Burke

Burke (sometimes written Bourke), Edmund, the son of a Protestant attorney by a Roman Catholic mother, was born at Dublin probably in 1729, but as to this fact and his early life generally accurate information is wanting. Along with his elder and his younger-brother he went to a school kept by Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker and a man of piety and learning, at Ballitore. Shackleton's son remained Burke's friend through life. Thence he passed to Trinity College, Dublin, and graduating without distinction, began in 1750 to keep terms at the Temple in London. His health was not strong, he had no great taste for the law, he enjoyed the clever and somewhat Bohemian society that the Temple furnished, and he began to work as a bookseller's hack or a contributor to magazines. In 1756 he made a great hit with A Vindication, of Natural Society, a satirical imitation of Bolingbroke, which deceived many critics, and was only understood by the intelligent few to be an elaborate mockery of rationalism as applied to social and political institutions. The same year witnessed the publication of his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful, a work which, in spite of crudity and narrowness, showed original power and great command of language, and won him the admiration and friendship of Dr. Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Warburton, Hume, and all the leading intellects of the day. Hints on the Drama, An Abridgment of the History of England, An Account of the European Settlements in America, occupied his time until 1759, when he began to compile for Dodsley the Annual Register. He had in the meantime married an amiable and gentle wife, in the person of Miss Nugent, the daughter of a physician at Bath. In 1761 he accompanied "single-speech" Hamilton, then Irish secretary, to Dublin, and for two years worked hard and learned much in his humble official post. A quarrel with his contemptible patron led to his resignation of the pension with which he retired, and Burke in 1765 became private secretary to Rockingham, who had just taken office as leader of the Whigs, and who procured him a seat for Wendover. His first night in the House was marked by a speech on American affairs that won him Pitt's cordial praise, and when at the end of a year, during which the stamp duty was repealed, general warrants condemned, and the cider tax abolished, the Rockingham ministry left office, Burke's reputation stood so high that Pitt made overtures to him, which he declined. In 1769 his pamphlet On the Present State of the Nation, in answer to Grenville's defence of his policy, proved him to possess a sound knowledge of commercial and financial matters as well as breadth and clearness of political views; and next year he wrote On the Cause's of the Present Discontents, a masterpiece in its way, with the purpose of building up a new Whig party, in which Rockingham and Chatham could be united. It reveals that hatred of overstrained royal prerogative, and yet that conservative veneration for the monarchy, which supply the keynote of his creed; but it failed to commend itself to the leaders of rival factions, and during North's administration, from 1770 to 1782, Burke was the life and soul of the opposition, gradually acquiring, in spite of an unpleasant voice and delivery, a great command over the House. He had now bought, chiefly with borrowed money, a house and estate at Beaconsfield, and his scanty income was augmented for a time by his agency for New York and his literary earnings; but even with Lord Rockingham's generous help, and with the knowledge that he was never free from debt, we are not a little puzzled to find out how his means sufficed for the handsome, but not extravagant, style of life in which he indulged. He visited France in 1773, and in 1774 was returned free of cost for Bristol. Then followed his noble struggle for justice to the American colonists, during which he never for one moment abandoned his constitutional attitude or dallied with revolutionary principles. His Speech on Conciliation and his Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol are the most eloquent and characteristic memorials of this period of his career. In 1780 he adopted three new causes, viz. the Roman Catholic claims, the movement in favour of economical reform, and the wrongs inflicted on India by Hastings and the East India Company. The first item in his programme cost him his seat at Bristol, but he found another at Malton, which he retained to the end of his political life. The utter failure of the king's American policy caused North to resign in 1782, and Rockingham, coming once more into power, made Burke paymaster of the forces and privy councillor. He displayed scrupulous honesty in a post where his predecessors had not hesitated to enrich themselves, but on the death of Rockingham he seceded from Shelburne along with Fox, formed the not very creditable coalition with North, and resumed office under the Duke of Portland in 1783. His India Bill, however, conceived in the same spirit as his measure of economical reform, with the aim, that is to say, of wresting patronage from the Crown to entrust it to ministers and to Parliament, broke up the ministry, and an appeal to the country in 1784 left the Whigs in a hopeless minority, and conferred lasting power on Pitt. Burke now concentrated his energies on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, and for nearly ten years he maintained this terrible conflict with unabated vigour, delivering a series of speeches that have never been surpassed for brilliancy of argument, power of invective, and pathetic dignity. That he was stimulated now and then by personal feelings to exaggerate his charge must, we fear, be conceded, but on the whole his conduct was inspired by a lofty sense of humanity and duty, and by a love of honour and justice. Before this struggle was over a new path was opened out to Burke by the course of the revolutionary movement in France, and he plunged into it with his usual impetuosity. Fox in 1790 spoke in favour of the French guards who had turned against their sovereign; Burke at once broke from his old colleagues, and after issuing ineffectually an Appeal from the Old to the New Whigs, brought out his most famous and effective manifesto, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in certain Societies in London relative to that Event. Nothing that has ever been written on political subjects has exercised a more striking and immediate influence on men's minds than this short but magnificent appeal to the highest conservative instincts of human nature. He was, of course, blind to the inevitable character of that Nemesis which had overtaken the French monarchy; he was unjust to the chiefs, who found themselves face to face with chaos; and his sympathies were rather with individuals than with nations. Still his horror of bloodshed and cruelty, his distrust in progress as divorced from religion and morality, his faith in reform of the old as opposed to theoretical reconstruction, and his hatred of the vulgar ignorance and coarse brutality of reckless demagogues, won him the support of many independent and honest minds as well as the effusive admiration of all who were interested in monarchical institutions. Honours and congratulations were showered upon him, but politically he remained isolated, for though he withdrew from the Whigs, he declined to join the Tories. He submitted to Government a paper entitled, Thoughts on French Affairs; he urged with some success Catholic claims, and he wrote Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Public Affairs; but he was anxious to retire from parliamentary life, and bade farewell to the House in 1794, accepting the Chiltern Hundreds. But a cruel blow now fell upon him. His son, who had taken his father's seat for Malton, and was just starting for Ireland as Lord Fitzwilliam's secretary, died of rapid consumption. Utterly heart-broken, Burke spent his last years on his estate in the enjoyment of a pension, which he was compelled to defend in a Letter to a Noble Lord. His last effort, Thoughts on a Regicide Peace, betrayed little loss of intellectual vigour, but his constitution was completely undermined. He died peacefully and with dignity amid the consolations of religion on July 7, 1797, and was buried without ostentation or ceremony beside his son in the little church at Beaconsfield. Mr. John Morley has written an admirable Life in the Men of Letters series.