Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 07

by Unknown

The leading events in this long struggle were the attempt of the House of Commons to disqualify Wilkes for a seat in the House, to punish reporting their debates as a breach of privilege, and the prosecution of the war against the American colonies. It may be said to have begun at the accession of the King, and to have lasted until the resignation of Lord North after the surrender of Cornwallis, or from 1770 to 1783.

Burke's contributions to it were his pamphlet, 'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,' and several speeches in Parliament: the first, like the pamphlet, on the general situation, and others on minor incidents in the struggle. This pamphlet has not only survived the controversy, but has become one of the most famous papers in the political literature of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is a century since every conspicuous figure in the drama passed away; it is seventy years since every trace of the controversy disappeared from English political life; most if not all of the principles for which Burke contended have become commonplaces of English constitutional practice; the discontents of that day have vanished as completely as those of 1630: but Burke's pamphlet still holds a high place in every course of English literature, and is still read and pondered by every student of constitutional history and by every speculator on government and political morals.

In 1774 Parliament was dissolved for the second time since Burke entered it: and there a misfortune overtook him which illustrated in a striking way the practical working of the British Constitution at that period. Lord Verney, to whom he had owed his seat for the borough of Wendover at two elections, had fallen into pecuniary embarrassment and could no longer return him, because compelled to sell his four boroughs. This left Burke high and dry, and he was beginning to tremble for his political future, when he was returned for the great commercial city of Bristol by a popular constituency. The six years during which he sat for Bristol were the most splendid portion of his career. Other portions perhaps contributed as much if not more to his literary or oratorical reputation; but this brought out in very bold relief the great traits of character which will always endear his memory to the lovers of national liberty, and place him high among the framers of great political ideals. In the first place, he propounded boldly to the Bristol electors the theory that he was to be their representative but not their delegate; that his parliamentary action must be governed by his own reason and not by their wishes. In the next, he resolutely sacrificed his seat by opposing his constituents in supporting the removal of the restrictions on Irish trade, of which English merchants reaped the benefit. He would not be a party to what he considered the oppression of his native country, no matter what might be the effect on his political prospects; and in 1780 he was not re-elected.

But the greatest achievement of this period of his history was his share in the controversy over the American War, which was really not more a conflict with the colonies over taxation, than a resolute and obstinate carrying out of the King's principles of government. The colonies were, for the time being, simply resisting pretensions to which the kingdom at home submitted. Burke's speeches on 'American Taxation' (1774), on 'Conciliation with America' (1775), and his 'Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol' (1777) on the same subject, taken as a sequel to the 'Thoughts on the Present Discontents,' form a body of literature which it is not too much to pronounce not only a history of the dispute with the colonies, but a veritable political manual. He does not confine himself to a minute description of the arguments used in supporting the attempt to coerce America; he furnishes as he goes along principles of legislation applicable almost to any condition of society; illustrations which light up as by a single flash problems of apparently inscrutable darkness; explanations of great political failures; and receipts innumerable for political happiness and success. A single sentence often disposes of half a dozen fallacies firmly imbedded in governmental tradition. His own description of the rhetorical art of Charles Townshend was eminently applicable to himself:—"He knew, better by far than any man I ever was acquainted with, how to bring together within a short time all that was necessary to establish, to illustrate, and to decorate that side of the question which he supported."

This observation suggests the great advantage he derives as a political instructor from the facts that all his political speeches and writings are polemical. The difficulty of keeping exposition from being dry is familiar to everybody who has ever sought to communicate knowledge on any subject. But Burke in every one of his political theses had an antagonist, who was literally as he says himself, a helper: who did the work of an opposing counsel at the bar, in bringing out into prominence all the weak points of Burke's case and all the strong ones of his own; who set in array all the fallacies to be exposed, all the idols to be overthrown, all the doubts to be cleared up. Moreover he was not, like the man who usually figures in controversial dialogues, a sham opponent, but a creature of flesh and blood like Grenville, or the Sheriffs of Bristol, or the King's friends, or the Irish Protestant party, who met Burke with an ardor not inferior to his own. We consequently have, in all his papers and speeches, the very best of which he was capable in thought and expression, for he had not only to watch the city but to meet the enemy in the gate.

After the close of the American War, the remainder of Burke's career was filled with two great subjects, to which he devoted himself with an ardor which occasionally degenerated into fanaticism. One was the government of India by the East India Company, and the other was the French Revolution. Although the East India Company had been long in existence, and had towards the middle of the eighteenth century been rapidly extending its power and influence, comparatively little had been known by the English public of the nature of its operations. Attention had been drawn away from it by the events in America and the long contest with the King in England. By the close of the American War, however, the "Nabobs," as they were called,—or returned English adventurers,—began to make a deep impression on English society by the apparent size of their fortunes and the lavishness of their expenditure. Burke calculated that in his time they had brought home about $200,000,000, with which they bought estates and seats in Parliament and became a very conspicuous element in English public and private life. At the same time, information as to the mode in which their money was made and their government carried on was scanty and hard to acquire. The press had no foreign correspondence; India was six months away, and all the Europeans in it were either servants of the Company, or remained in it on the Company's sufferance. The Whigs finally determined to attempt a grand inquisition into its affairs, and a bill was brought in by Fox, withdrawing the government of India from the Company and vesting it in a commission named in the bill. This was preceded by eleven reports from a Committee of Inquiry. But the bill failed utterly, and brought down the Whig ministry, which did not get into office again in Burke's time. This was followed in 1785, on Burke's instigation, by the impeachment of the most conspicuous of the Company's officers, Warren Hastings. Burke was appointed one of the managers on behalf of the Commons.

No episode in his career is so familiar to the public as his conduct of this trial, owing to Warren Hastings having been the subject of one of the most popular of Macaulay's Essays. None brought out more clearly Burke's great dialectical powers, or so well displayed his mastery of details and his power of orderly exposition. The trial lasted eight years, and was adjourned over from one Parliamentary session to another. These delays were fatal to its success. The public interest in it died out long before the close, as usual in protracted legal prosecutions; the feeling spread that the defendant could not be very guilty when it took so long to prove his crime. Although Burke toiled over the case with extraordinary industry and persistence, and an enthusiasm which never flagged, Hastings was finally acquitted.

But the labors of the prosecution were not wholly vain. It awoke in England an attention to the government of India which never died out, and led to a considerable curtailing of the power of the East India Company, and necessarily of its severity, in dealing with Indian States. The impeachment was preceded by eleven reports on the affairs of India by the Committee of the House of Commons, and the articles of impeachment were nearly as voluminous. Probably no question which has ever come before Parliament has received so thorough an examination. Hardly less important was the report of the Committee of the Commons (which consisted of the managers of the impeachment) on the Lords' journals. This was an elaborate examination of the rules of evidence which govern proceedings in the trial of impeachments, or of persons guilty of malfeasance in office. This has long been a bone of contention between lawyers and statesmen. The Peers in the course of the trial had taken the opinion of the judges frequently, and had followed it in deciding on the admissibility of evidence, a great deal of which was important to the prosecution. The report maintained, and with apparently unanswerable force, that when a legislature sits on offenses against the State, it constitutes a grand inquest which makes its own rules of evidence; and is not and ought not to be tied up by the rules administered in the ordinary law courts, and formed for the most part for the guidance of the unskilled and often uneducated men who compose juries. As a manual for the instruction of legislative committees of inquiry it is therefore still very valuable, if it be not a final authority.

Burke, during and after the Warren Hastings trial, fell into considerable neglect and unpopularity. His zeal in the prosecution had grown as the public interest in it declined, until it approached the point of fanaticism. He took office in the coalition which succeeded the Fox Whigs, and when the French Revolution broke out it found him somewhat broken in nerves, irritated by his failures, and in less cordial relations with some of his old friends and colleagues. He at once arrayed himself fiercely against the Revolution, and broke finally with what might be called the Liberty of all parties and creeds, and stood forth to the world as the foremost champion of authority, prescription, and precedent. Probably none of his writings are so familiar to the general public as those which this crisis produced, such as the 'Thoughts on the French Revolution' and the 'Letters on a Regicide Peace.' They are and will always remain, apart from the splendor of the rhetoric, extremely interesting as the last words spoken by a really great man on behalf of the old order. Old Europe made through him the best possible defense of itself. He told, as no one else could have told it, the story of what customs, precedent, prescription, and established usage had done for its civilization; and he told it nevertheless as one who was the friend of rational progress, and had taken no small part in promoting it. Only one other writer who followed him came near equaling him as a defender of the past, and that was Joseph de Maistre; but he approached the subject mainly from the religious side. To him the old régime was the order of Providence. To Burke it was the best scheme of things that humanity could devise for the advancement and preservation of civilization. In the papers we have mentioned, which were the great literary sensations of Burke's day, everything that could be said for the system of political ethics under which Europe had lived for a thousand years was said with a vigor, incisiveness, and wealth of illustration which must make them for all time and in all countries the arsenal of those who love the ancient ways and dread innovation.

The failure of the proceedings against Warren Hastings, and the strong sympathy with the French Revolution—at least in its beginning—displayed by the Whigs and by most of those with whom Burke had acted in politics, had an unfortunate effect on his temper. He broke off his friendship with Fox and others of his oldest associates and greatest admirers. He became hopeless and out of conceit with the world around him. One might have set down some of this at least to the effect of advancing years and declining health, if such onslaughts on revolutionary ideas as his 'Reflections on the French Revolution' and his 'Letters on a Regicide Peace' did not reveal the continued possession of all the literary qualities which had made the success of his earlier works. Their faults are literally the faults of youth: the brilliancy of the rhetoric, the heat of the invective, the violence of the partisanship, the reluctance to admit the existence of any grievances in France to justify the popular onslaught on the monarchy, the noblesse, and the Church. His one explanation of the crisis and its attendant horrors was the instigation of the spirit of evil. The effect on contemporary opinion was very great, and did much to stimulate the conservative reaction in England which carried on the Napoleonic wars and lasted down to the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832.