We are very unwilling to acknowledge that the habit of generalization, which imparted so lofty a character to the speeches of Mr. Burke, was any hinderance to their effect. We would not suppose that he failed of attracting attention by more emphatically deserving it. If it was really so, we trust that in his latter days he foresaw the amends which posterity would make to his fame: that in the distant perspective he had a clear vision of that high place and authority in which his name was to stand in the ranks of departed greatness. In him, and in him alone, among all the moderns, and, as far as we know, we may extend the comparison to the ancients too, patience of research, activity in business, the rarest eloquence, the richest fancy, and the profoundest philoso phy, were all harmoniously combined. Cicero was both a philo sopher and an orator, but as his philosophy was not his own, he could not hold it in constant subservience to his occasions; nor could he, like Burke, disperse it over his speeches in aphorisms of immortal truth. In this consisted the solitary preeminence of our great countryman, whose works now lie spread upon our table

"A table richly spread in regal mode."

We would not be understood to mean that this philosophical eloquence is always appropriate and in place. The occasion, the purpose, and the auditory, must always vary the modes and the tests of good speaking. Mr. Burke usually addressed himself to the collective talent of his country. But we are far from being sure that the practice of generalizing must, in every view of it, he injurious to the success of speeches, addressed even to the multitude. Care only must be taken to keep down all general propo, sitions within the scope of general apprehension, or, which is the same thing in substance, of general experience. The common people have been at all times very sententious. Witness the pithy dialect of their proverbs and adages, which form their domestic, their rural, their vernacular philosophy. Of this philosophy of experience the eloquence of philosophy may make a dexterous use. It is within the compass of ordinary skill to inflame the passions of the people, and the success is as fugitive as the task is easy; but to fasten upon the understanding, to secure the moral mind, and to make the reason of the hearers a party to the reasoning of the speaker, is the only mode by which a fixed ascendency is to be gained, whether the purpose be to abuse or to enlighten. The fabric of popular eloquence should rest upon massy columns of Tuscan simplicity.

If we mistake not, the speeches of Mr. Burke to the Bristol electors were speeches of the above description. We allude particularly to that which was delivered in 1780. We read

Above

over immediately before we sat down to this article; and we read it under the disadvantage of an expectation raised to the verge of enthusiasm, by the recollection of the delight we felt in the perusal of it about twenty years ago. But we read it with augmented. pleasure, arising partly, we presume to suspect, from an improved capacity of judging in ourselves, and partly from the contrast it exhibits to the puerile intemperance of modern party-politics. The speech is plain, and easy to be understood. It stoops to conquer, not to flatter. It appears to move from the heart, and to press towards the heart. But in the midst of its warm career it never omits to pay its tribute to truth, and to the understanding. Wisdom with its steady lamp lights it on its way, and renders the sense of every statement and argument luminously and emphatically clear. At judicious intervals a rest is given to the mind, wearied with the continuous effort of pursuing a series of resulting propositions: and that rest is always on an eminence, from which the surrounding objects may be contemplated at ease. all, we admire and love the manly independence of principle which governs the whole argument, and which with infinite address is made the vehicle of the most refined compliment to his auditors. In a former number we have lamented the poisonous effects of electioneering oratory. We should reverse the observation with a pleasure equal to the pain with which we made it, could we see the example of this great person prevail over that coarse and lying spirit which flatters the insolence of the mob with the name of freedom, and teaches the fatal and ferocious doctrine, that liberty consists in the contempt of authority. Such was not the conduct of Paulus Emilius in his address from the rostrum on being chosen general for the Macedonian war; nor was such the conduct of Mr. Burke in addressing the electors of Bristol. The Occasions were dissimilar, but the conduct in both was both British and Roman in its character. The actions were internally the same.

We were on the point of quoting a passage from this admirable oration, but were checked by the recollection that it is not a part of our immediate subject. We must content ourselves with refer ring the reader to the speech itself, through the whole of which, but particularly from page 358 to the middle of page 360 of the octavo edition of 1800, he will find the justification of the praise we have bestowed upon it. He will find in it, we trust, sufficient reason for our selecting it as a proof of the efficacy of the legitimate union of philosophical generalities with popular eloquence. And he will take up the thread of that consistency of principle which shows Mr. Burke the same, amidst all the windings and turns of affairs, to him who judges of consistency not by the cons Stancy of political friendships, Lut by the parallelism which a

statesman maintains with himself in the different relative positions in which he is placed by the changes about him.

That he had strong party affections cannot be denied. To be predisposed in favour of measures by his attachment to their authors was natural to his sanguine temper. But there is a clear difference between party affections and party principles. To be biassed in favour of the measures for the sake of the men, belongs too much to the best feelings of the heart to be positively blamable; but deliberately to adopt what the understanding disapproves, to act upon predetermined hostility to all propositions which come from the opposite quarter, whatever may be their tendency, is the character of that party principle, which might be equally well expressed by the phrase-political prostitution. No private friendships, or personal ambition, could ever induce Mr. Burke to treat his country with secondary regard. On great conservative points he frequently differed with his party; placing his country, and his country only, full before him, on all questions affecting its standing policy, and permanent interest. Faithful to this high vocation, he was prepared to sacrifice all private regards to the duty it imposed; and when the French revolution burst upon the world, that masculine love of liberty which had always led him to reprove its excesses, and condemn its abuses, sublimated his genius, and gave it to the world discharged from the pollutions of party. Such was the excitation of this great event; such the vastness and variety of its relations and consequences to man, that every feeling, every faculty, all the knowledge, and all the sagacity of his great mind, was wrought up to an intensity of operation. The full effulgence of all these powers was collected upon the work called Reflections on the Revolution in France-a work which it is not within the compass of our present undertaking to examine and which now stands upon a pedestal, from which it looks down and smiles at criticism. But it is impossible to glance at this magnificent monument of human intelligence, without paying the passing tribute of our homage.

A celebrated author* (who has written the most able answer to it) has observed, " that to estimate it correctly, would prove one of the most arduous efforts of critical skill, and that we can scarcely praise or blame it too much." We read with pleasure this acknowledgment of its title to the highest praise. But it was incumbent on the answerer to prove the propriety of his extreme censure, by showing its erroneous calculation of the results of the great transactions to which it ascribed such iniquitous views, and foretold so disastrous a sequel. That the argument was everywhere dexterous and specious, sometimes grave and profound, clothed

* See preface to the Vindiciae Gallicæ, p.ir.

in the most rich and various imagery, and aided by the most pathetic and picturesque description-that it spoke the opulence and powers of that mind of which age had neither dimmed the discernment, nor enfeebled the fancy, neither repressed the ardour, nor narrowed the range," was admitted by the grudging pen of this champion of the blood-stained beginnings of the French revolution. But in what part of Mr. Burke's Reflections this writer found what he quaintly and extravagantly calls, in language untastefully borrowed from the subject of his abusive criticism, " turbulent encomiums on urbanity, and inflammatory harangues against violence, and homilies of religious mysticism, better adapted to the amusement than to the conviction of an incredulous age,' we are utterly at a loss to imagine: nor can we resist the temptation to believe, that it was the contagion of that same incredulous age which had infected the judgment of the writer of the vindication.

It must give pleasure to the admirers of Mr. Burke's political conduct, to read the testimony to the consistency and uniformity of his principles borne by the writer to whom we have been alluding, in the first pages of his most unjust attack. He admits his constant abhorrence of abstract politics, his predilection for aristocracy, and dread of innovation, and that it was not likely that at his age he should abandon to the invasion of audacious novelties, opinions which he had received so early, and maintained so long; which had been fortified by the applause of the great, and the assent of the wise, which he had dictated to so many illustrious pupils, and supported against so many distinguished opponents.

We have here, then, the praise of beautiful writing, dexterous, grave, and profound reasoning, a boundless range of knowledge, and the rarest assemblage of descriptive and pathetic powers, ascribed to Mr. Burke by one who seemed to catch no sympathy or joy from the picture he was involuntarily tracing: we have here, too, the fullest credit given to the great statesman for the harmonious consistency of his political life. His crime consisted in his want of charity to the regenerators of France; in the hard measure he gave to murder, confiscation, and rapine, the organization of treason, and the consecration of atheism; in his feeling for royalty, and rank, and age, and infancy, suffering the penalties of their former fortunes and present imbecility, from the hands of persons without education to humanize, or religion to restrain them; and, above all, in his presumptuous predictions of the consequences of such a system to England, to Europe, to humanity. A few more years were only wanting to decide the contest between Mr. Burke and his fierce opponents. A few more years have passed, and the contest has been decided. It cannot be necessary to state on whose side, or in what manner.

The terms in which Mr. Burke, in treating of the French revo lution, has expressed the swellings of his heart against the mass of crime, pollution, and sacrilege, out of which it was born, and has since been maintained, has given offence to some persons of cool and dispassionate judgment, and a delicate ear for propriety. We confess ourselves to be less squeamish, and to be capable of hearing, without disgust, foul acts described by foul names. There is a callous moderation in treating cruelty, with which we are inclined to be more disgusted (speaking for ourselves) than with the red hot anger of outraged feeling. If no degree of detestation can be excessive, we doubt whether any strength of language can be too great for the systematic horrors which ushered in and accompanied the bloody and unprincipled revolution of France. If the sallies of indignant feeling sometimes broke loose from the restraints of ordinary decorum, and indulged in an unmeasured phraseology, we do not concur with the polished writer of the Vindicia Gallicæ in thinking that a reason for stigmatizing Mr. Burke's "Reflections" as "inflammatory harangues against violence." Nor because a warm heart, and a rich imagination, were engaged on the side of compassion and justice, do we feel that "turbulent encomiums on humanity" was a phrase at all suited to the character of any part of that immortal work. Coldness is not always prudence, though it is perpetually assuming the title. If any thing could elicit mirth out of the subject to which we have been alluding, a temperate argument, arranged in a logical method, to prove that the butchery of priests, the unsparing massacre of age and infancy, executions without trial, and plunder under the name of confiscation, were wrong things, would have produced that effect.

If there is any real violence in the "Reflections" of Mr. Burke, we offer the infirmity which belongs to virtuous feeling as his apology; and the beauty, the verity, the excellence of his philosophical and political reasoning, we propose by way of expiation. Let the author of the Vindicia Gallicæ have also his excuse; and as we presume the best would naturally be that which he has made for himself, we will lay it before the reader, and let him judge of the merits, with the accusation and defence before him. "I have been accused by valuable friends of treating with ungenerous levity the misfortunes of the royal family of France. They will not, however, suppose me capable of deliberately violating the sacredness of misery in a palace or in a cottage; and I sincerely lament that I should have been betrayed into expressions which admitted that construction." Mr. Burke is accused, by the author of the Vindicia Gallicæ, of violence on the side of a mistaken humanity; the accuser is himself accused, even by his valuable friends, of sporting with the sacredness of misery. Let our readers say under which imputation they would choose to be