case of Pennsylvania for some short time towards the beginning of the last war, owing to some internal dissensions in the colony. But whether the fact were so, or otherwise, the case is equally to be provided for by a competent sovereign power. But then this ought to be no ordinary power; nor ever used in the first instance. This is what I meant, when I have said at various times, that I consider the power of taxing in Parliament as an instrument of empire, and not as a means of supply.

Such, sir, is my idea of the Constitution of the British Empire, as distinguished from the Constitution of Britain; and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently reconciled through the whole; whether to serve a refining speculatist, or a factious demagogue, I know not; but enough surely for the ease and happiness of man.

Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we drew more from the Colonies than all the impotent violence of despotism ever could extort from them. We did this abundantly in the last war. It has never been once denied-and what reason have we to imagine that the Colonies would not have proceeded in supplying Government as liberally, if you had not stepped in and hindered them from contributing, by interrupting the channel in which their liberality flowed with so strong a course; by attempting to take, instead of being satisfied to receive? Sir William Temple says, that Holland has loaded itself with ten times the impositions which it revolted from Spain, rather than submit to. He says true. Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to accumulate, nor how to extract.

I charge therefore to this new and unfortunate system the. loss not only of peace, of union, and of commerce, but even of revenue, which its friends are contending for. It is morally certain, that we have lost at least a million of free grants since the peace. I think we have lost a great deal more; and that those who look for a revenue from the provinces, never could have pursued, even in that light, a course more directly repugnant to their purposes.

Now, sir, I trust I have shown, first on that narrow ground which the honourable gentleman measured, that you are likely to lose nothing by complying with the motion except what you have lost already. I have shown afterwards, that in time of peace you flourished in commerce, and, when war required it, had sufficient aid from the Colonies, while you pursued your ancient policy; that you threw everything into confusion when you made the Stamp Act; and that you restored everything to peace and order when you repealed it. I have shown that the revival of the system of taxation has produced the very worst effects; and that the partial repeal has produced, not partial good, but universal evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back to our reason by the road of our experience.

I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed measures: but surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the Act of Navigation when it ought to be enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought still further to be opened. Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, from policy and not from rancour. Let us act like men, let us

act like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is agreed that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the profit, let us get rid of the odium.

On this business of America, I confess I am serious, even to sadness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I sat, in Parliament. The noble lord will, as usual, probably attribute the part taken by me and my

friends in this business, to a desire of getting his places. Let him enjoy this happy and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take away most of his wit, and all his argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and indeed blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God for embracing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of his works. But I know the map of England, as well as the noble lord, or as any other person; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and honourable friend under me on the floor has trod that road with great toil for upwards of twenty years together. He is not yet arrived at the noble lord's destination. However, the tracks of my worthy friend are those I have ever wished to follow; because I know they lead to honour. Long may we tread the same road together, whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us on our journey! I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other reason, than that I think it laid deep in your truest interests-and that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes, on the firmest foundations, a real, consistent, well-grounded authority in Parlia ment. Until you come back to that system, there will be no peace for England.

Nine years before, an American Congress had met to reject the Stamp Act. On the 5th of September, 1774, a second Congress, called the Continental Congress, met at Philadelphia, which again put forth a Declaration of Rights, and also a body of articles called the American Association, signed on the 20th of October, that represented the first stride towards Independence. The Congress prepared also a petition to the King, and an address to the people of Great Britain. George Washington wrote at that time, "More blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the Ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America." The Colonies began to arm. Chatham and Burke still laboured for peace, but the King refused to receive the petition of the Continental Congress. On the 19th of April, 1775, there was a conflict at Lexington with British troops, and some hundreds were killed or wounded. On the 17th of June, George Washington accepted his commission as Commander-in-Chief of the army of the United Colonies. So the struggle began that led to the Declaration of Independence, finally adopted on the 4th of July, 1776, which transformed the Colonies into the United States of America. There was war for eight years, hostilities being stayed on the 19th of April, 1783, the anniversary of their first outbreak at Lexington. On the 3rd of September in that year peace was signed with Great Britain, including a full recognition of the Independence of the States, and confirmed by Congress on the 14th of January, 1784.

Burke only entered public life in 1765 at the formation of the Rockingham Ministry, and to the wealth and friendship of Lord Rockingham he was much indebted for his ability in 1768 to pay £23,000 for an estate called Gregories or Butler's Court. It was about a mile from the town of Beaconsfield, and as Burke made little use of the old name of the house, but generally wrote his address Beaconsfield, Beaconsfield became the name

of the house also. When Lord Rockingham died, in July, 1782, he left all Burke's money debts to him cancelled.

After the dissolution of Parliament, in 1774, Burke was returned for Malton, but he resigned Malton when invited to Bristol. He was returned after a contest, and following his speech of thanks to the electors, his colleague, Mr. Cruger, a merchant in the American trade, who had also thanks to return, avoided comparisons with the great orator by only exclaiming "Gentlemen, I say ditto to Mr. Burke!" Our language is the richer by the whole of Mr. Cruger's speech, for it has passed into a proverb.

In 1775, on the 22nd of March, Burke laid before the House thirteen resolutions for reconcilement with America, and made another famous speech on

eloquence of Burke, caused the dismissal of this Ministry; and in December, 1783, William Pitt the younger, second son of the Earl of Chatham-who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Shelburne's administration at the age of twenty-three-became in his twenty-fourth year Prime Minister, and took the two offices of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had then the King on his side and the majority of the House against him; but after the dissolution in March, 1786, he was supported by the country, and ruled English policy when France was hurrying towards revolution.

On the 20th of December, 1784, Burke was a mourner at the funeral of his friend Samuel Johnson, with Sir Joshua Reynolds and other friends. "He has made a chasm," said Burke in his grief, "which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up. Johnson is dead. Let us go to the next best: there is nobody. No man can be said to put the world in mind of Johnson."

In June, 1786, the House of Commons voted, by a majority of thirty-nine, that Warren Hastings was impeachable for his conduct as Governor-General of Bengal to Cheyt Sing, Rajah of Benares. In May, 1787, Warren Hastings was impeached by Burke, on the part of the House of Commons, before the bar of the House of Lords. The trial began in February, 1788, and Burke "stood forth," as he said, "at the command of the Commons of Great Britain, as the accuser of Warren Hastings." His great speech extended over three days, and introduced a trial of which, during its intermittent course through seven years to an acquittal in April, 1795, the interest was wholly broken by the magnitude of events that called all public attention to themselves.

One of the most peaceful of books, Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne," was published in the year of the great French Revolution, 1789. Gilbert White, born in the Hampshire village of Selborne in 1720, school-boy at Basingstoke, and afterwards Fellow of Oriel, settled in his native place, and in letters to Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington detailed some of the results of that quiet, constant observation of nature in which he delighted. He died unmarried in 1793. This is one of his letters to Daines Barrington:

Councillor and Paymaster-General of the Forces. Burke then introduced a reform in the expenses of the civil list which included a reduction of his own income by £1,300 a year. But Lord Rockingham died when this Ministry was not yet four months old, and was succeeded by Lord Shelburne on impossible conditions as to American policy, that caused Burke to resign. Coalition between Fox and Lord North ended the Shelburne administration in February, 1783; Fox and Lord North then became Secretaries of State, and Edmund Burke returned to office as Paymaster of the Forces. The King's opposition to Fox's East India Bills, which were supported by the

THE CONGREGATING TEMPER.

There is a wonderful spirit of sociality in the brute creation,

of gregarious birds in the winter is a remarkable instance. Many horses, though quiet with company, will not stay one minute in a field by themselves: the strongest fences cannot restrain them. My neighbour's horse will not only not stay by himself abroad, but he will not bear to be left alone in a strange stable without discovering the utmost impatience, and endeavouring to break the rack and manger with his fore feet. He has been known to leap out at a stable-window, through which dung was thrown, after company; and yet in other respects is remarkably quiet. Oxen and cows will not fatten by themselves; but will neglect the finest pasture that is not recommended by society. It would be needless to add instances in sheep, which constantly flock together.

But this propensity seems not to be confined to animals of the same species; for we know a doe, still alive, that was brought up from a little fawn with a dairy of cows; with them it goes a-field, and with them it returns to the yard. The dogs of the house take no notice of this deer, being used to her; but, if strange dogs come by, a chase ensues; while the master smiles to see his favourite securely leading her pursuers over hedge, or gate, or stile, till she returns to the cows, who, with fierce lowings and menacing horns, drive the assailants quite out of the pasture.

Even great disparity of kind and size does not always prevent social advances and mutual fellowship. For a very intelligent and observant person has assured me that, in the former part of his life, keeping but one horse, he happened also on a time to have but one solitary hen. These two incongruous animals spent much of their time together in a lonely orchard, where they saw no creature but each other. By degrees an apparent regard began to take place between these two sequestered individuals. The fowl would approach the quadruped with notes of complacency, rubbing herself gently against his legs: while the horse would look down with satisfaction, and move with the greatest caution and circumspection, lest he should trample on his diminutive companion. Thus by mutual good offices, each seemed to console the vacant hours of the other: so that Milton, when he puts the following sentiment in the mouth of Adam, seems to be somewhat mistaken :-

"Much less can bird with beast, or fish with fowl
So well converse, nor with the ox the ape." 1

Selborne, Aug. 15, 1775.

The congregating spirit, strongest in man, caused in many minds an extreme dread of the spread of revolution from France into England. Ideals of society were matter of speculation everywhere, and joined with more or less impatience of the tyranny of custom. But in France the tyranny had been real, and when Government became bankrupt its ruin was inevitable, and the idealists had, so far, a clear field for their labour towards the sudden elevation of the human race. There was no liberty of the subject, where a lettre de cachet could send any man at the King's will, and, through the general corruption, at the will often of a private enemy, untried, or even, so far as he knew, unaccused, to the Bastile. Government mulcted at will those who invested in the public funds. The best works on law, finance, and politics were burnt by the hangman. Atheism was tolerated; Protestants were persecuted. The clergy had let religion almost die out. Men could not call their property their own to use, subject as they were to restrictions on the transport, sale, and preservation of corn; to charges on wine that often went beyond the value of the crop, and caused many of the vineyards to be left uncultivated; to the taille and vingtième, that took from forty-five to fifty per cent. of the nett profit of the soil. When landlord and tenant divided what was left to them, after paying tithe and other dues, they had often only a quarter of the yield between them, and sometimes, in bad years, nothing.

Turgot allowed free circulation (not export) of corn, and remitted taxes on food. But there was a bad

harvest, and he was made answerable for it by the people. He would make the land bear the burden of taxation, abolish the corvée, and throw the cost of roads, &c., on the vingtième. Therefore, the landed proprietors opposed him. In finance he was for no bankruptcy, no loans, and no new taxes; he relied upon economy with peace. He opposed as needless the dragging of France into the American quarrel. Here were more grounds of offence. In May, 1776, Turgot was succeeded as Controller-General by Clugny, who failed utterly, but died in a few months. Then followed Turgot's opponent, the Swiss banker in Paris, Necker, who first introduced into the Treasury a regular system of accounts, the Compte Rendu, which angered the minister, Maurepas. He met with loans the war with England in the American quarrel. He raised five hundred million livres by sale of annuities, and thus added to the public debt. He excited opposition at Court by his publication of accounts, in Parliament and among populations by his convoking of Provincial Assemblies. In May, 1781, Necker resigned. A judge, Joly de Fleury, succeeded him as Controller-General; he was succeeded in March, 1783, by Ormesson, a younger judge. In two years these gentlemen increased the liabilities by more than four hundred million of livres. Towards the end of 1783, Calonne was appointed. He promised wonders. His policy was to oblige everybody, raise loans, and scatter the money. "When I saw every one stretching his hand," said a Prince, "I held out my hat, and Calonne filled it." The King supported Calonne till, after three years of this easy extravagance, more loans and more taxes were alike impossible. There was avowed a yearly deficit of one hundred and fourteen million, and an arrear of six hundred million of livres. The only remedy was to call an Assembly of Notables, which was convoked for January, 1787. The King has sent in his resignation," said Ségur. The Assembly was opened on the 22nd of February. On the 26th of August, 1788, Necker was Finance Minister again. He restored the Provincial Parliaments, and summoned the States-General, which first met on the 4th of May, 1789. Then arose contest between the Clergy, the Nobility, and the Third Estate as to the manner of voting. If the vote was by orders, there were two to one against the Third Estate; if the vote was by heads, the majority was twenty to one the other way.

66

The Nobles kept aloof, and with them

all but nine of the Clergy. The Third Estate, thus left to its own devices, sat as the Commons, and on the 17th of June styled itself the National Assembly. Necker devised a compromise that was over-ruled by the Court Party. The Assembly then swore never to separate until a Constitution was established. On the ground of danger to the King, and with expectation of support to their side from an armed force, the Nobles yielded, and joined the Assembly. Troops then were collected about Paris; July. Next day, Sunday the 12th, in consequence Necker was dismissed, and banished on the 11th of of this, tumults began. On Tuesday the 14th, the Bastile was taken by the people. Though details of the storming of this stronghold of tyranny are mean and base with the passion of uncultivated minds, the Bastile typified the wrong that earnest young minds

had been yearning to see righted, and its fall resounded throughout Europe. Now was the time for showing how a people might rise from death. into life, and a true state be formed that should realise the noblest aspirations for humanity. Many then felt with Wordsworth's Solitary, and were suddenly roused from that long inquisition into the framework of society in which

The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way.

For lo! the dread Bastile, With all the chambers in its horrid towers, Fell to the ground: by violence overthrown Of indignation; and with shouts that drowned The crash it made in falling. From the wreck A golden palace rose, or seemed to rise, The appointed seat of equitable law And mild paternal sway

prophetic harps

In every grove were ringing, "War shall cease,
Did ye not hear that conquest is abjured?
Bring garlands, bring forth choicest flowers to deck
The tree of liberty."-My heart rebounded;
My melancholy voice the chorus joined;

"Be joyful all ye nations; in all lands,
Ye that are capable of joy be glad!
Henceforth, whate'er is wanting to yourselves
In others ye shall promptly find; and all,
Enriched by mutual and reflected wealth,
Shall with one heart honour their common kind."1

ALLEGORICAL DESIGN. (From Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope.") Young poets were full of the great hope. Its noblest aspiration was enshrined ten years after the

1 "Excursion," Book iii,

fall of the Bastile in Thomas Campbell's maiden song, "The Pleasures of Hope," published in the spring-time of the last year of the eighteenth century, when the poet's age was twenty-one years and nine months. Though fury of war had followed, and wild passions were let loose, the Hope was still there. As Campbell wrote

When every form of death, and every woe
Shot from malignant stars to earth below;
When Murder bared his arm, and rampant War
Yoked the red dragons of her iron car;
When Peace and Mercy, banished from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to Heaven again;
All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind,
But Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind.

CHAPTER X.

FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO..-A.D. 1789 TO A.D. 1815. ON the 9th of February, 1790, Edmund Burke first uttered in Parliament his sense of alarm at the French Revolution. Fox, in a debate on the army estimates, had expressed sympathy with the aspirations of the Revolutionists, and seen no need for an increase of English military force. Burke dreaded the spread through Europe of a revolutionary fever, and the danger from it in England to religion, government, and the whole fabric of society. "Our danger," he said, "arises from the model offered by a people whose character knows no medium." The dread became in him itself a fever, and in the eloquent outpouring of his thoughts and feelings, published in October, 1790, as "Reflections on the Revolution in France," which reached in a few months an English sale of 30,000, and was widely read on the continent in a French translation by M. Dupont, there were the arguments and pleadings of a wise man with his reason blurred by passion. There were many replies to Burke's pamphlet. Capel Lofft, Mrs. Macaulay Graham, Dr. Joseph Towers, George Rous, M.P., were soon in the field. The most revolutionary answer was Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man;" the wisest was that of a young Scotsman, afterwards known as Sir James Mackintosh. James Mackintosh was born at Inverness in 1766, and bred at the University of Edinburgh to the profession of medicine, though his interest in the great problem of government, which then occupied many minds, gave him a strong inclination towards law. After graduating as M.D., he went abroad, and soon afterwards, being left free to follow his own bent by the death of Captain Mackintosh, his father, he gave himself to the study of politics and law. That was his position when, at the age of twenty-four, he replied to Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" with his "Vindicia Gallica."

It is good that we should be impatient in our youth of ills that cry for remedy, of the corruptions of life, and the slow growth of the best human institutions. With years the desire for reform does not

lessen, but patience grows with experience, and our later labour is to do what is possible within a lifetime, little as it may be; we accept small compromises that involve a measure of reform, and learning that no human institution, however high its aim, can be actually better than the men by whom it is sustained, look more and more habitually to the men through whom a work is to be done, and measure our reduced hope by their worth and skill. Differences of temperament and training make differences between us in the relative degrees of our eagerness for reform and dread of hasty change; this establishes what we call parties in Church and State, and so secures, where there is free speech, thorough discussion of all possible measures of improvement, and, perhaps, choice of the best. In Burke and Mackintosh there was this difference of temperament, accented more strongly by the dif

ference of years. Whatever experience the years may bring, old men need always the voices of the young around them. The generous yearning for a higher life than has been yet attained by any society of men, enthusiasm yet unchilled, scorn of the little make-shifts with which we grow only too apt to be content, rekindle the dead fire in many an elder mind, bring wisdom to the aid of wit and will, and win some conquests for humanity of which experience might have despaired. Strength for society is in the fellowship of old and young, as well as in the full and friendly conflict of opinion by which alone we can test, purify, and shape for use the truth we win.

The address of the French National Assembly to the people, after enumerating gains, said, in reply to hostile critics :-"We have destroyed everything, say they. True; it was necessary that everything should be rebuilt. And what was there so much to be regretted?

Can any one be ignorant

that it is only by attacking and overthrowing all abuses at the same time, that we can hope to be delivered from any without the danger of a return? It is impossible, say they, to regenerate an old and corrupted nation. Let us teach them that none are corrupted but those who wish the perpetuity of abuses which tend to corrupt; and that a nation renews her youth the very day in which she resolves to revive liberty. Behold the new generation. How their hearts beat with joy and hope! How pure, how noble and patriotic are their sentiments!" This address was signed by Bureaux de Pusy, President, and six Secretaries, one of them named Guillotin.

There was nothing to repel English sympathy in any one clause of the famous revolutionary Declaration of the Rights of Man. The rights declared were these:-(1) Men are free and equal. (2) The end of Government is to maintain the rights of man-viz., Liberty, Property, Security, Resistance of Oppression. (3) Sovereignty is in the nation. (4) Liberty is the power of doing whatever does not injure another. (5) Law only prohibits actions hurtful to society. (6) It represents the will of all, and all are equal before it. (7) There should be no arrest without procedure by law. (8) There should be no needless penalties enforced by law, nor any that had not been promulgated before the offence; (9) and every man should be presumed innocent until proved guilty.

(10) None should be molested for opinions, not even for religious opinions, if the avowal of them do not disturb public order established by law. (11) There should be free communication of thought, with responsibility for abuse of it, defined by law. (12) Public force is instituted only for the benefit of the community; (13) and paid by citizens in contributions, according to their means. (14) There should be no taxation without representation; (15) and agents should be answerable to the Communities appointing them. (16) Every community in which separation of powers is not determined, and security of rights is not provided for, wants a Constitution. (17) Rights of Property are inviolable, except in cases of evident public necessity legally ascertained, and upon condition of a previous just indemnity.-Those were all the Rights declared, and men in other countries might reasonably be glad in the hope that they were to be established in France on the ground cleared of a debasing tyranny. In his "Vindicia Gallicæ," among sound reasonings, there is this passage, which strikes the note of youth, in sympathy with the desire of the French Revolutionists for root and branch reform: "Let us grant," says James Mackintosh, aged twenty-four, "let us grant that the state of France was not so desperately incorrigible. Let us suppose that changes far more gentle, innovations far less extensive, would have remedied the grosser evils of her government, and placed it almost on a level with free and celebrated constitutions. These concessions, though too large for truth, will not convict the Assembly. By what principle of reason, or of jus tice, were they precluded from aspiring to give France a government less imperfect than accident had formed in other States? Who will be hardy enough to assert that a better Constitution is not attainable than any which has hitherto appeared? Is the limit of human wisdom to be estimated in the science of politics alone by the extent of its present attainments? Is the most sublime and difficult of all arts, the improvement of the social order, the alleviation of the miseries of the civil condition of man, to be alone stationary, amid the rapid progress of every other art, liberal and vulgar, to perfection? Where would be the guilt of a grand experiment, to ascertain the portion of freedom and happiness that can be created by political institutions? It was time, as it has been wisely and eloquently said, that legislators, instead of that narrow and dastardly coasting which never ventures to lose sight of usage and precedent, should, guided by the polarity of reason, hazard a bolder navigation, and discover, in unexplored regions, the treasure of public felicity. The task of the French legislators was, however, less hazardous. The philosophers of Europe had, for a century, discussed all objects of public economy. Suppose it had been mathematically proved that by a certain alteration in the structure of a machine, its effect would be increased fourfold, would an instructed mechanic hesitate about the change? Would he be deterred because he was the first to discover it?"

With this generous young idealism, yearning for the highest truth and right, but too regardless of the actual powers of the men who were to be chief factors