1 call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel and pious pastors of our church; I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honor, the liberties, the religion, the Protestant religion, of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose among us; to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connections, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! to send forth the infidel savage-against whom? against your Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war!-hell-hounds, I say, of savage war. Spain armed herself with bloodhounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America; and we im. prove on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren

and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion; endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity.

My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your lordships, and the united powers of the State, to examine it thoroughly and decisively and to stamp upon it an indeli ble stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this house and this country from this sin.

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such prepos terous and enormous principles.

EDMUND BURKE

ED

DMUND BURKE was born at Dublin on January 12, 1729. His father was a Protestant attorney practicing in the Irish capital, but his mother was a Catholic, a member of the family of Nagle. At the age of 12, he was sent to school at Ballitore in the County of Kildare, and two years later was matriculated at Trinity College, Dublin. He left Trinity in 1748 without having acquired any academic distinction or any great stock of well-ordered knowledge. In 1750, he went to London to keep terms at the Temple. The next ten years of his life seem to have been passed in obscure industry. He is said to have been one of the numerous lovers of his countrywoman, Peg Woffington. It was hinted that he made a mysterious visit to the American colonies. He was for years accused of having gone over to the Church of Rome and of recanting afterward. As a matter of fact, there is no evidence of any of the statements to Burke's discredit. In 1756, he published "An Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful," a crude performance which in England had considerable vogue, but has left no permanent trace in the development of æsthetic thought. Subsequently, he brought out an abridgment of the History of England as far as the reign of John, and, about the same time, an "Account of the European Settlements in America." In 1759 he started the Annual Register, which was designed to present the chief events of each year. In 1759, he was introduced by Lord Charlemont to "Single Speech" Hamilton, and, when the latter was made Irish Secretary, Burke accompanied him to Dublin. When Hamilton retired from this post, Burke went back with him to London and obtained a pension of $1,500 a year on the Irish Establishment. This pension, however, he kept only for a twelvemonth. In July, 1765, the Marquis of

Rockingham, becoming Prime Minister, was induced to make Burke his private secretary; their relations continued to be those of close friendship and confidence until the Marquis's death in 1782. Having been returned to the House of Com mons for the pocket borough of Wendover, Burke delivered his first speech in January, 1766, and thenceforth, until 1790, was recognized as one of the chief guides and inspirers of the Whig party. His speech on the Conciliation of the Colonies, and the first of his orations against Warren Hastings, both of which are here reproduced, are generally deemed the most admirable examples of his eloquence. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Burke parted company from most of his old Whig friends, advocated a war between England and the French Revolutionary Government, showing himself a much more vehement

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Burke died Had his son

upholder of the Ancien Régime than was the younger Pitt himself. in 1797, and was buried in the little church at Beaconsfield. Richard survived him, Burke would have been made a peer under the name of Lord Beaconsfield, and an income for three lives would have been annexed to the title,

I

ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA

HOPE, sir, that, notwithstanding the austerity of the chair, your good nature will incline you to some de

gree of indulgence toward human frailty. You will not think it unnatural that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the House full of anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the other House. I do confess, I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate omen. I look upon it as a sort of providential favor, by which we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of this bill, which seemed to have taken its flight forever, we are, at this very instant, nearly as free to choose a plan for our American government as we were on the first day of the session. If, sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. fore, called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.

We are, there

Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on this side of the grave. When I first had the honor of a seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed themselves upon us as the most important and most delicate object of parliamentary attention. My little share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust; and having no sort of rea son to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take more than common pains to instruct myself in everything which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable, in order, amid so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts; to ballast my conduct; to preserve me from being blown about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe or manly to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive from America.

At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I have continued ever since in my original sentiments without the least deviation. Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge.

Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiment and their conduct than could be justified in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private