[Note 51], [p. 206].—In allusion to the well-known story told at length by Valerius Maximus, lib. v., 7; and in briefer form by Pliny, “Nat. Hist.,” vii., 36.
[Note 52], [p. 208].—The whole of this magnificent passage was founded upon very substantial facts. Massachusetts had 183 vessels, carrying 13,820 tons in the North, and 120 vessels, carrying 14,026 tons in the South. It was in 1775, the very year of Burke’s speech, that English ships were first fitted out to follow the Americans into the fisheries of the South Seas. See Quarterly Review, lxiii., 318.
[Note 53], [p. 211].—At the time of the great struggle against the Stuarts. In the Annual Register, for 1775, p. 14, Burke says: “The American freeholders at present are nearly, in point of condition, what the English yeomen were of old when they rendered us formidable to all Europe, and our name celebrated throughout the world. The former, from many obvious circumstances, are more enthusiastical lovers of liberty than even our yeomen were.”
[Note 54], [p. 213].—The differences here indicated are fully explained in Marshall’s “American Colonies,” Story “On the Constitution,” Lodge’s “English Colonies in America,” and more briefly in vol. iv., chap, vi., of Bancroft. It is noteworthy that it was not in the most democratic forms of government that the most violent resolutions were passed. See Ann. Reg. for 1775, p. 6.
[Note 55], [p. 218].—General Gage had prohibited the calling of town meetings after August 1, 1774. The meetings held before August 1st were adjourned over from time to time, and consequently there was no need of “calling” meetings. Gage complained that by such means they could keep their meetings alive for ten years. See Bancroft, vii., chap. viii., and Ann. Reg., 1775, p. 11.
[Note 56], [p. 219].—The “ministrum fulminis alitem” of Horace, bk. iv., ode i.
[Note 57], [p. 227].—In 1766, Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier had written to the Lords in Trade: “In disobedience to all proclamations, in defiance of law, and without the least shadow of right to claim or defend their property, people are daily going out to settle beyond the Alleghany Mountains.” Migration hither was prohibited. “But the prohibition only set apart the Great Valley as the sanctuary of the unhappy, the adventurous, and the free; of those whom enterprise, or curiosity, or disgust at the forms of life in the old plantations raised above royal edicts.” Bancroft, vi., 33.
[Note 58], [p. 233].—Reference is made to the brutal attack of Sir Edward Coke upon Sir Walter Raleigh, the details of which are given in Howell’s “State Trials,” ii., 7.
[Note 59], [p. 240].—Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” ii., 594.
[Note 60], [p. 240].—This passage has been much admired for the skill with which Burke excludes the general question of the right of taxation, and confines himself to the expediency of particular methods. But this was in accordance with all of Burke’s political philosophy. In his “Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs,” he announces the principle which governs him in all such cases: “Nothing universal can be rationally affirmed on any moral or any political subject. Pure metaphysical abstraction does not belong to these matters. The lines of morality are not like ideal lines of mathematics. They are broad and deep as well as long. They admit of exceptions; they demand modifications. These exceptions and modifications are not made by the process of logic, but by the rules of prudence. Prudence is not only the first in rank of the virtues political and moral, but she is the director, the regulator, the standard of them all.”