward was obliged to resign. Burke summed up its activity in an excellent pamphlet, "A Short Account of a Late Short Administration," and now entered into opposition against Lord Chatham's ministry, which he called "a tessellated pavement without cement." On the other hand, he victoriously refuted the attacks of the Grenvilles against Rockingham, in his "Observations on the Present State of the Nation," exhibiting the emptiness of his opponents' declamations on the declining wealth of the country, and proving that its resources were fast increasing.
Burke rises still higher in the "Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents" (1770), a powerful plea for the British Constitution in its development from 1688, and exhibiting the full maturity of his talent. He denies that the prevailing discontents are due to some factious libellers exciting the people, who have no interest in disorder, but are only roused by the impatience of suffering. The discontents were real, and their cause was a perversion of the true principles on which the Constitution rested. As hitherto, business had gone alternately through the hands of Whigs and Tories, the opposition controlling the government; but now a court faction had sprung up called "the king's friends," a double cabinet, acting as irresponsible wire-pullers behind the scenes. These men deriving, like Janissaries, a kind of freedom from the very condition of their servitude, were sitting in secondary, but efficient, departments of office and in the household of the royal family, so as to occupy the avenues to the throne and to forward or frustrate the execution of any measure according to their own interests; they endeavored to separate the crown from the administration, and to divide the latter within itself. To this cabal it was owing that British policy was brought into derision in those foreign countries which, a while ago, trembled at the power of England's arms. Above all, they tried to pervert the principles of Parliament by raising divisions among the people, by influencing the elections, by separating representatives from their constituents, and by undermining the control of the legislature over the executive. They maintained that all political connections were in their nature factious; but free commonwealths were ever made by parties, i.e., bodies of men united for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest upon great leading principles in which they were agreed; government by parties was the very soul of representative institutions; it had raised England to her present power and protected the liberty of the people; while the cant, "measures not men," had always been the pretext for getting loose from every honorable engagement.
Burke finds the remedy in restoring the Constitution to its original principles; all patriots must form a firm combination against the cabal; a just connection between representatives and constituents must be re-established; Parliament ought not to meddle with the privileges of the executive, but exercise real control upon the acting powers of the state, and if necessary, not be afraid to resort to impeachment, "that great guardian of the purity of the Constitution;" finally, if all means fail, there must be an interposition of the body of the people itself—"an unpleasant remedy but legal, when it is evident that nothing else can hold the Constitution to its true principles."