gation of the court junto, and conceive the prosecution of Lord Oxford and of Atterbury to have been at least as contrary to natural justice and to constitutional principle, as the prose cution of Wilkes. The purity of the longest of all Whig Administrations has been questioned on fully as strong grounds as the purity of any Ministry formed at the instance of the court junto.

Corruption appears from history to have prevailed fully as much under the Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, as under those of Bute, Grenville, or Grafton. The Whig Ministers, during the first war of George II. did not contribute very much either to national honour or advantage. The most able and successful Minister England had known was not a creature of the Whig aristocracy, but a statesman recommended to his Sovereign's choice by his personal talents and the favour of the people. He was even obnoxious to some Whigs of the highest rank, but overbore them by the highest TALENTS. Following, therefore, with Burke, experience, as the surest guide in the conduct of affairs, we do not find the Whig combination, which he proposes, most likely to extricate the country from the alledged evil. A Whig junto might be better than a Court junto. Independent Whigs would probably be better disposed to promote the interest of their country, than dependant Courtiers ;-but all Whigs are not independent. The independence

of many of the members of the connection was by no means clear. Whig great men had retainers, as well as Court great men. Where evil of any great kind, and in a great degree, prevails, the remedy does not lie in any particular junto, but in the UNITED SENSE AND VIRTUE OF THE COMMUNITY.

Burke thought the Whig connection more powerful opposers of the court project, than the personal talents and popularity of individuals. His reasoning is directed to recommend the Rockingham party to have the management of affairs, rather than Lord Chatham. Although endued with talents that needed no patronage to render him great, Burke had been brought forward by the Whig interest; and endeavours to shew that the wisest policy was to entrust government to those with whom he himself was connected. He tries to conciliate the King to that party, by intimating, that by it the means of royal magnificence would be much more amply supplied than by the court junto. Suppose (he says) we were to ask, whether the King has been richer since the establishment of court favouritism, I believe it will be found, that the picture of royal indigence, which our Court has presented, has been truly humiliating. If the royal treasury had been exhausted by splendour and magnificence, his distress would have been ac counted for, and in some measure justified.”

He contends less for change of measures than change of men. Indeed he proposes no material change of measures.

A much less degree of political knowledge and ability than he possessed would, if impartially exerted, have seen, that such a government as he proposes would be hereafter ineffectual, as it had hitherto been; but so ductile was the fancy, so ardent were the passions of Burke, that he often deviated from reason much farther than men of very inferior talents, with cooler imaginations and tempers. Whatever side he embraced, he embraced eagerly. When his affections were once engaged, whatever they stimulated he frequently conceived to be true and right. It is evidently not peculiar to Burke that his passions often warped his reason; but an attentive observer of his life must see that effect produced in him in so great a degree, as to form a peculiar characteristic of his mind. His genius is often employed in inventing arguments for propositions not true, or devising means for ends not salutary:-in counteracting wisdom.

In many of Burke's writings we meet rather with an abundance of important facts, profound observations, brilliant images, and able arguments, adding to the general amusement, pleasure, information, and instruction, than with a chain of proofs, tending to confirm a specific, proposition. In this pamphlet, the evident ob

J

1

ject is to evince the necessity of calling Lord Rockingham's party into power. Excellent as it is in many parts, it does not evince the neces sity, nor even the expediency, of that change. Some of his premises tend to establish conclusions contrary to those which he forms. While he has drawn a most glowing picture of the corruption of the House of Commons, he is inimical to parliamentary reform. If the House of Commons was so perverted from its original purpose, as to become a mere engine of the Court, a reform would not only be expedient but necessary. A mere dissolution of that parliament would not be sufficient, as the corrup tion did not arise from causes peculiar to that parliament. If secret influence existed, and existed with the alarming and destructive corrup tion of the House of Commons, which hè states, a radical change was necessary. It must be admitted by the friends of Burke, that though he declares himself an enemy to parliamentary reform, his statement of the corruption would, if true, be asstrongan argument in favour of reform as its supporters could adduce. Either the disease was not so virulent as he represented, or the remedy which he proposed was inadequate to the cure. Mere change of physicians could not expel dis. temper, without a change of either regimen or medicine. This treatise tends rather to recommend the members of his own college to em

ployment than to restore the patient to health..

In perusing this, or any of the works of Burke, on the politics of the time, the astonishing abilities and knowledge employed lead a reader to`regret that they were not directed either to more permanent objects, or to objects, to the attainment of which they might have been more effectual, Though in point of genius and learning even Johnson or Hume were not superior to Burke, the direction of both these men's powers to objects of more permament importance has rendered their efforts of greater advantage to mankind than Burke's. The effect of exertions so directed as their's depended on their intrinsic ability and skill; the effect of Burke's, in a great degree, on extrinsic circumstances. He might reason, he might write, he might speak, but unless he coincided with the notions and views of government, his reasoning, literature, and oratory, could not effectuate his purposes. There was no subject of moral or political history, or science, of which he was not master. Had he devoted those powers and exertions to the illustration of the "noblest study of mankind,'

of man, in his faculties, in his social and civil relations, which he applied to the propagation of lations,—which party creeds, his utility to society must have been much greater. The accession of delight and instruction, from the labours of Burke, investigating and elucidating general truths, must