Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke
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between right and wrong—Edmund Burke will continue to be admired, revered, and consulted, not only as the greatest of English orators, but as the profoundest teacher of political Science. It was not that he despised the arrangement of facts, or overlooked the minutiae of detail; on the contrary, as may be proved by his speeches on "economical reform," and Warren Hastings; in these respects his research was boundless, and his industry inexhaustible. Moreover, he was quite alive to the claims of a crisis, and with the coolness and calm of a practical statesman, knew how to confront a sudden emergency, and to contend with a gigantic difficulty. Yet all these qualifications recede before Burke's amazing power of expanding particulars into universals, and of associating the accidents of a transient discussion with the essential properties of some permanent Law in policy, or abstract Truth in morals. His genius looked through the local to the universal; in the temporal perceived the eternal; and while facing the features of the Individual, was enabled to contemplate the attributes of a Race. (Cicero, in many respects a counterpart of Burke, both in statesmanship and oratory, appears to recognise what is here expressed when he says:—"Plerique duo genera ad dicendum dederunt; UNUM DE CERTA DEFINITAQUE CAUSA, quales sunt quae in litibus, quae in deliberationibus versantur;—alterum, quod appellant omnes fere scriptores, explicat nemo, INFINITAM GENERIS SINE TEMPORE, ET SINE PERSONA quaestionem."—"De Orat." lib. ii. cap. 15.) Hence his speeches are virtual prophecies; and his writings a storehouse of pregnant axioms and predictive enunciations, as limitless in their range as they are undying in duration. In one word, no speeches delivered in the English Parliament, are so likely to be eternalized as Burke's, because he has combined with his treatment of some especial case or contingency before him, the assertion of immutable Principles, which can be detached from what is local and national, and thus made to stand forth alone in all the naked grandeur of their truth and their tendency. Let us be permitted to investigate this topic a little further. If, then, what Quintilian asserted of the Roman orator may be applied to our own British Cicero—"Ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit;" and if, moreover, this pre-eminence be chiefly discovered in Burke's instinctive grasp of that moral essence which is incorporated with all questions of political Science, and social Ethics—from WHENCE came this diviner energy of his Genius? No believer in Christian revelation will hesitate to appropriate, even to this subject, the apostolic axiom, "EVERY good gift, and EVERY perfect gift is from above." But while we subscribe with reverential sincerity to this announcement, it is equally true, that the Infinite Inspirer of all good adjusts His secret energies by certain laws, and condescends to work by analogous means. Bearing this in mind, we venture to think Burke's gift of almost prescient insight into the recesses of our common nature, and his consummate faculty of instructing the Future through the medium of the Present—were partly derived from the elevation of his sentiments, and the purity of his private life. (The action and reaction maintained between our moral and intellectual elements is but remotely discussed by Quintilian in his "Institutes." But still, in more than one passage, he most impressively declares, that mental proficiency is greatly retarded by perversity of heart and will. For instance, on one occasion we find him speaking thus:—"Nihil enim est tam occupatum, tam multiforme, tot ac tam variis affectibus concisum, atque laceratum, quam mala ac improba mens. Quis inter haec, literis, aut ulli bonae arti, locus? Non hercle magis quam frugibus, in terra sentibus ac rubis occupata."—"Nothing is so flurried and agitated, so self-contradictory, or so violently rent and shattered by conflicting passions, as a bad heart. In the distractions which it produces, what room is there for the cultivation of letters, or the pursuits of any honourable art? Assuredly, no more than there is for the growth of corn in a field overrun with thorns and brambles.") It would be unwise to draw invidious comparisons, but no student of the period in which Burke was in Parliament, can deny that, compared with SOME of his illustrious contemporaries, he was indeed a model of what reason and conscience alike approve in all the relative duties and personal conduct of a man, when beheld in his domestic career. It is, indeed, a source of deep thankfulness, the admirer of Burke's genius in public, has no reason to blush for his character in private; and that when we have listened to his matchless oratory upon the arena of the House of Commons, we have not to mourn over dissipation, impurity, and depravity amid the circles of private history. Our theory, then, is, that beyond what his distinctive genius inspired, Burke's wondrous power of enunciating everlasting principles and of associating the loftiest abstractions of wisdom with the commonest themes of the hour—was sustained and strengthened by the purity of his heart, and the subjection of passion to the law of conscience. And if the worshippers of mere intellect, apart from, or as opposed to, moral elevation, are inclined to ridicule this view of Burke's genius, we beg to remind them, that "One greater than the Temple" of mortal Wisdom, and all the idols enshrined therein, has asserted a positive connection to exist between mental insight and moral purity. We allude to the Redeemer's words, when He declares—"If any man WILLS to do His will, he shall KNOW of the doctrine." HOW the passions act upon our perceptions, and by what process the motions of the Will elevate or depress the forces of the Intellect, is beyond our metaphysics to analyse. But that there exists a real, active, and influential connection between our moral and mental life, is undeniable: and since Burke's power of seizing the essential Idea, or fundamental Principle of every complex detail which came before him, was pre-eminently his gift—the intellectual insight such gift developed, was not only an expression of senatorial wisdom, but also a witness for the elevation of his moral character. We must now allude to the public conduct of Burke, as a Statesman and Politician, and only regret the limited range of a popular essay confines us to one view, namely, his alleged inconsistency. There WAS a period when charges of apostasy were brought against him with reckless audacity: but Time, the instructor of ignorance, and the subduer of prejudice, is now beginning to place the conduct of Burke in its true light. The facts of the case are briefly these. Up to the period of 1791, Fox and Burke fought in the same rank of opposition, and stood together upon a basis of complete identity in principle and sentiment. But even before the celebrated disruption of 1791, the progress of Republicanism in America, and the approaching separation of the colonies from their parent state, Burke's views of political liberty had received extensive modifications; and the ardour of his confidence in the so-called friends of freedom had been greatly cooled. But in 1791, the disruption between Burke and Fox became open, absolute, and final, when the latter statesman uttered, in the hearing of his friend, this fearful eulogium on the French Revolution:—"The new constitution of France is the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any age or country!" (That ancient Sage unto whose political wisdom frequent reference has been made in this essay, thus speaks on the reverence due unto an existing government, even when contemplated from its weakest side:—"Formidable as these arguments seem, they may be opposed by others of not less weight; arguments which prove that even the rust of government is to be respected, and that its fabric is never to be touched but with a fearful and trembling hand. When the evil of persevering in hereditary institutions is small, it ought always to be endured, because the evil of departing from them is certainly very great. Slight imperfections, therefore, whether in the laws themselves, or in those who administer and execute the laws, ought always to be overlooked, because they cannot be corrected without occasioning a much greater mischief, and tending to weaken that reverence which the safety of all governments requires that the citizens at large should entertain, cultivate, and cherish for the hereditary institutions of their country. The comparison drawn from the improvement of arts does not apply to the amendment of laws. To change or improve an art, and to alter or amend a law, are things as dissimilar in their operation as different in their tendency; for laws operate as practical principles of moral action; and, like all the rules of morality, derive their force and efficacy, as even the name imports, from the customary repetition of habitual acts, and the slow operation of time. Every alteration of the laws, therefore, tends to subvert that authority on which the persuasive agency of all laws is founded, and to abridge, weaken, and destroy the power of the law itself."—Aristotle's "Politics.") The reply of Burke to this burst of Jacobinism, with all its consequences in the political history of Europe, is far too well known to be quoted here. But, since it was at this point in the career of Burke the charge of apostasy was commenced, and which has never quite died away, even in existing times, we may be permitted, first, to cite a noble passage from Burke's self-vindication; and secondly, to adduce a still more impressive evidence of his political rectitude and wisdom, derived from the admission of those who were once his uncompromising opponents. In relation to the attacks of Fox