[Note 70], [p. 265].—In allusion to a statement that had been made by Grenville. Burke said in his speech on American taxation: “He has declared in this House an hundred times, that the colonies could not legally grant any revenues to the Crown.”
[Note 71], [p. 278].—This was in strict accordance with Burke’s political philosophy. In a letter to the Sheriff of Bristol, he wrote: “Of one thing I am perfectly clear, that it is not by deciding the suit, but by compromising the difference, that peace can be restored or kept.”
[Note 72], [p. 278].—Shak.: “Othello,” Act iii., Scene v. So at the beginning of his paper on the “Present Discontents,” Burke speaks of “reputation, the most precious possession of every individual.” In the fourth letter on a “Regicide Peace,” he said: “Our ruin will be disguised in profit, and the sale of a few wretched baubles will bribe a degenerate people to barter away the most precious jewel of their souls.”
[Note 73], [p. 279].—“I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.”—Hosea, xi., 4.
[Note 74], [p. 279].—Another illustration of Burke’s habit of making use of the inestimable maxims of the great Greek politician.
[Note 75], [p. 282].—“Experiment upon a worthless subject” was a maxim among old scientific inquirers.
[Note 76], [p. 286].—A “Treasury Extent” was a writ of Commission for valuing lands and tenements for satisfying a Crown debt.
[Note 77], [p. 289].—The quotation is from Juvenal i., l. 90, and refers to the habit of the Roman gambler. Gifford renders the passage:
“For now no more the pocket’s stores supply
The boundless charges of the desperate die,
The chest itself is staked.”
[Note 78], [p. 291].—Milton’s Paradise Lost, iv., 106. This also is a misquotation:—retract should be recant. Burke seldom took the trouble to verify his quotations, but relied upon a powerful, though slightly fallible, memory.