Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

more tedious and more earnest than the preconceived opinions and present temper of his hearers required, to whom he was always. in perfect unison. He conformed exactly to the temper of the house; and he seemed to guide, because he was always sure to follow. The effects of such a character, minding the currency and not the weight of opinions, Burke shews in the inconstancy of Townshend's political conduct. He voted for the Stamp Act while it was popular; when it became disliked, he voted for the repeal: and when that repeal became unpopular, he voted for raising a revenue from America.

Of the characters, those of Mr. Townshend and Mr. Grenville appear to me the most highly finished: Townshend's, distinguished for truth and discrimination; Grenville's, for truth, discrimination, and philosophy,

In speaking of the conduct of the North Ministry, he makes an observation, of which

the converse applies to himself: Never have the servants of the State looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected view they have taken things by bits and scraps, just as they pressed, without any regard to their relations and dependencies: they never had any system, right or wrong; but only occasionally invented some miserable tale of the day; in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties, into which they had proudly strutted.' Burke himself, on the contrary, took the whole of a subject, and all its parts and dependencies, into consideration. Whenever he was right, his speeches contained a series of causes and effects, antecedents and consequents: they were chains of massy steel, at once strong and brilliant. Whenever he was wrong, he was systematically wrong; the parts were at least congruous. Si non sunt vera saltem sunt inter se apta.

Burke descanted with wonderful eloquence on the inconsistency of Ministry, in proposing, at the same time, addresses and re

[ocr errors]

solutions declaring America in a state of rebellion, and conciliatory bills: acts repealing and coercive; soothing and irritating. 'You send out,' said he, an angel of peace, but you send out a destroying angel along with him; and what will be the effects of the conflict of these adverse spirits is what I dare not say--whether the lenient measures will cause passion to subside, or the severer increase its fury: all this is in the hands of Providence: yet now, even now, I should confide in the prevailing virtue and efficacious operation of lenity, though working in darkness and in chaos. In the midst of this unnatural and turbid combination, I should hope it might produce order and 'beauty in the end.'

The great mind of Burke most thoroughly despised mere courtiers, or, as he called them, household troops,-the parrots of court notions and court stories. Sir, this vermine of court reporters, when they are forced into day, upon one point, are sure to burrow in another; but they shall have no

refuge: I will make them bolt out of all their holes. In the same speech, Burke manifests a feature in his character, long afterwards noticed by his very able opponent, Mr. Mackintosh :-' an abhorrence for abstract politics and a dread of innovation."

[ocr errors]

I am not,' says Burke, going into the distinction of rights, nor attempting to mark their boundaries. I do not enter into these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the very sound of them. Leave the Americans as they anciently stood, and these distinctions, born of our unhappy contest, will die along with it. They, and we, and their and our ancestors, have been happy under that system. Oppose the ancient policy and practice of the empire as a rampart against the speculations of innovators, and they will stand on a manly and sure ground.'

Whether we consider this speech of Burke as a display of the most creative genius, as an explanation of the subject in debate, as a chain of reasoning to prove propositions of the highest importance to the hearers

and their constituents, as antecedents from which the consequences he drew actually did proceed, or as affording motives which ought to have induced them to the conduct he recommended, it is one of the ablest orations to be met with in any language. Besides being replete with means adapted to the main end of conviction, and also of persuasion, were men always persuaded by a striking exhibition of their duty and interest, it has other distinguished excellencies: it displays a most penetrating and profound knowledge of human character and its effects: it abounds also in the soundest principles of morality. Transcendent excellence, logical, political, and philosophical, as this oration contains, embellished, enlivened, and elevated as it is by the most beautiful, animated, and grand imagery, which a POET's genius could produce, a hypercritical rhetorician might probably discover some violations of the rules of his art. The rapidity of Burke's genius frequently produces a mixture of plain and figurative language, and also a confusion of figures, which a

« AnteriorContinuar »