success. When the poor are to be relieved, the officers appointed to dole out public charity, assemble and eat upon it: nor has it ever been known, that they filled the bellies of the poor, till they had previously satisfied their own. But in the election of magistrates, the people seem to exceed all bounds; the merits of a candidate are often measured by the number of his treats; his constituents assemble, eat upon him, and lend their applause, not to his integrity or sense, but to the quantities of his beef and brandy.

And yet I could forgive this people their plentiful meals on this occasion, as it is extremely natural for every man to eat a great deal when he gets it for nothing; but what amazes me is, that all this good living no way contributes to improve their good-humour. On the contrary, they seem to lose their temper as they lose their appetites; every morsel they swallow, and every glass they pour down, serves to increase their animosity. Many an honest man, before as harmless as a tame rabbit, when loaded with a single election dinner, has become more dangerous than a charged culverin. Upon one of these occasions, I have actually seen a bloody-minded man-milliner sally forth at the head of a mob, determined to face a desperate pastry-cook, who was general of the opposite party.

But you must not suppose they are without a pretext for thus beating each other. On the contrary, no man here is so uncivilized as to beat his neighbour without producing very sufficient reasons. One candidate, for instance, treats with gin, a spirit of their own manufacture; another always drinks brandy imported from abroad. Brandy is a wholesome liquor; gin a liquor wholly their own. This then furnishes an obvious cause of quarrel, whether it be most reasonable to get drunk with gin, or get drunk with brandy?

The mob meet upon the debate; fight themselves sober; and then draw off to get drunk again, and charge for another encounter. So that the English may now properly be said to be engaged in war; since, while they are subduing their enemies abroad, they are breaking each other's heads at home.

In this manner it lived, in a precarious state, and nature seemed to have fitted it for such a life; for upon a single fly it subsisted for more than a week. I once put a wasp into the nest, but when the spider came out in order to seize it as usual, upon perceiving what kind of an enemy it had to deal with, it instantly broke all the bands that held it fast, and contributed all that lay in its power to disengage so formidable an antagonist. When the wasp was at liberty, I expected the spider would have set about repairing the breaches that were made in its net, but those it seems were irreparable, wherefore the cobweb was now entirely forsaken, and a new one begun, which was completed in the usual time.

I had now a mind to try how many cobwebs a single spider could furnish; wherefore I destroyed this, and the insect set about another. When I destroyed the other also, its whole stock seemed entirely exhausted, and it could spin no more. The arts it made use of to support itself, now deprived of its great means of subsistence, were indeed surprising. I have seen it roll up its legs like a ball, and lie motionless for hours together, but cautiously watching all the time; when a fly happened to approach sufficiently near, it would dart out all at once, and often seize its prey.

Of this life, however, it soon began to grow weary, and resolved to invade the possession of some other spider, since it could not make a web of its own. It formed an attack upon a neighbouring fortification with great vigour, and at first was as vigorously repulsed. Not daunted, however, with one defeat, in this manner it continued to lay siege to another's web for three days, and at length, having killed the defendant, actually took possession. When smaller flies happen to fall into the snare, the spider does not sally out at once, but very patiently waits till it is sure of them; for upon his immediately approaching, the terror of his appearance might give the captive strength sufficient to get loose: the manner then is to wait patiently till, by ineffectual and impotent struggles, the captive has wasted all its strength, and then he becomes a certain and easy conquest.

The insect I am now describing lived three years; every year it changed its skin, and got a new set of legs. I have sometimes plucked off a leg, which grew again in two or three days. At first it dreaded my approach to its web, but at last it became so familiar as to take a fly out of my hand, and upon my touching any part of the web, would immediately leave its hole, prepared either for a defence or an attack.

XLIII.

EDMUND BURKE.

1729-1797.

EDMUND BURKE was born in Dublin, Jan. 12, 1729. His first official connection with English politics was as Private Secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, in 1765. His first speech in the House of Commons was delivered early in that year on the too memorable Stamp Act, which Lord Rockingham had brought in a Bill to repeal. Of this celebrated debate Macaulay says, 'Two great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different generations, put forth all their powers in defence of the Bill. The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was, indeed, a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn.' Macaulay's description of Burke as an orator is worth quoting. He speaks of him as 'ignorant, indeed, or negligent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of comprehension and richness of imagination, superior to every orator, ancient or modern.'

From 1765 to 1797, Burke was one of the chief moving forces in English politics. His views on domestic politics may best be gathered from his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770, and from his two admirable speeches at Bristol, 1774 and 1780.

The three great external 'questions' with which his name is imperishably linked, are the American War, the Government of India, and the French Revolution. Two of his greatest speeches are those on 'American Taxation,' 1774, and on 'Conciliation

with America,' in 1775. The peroration of this latter oration is, perhaps, the noblest specimen of his most elevated style. It is there that his celebrated aphorism occurs: Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.' In the former speech are found his famous portraits of his most eminent contemporaries—the great Earl of Chatham, that clarum et venerabile nomen; the brilliant but flashy Charles Townshend; the laborious but pedantic George Grenville. The passage containing these personal sketches are models of ironical and yet genuinely respectful eulogy.

The government of India had a special fascination for Burke's large and humane spirit. His chief utterances on the subject are his speeches on 'Mr. Fox's East India Bill,' 1783; on 'the Nabob of Arcot's Debts,' 1785 (regarded by Lord Brougham as his very greatest oration); and the numerous speeches connected with the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Burke's whole heart, as well as his imagination, was with the natives of India. He felt their wrongs as an outrage on England and on himself.

The French Revolution, 1789-1797, called forth all his energies during the closing years of his life. His celebrated Reflections, published in 1790, filled all Europe with admiration. Perhaps the chief permanent power of this great work lies in its eloquent testimony to the value of sentiment in politics as opposed to naked reason;-of settled institutions as opposed to experiments based on abstract principles;—of slow and cautious development as the sole practical guarantee of well-ordered liberty. The beneficent side of the French Revolution was hid from Burke. He could see neither the necessity of its consequence upon the hopeless corruptions of the old system, nor yet the promise which it held out for the future. Indeed, the idea of human progress, with or without revolution, was not one which coloured his life. He had a profound sense of individual weakness. The checks and the compromises of the English Constitution he had come to venerate almost as fundamental principles of nature.

The Reflections were followed by numerous other pamphlets on