THE second period of the life of this memorable man, commencing with his acceptance of office, and ending with his abjuration of the Whig party, abounded in the most striking political change. The British Cabinet was in a perpetual state of convulsion. Ministers shifted their places, and sometimes their principles, like the scenes of a pantomime. The "King's Friends, the Landed Interest, and the Allies of the People," were alternately uppermost and plunged into the lowest depths of political disgrace. The wheel of power was in a perpetual whirl. But the world, too, was in a constant state of change. America had hoisted the standard of civil war, and it was rapidly answered by a signal from France. England was half-revolutionized, and might have rivalled France in ruin, but for the prowess of one man. Unexampled ability, sustained by integrity beyond all spot, and patriotism equal to all sacrifice, constituted Pitt the national leader; and though he did not live to see the triumph of his efforts, he proved irresistibly, that if the British empire was to be preserved, it must be by his right hand.

We have seen Burke rising by rapid steps to the summit of parlia mentary fame. There he stood fixed. Nothing could shake the supremacy founded upon his own great powers. He had attained an equal eminence of popularity. But here he was to suffer the natural fluctuations of an element, to which the waves and the winds are constancy. He had been flung up by popular caprice to the height of popular confidence, and was now to be flung down by the mere action of the surge. The people of Bristol, clamouring for the rights and wrongs of America, became suddenly indignant at finding their representative supporting the same principles in the cause of Ireland. The injuries of men in open rebellion against their country, awoke all their sympathies; the benefits of their fellow-subjects on the other side the Irish Channel,

To

He was

roused all their resentment. please both was clearly impossible. Burke, at a later period of his career, would have scorned to please either. But he was still young in politics; his nature was generous and patriotic; his spirit was contemptuous of self; he took the side of justice and his country; and in that hour cast himself for ever out of the representative glories of Bristol. equally unlucky in both instances. Ireland, buoyed up with extravagant hope, pronounced the man all but a traitor, who advised moderation. Bristol branded him as renegade; and under the "pitiless, pelting storm" of rabble obloquy, he slowly learned the greatest, yet the tardiest talent of public life, the firmness, that, scorning the volatile and profligate breath of party, draws its judgment, its reason, and its reward, from its own bosom.

Once in every half century, the populace of England discover that they are the most aggrieved body under the stars. All the old institutions of the land are found to be utterly worthless; Church and State equally demand a universal change; the political buttresses which have supported our freedom for centuries, are seen, by the sudden discernment of the rabble, to be constructed on false principles; the safeguards for which the ablest men of England struggled and died, are declared by every fabricator of paragraphs in a newspaper to be tricks on popular credulity; allegiance to Kings, reverence to the Church, and honour to society, are ridiculed as the exploded discovery of times when the human understanding was still in its infancy; and with the populace for the philosophers, and their haranguers for the legislators, the new course of illumination begins and ends. In the year 1779, Bristol had made the discovery, which she has renewed since in even a more expressive shape, that the law of the multitude was entitled to be the law of the land. Burke received sufficient intimation, that any doubt upon this subject

must be his overthrow. His party in the House were probably alarmed at the loss of so powerful a champion; and for the evident purpose of retrieving his position, and retaining his seat, he was urged to his famous motion on "Economical Reform." The name has since become so obnoxious as a cover for every hazard, to be purchased by every illusion, that its simple adoption may seem a stain upon the memory of a great man. But it is to be remembered that party has its bondage not the less severe that its fetters invisibly work their way into the mind. Reform was essential as a popular bribe. But the violence which reforms by tearing down, and the covetousness which purifies by rapine, were equally alien to the mind of this great leader. In declaring change necessary, he stopped at the portal of the Constitution; he did not venture to lay a finger upon the shrine, which so many thousands of the school of patriotism would have been rejoiced to rob; and leaving it to others to offer "strange fire upon the altar," he proceeded to purify and brighten its exterior, to remove impediments to the national investigation, and to make the greater abuses of the public purse, too public to exist, or be suffered to exist, any longer. The speech which he addressed to the House on this topic, is still quoted as one of the most pregnant and powerful of his triumphs; it contains one of the finest exemplifications of parliamentary eloquence in all its forms; and, by its brilliant dexterity, no less than by its vast accumulation of fact, and its rich and poetic fancy, no less than by its vigorous reasoning, might alone place the orator at the head of philosophic statesmen.

The commencement of this great performance has been criticised, as coming too circuitously to its object. Yet we must take into consideration the difficulties in which the speaker on the surrender of salaries and the extinction of offices must feel himself involved. Burke was evidently sensible of the necessity of treading his way cautiously upon those "fires hidden under treacherous ashes." "I enter," says he, "perfectly into the nature and consequences of my attempt. I advance to it with a tre

mor that shakes me to the inmost fibre of my frame. I feel that I engage in a business, in itself most ungracious, totally wide of the course of prudent conduct, and I really think, the most completely adverse that can be imagined to the natural turn and temper of my own mind. I know that all parsimony is of a quality approaching to unkindness, and that on some person or other every reform must operate as a sort of punishment. Indeed, the whole class of the severe and restrictive virtues are at a market almost too high for humanity. What is worse, there are very few of those virtues which are not capable of being imitated, and even outdone, in many of their most striking effects, by the worst of vices. Malignity and envy will carve much more sharply in the work of retrenchment, than frugality and providence."

But the personal point, which no man ever despised more, and which no man more loftily defied, when the occasion demanded, did not escape the Orator, who was also a candidate for the distinctions of public employment. The man who was to triumph in debate by the keenness of his investigation into the abuses of office, and to gain the palm of public approbation by his vigour in pursuing patronage to its strongholds, must have felt that he was closing the doors of administration upon himself. This he expresses with prophetic consciousness. "It is much more easy to reconcile this measure with humanity, than to bring it to any agreement with prudence. I do not mean that little, selfish, pitiful, bastard thing, which sometimes goes by the name of a family in which it is not legitimate, and to which it is a disgrace. I mean even that public and enlarged prudence, which, apprehensive of being disabled from rendering acceptable services to the world, withholds itself from those that are invidious. Gentlemen who are apt to form their ideas of Kings from Kings of former times, might dread the anger of a reigning Prince! They who are more provident of the future, or, by being young, are more interested in it, might tremble at the resentment of the successor; they might see a long, dull, dreary, un

varied vista of despair and exclusion for half a century before them. This is no pleasant prospect at the outset of a political journey."

Another shape of this many-headed hazard now developes itself to his eye, and, undoubtedly, to a man who desired to pass smoothly through life, to glide along the railway of the world without shocks or jolts to the machine, to float down the stream of society without being submerged in its eddies, or hurled down its cataracts, nothing could be more startling than the host of personal hostilities which this measure was sure to create. "The private enemies to be made in all attempts of this kind," said he, "are innumerable, and this enmity will be the more bitter, and the more dangerous too, because a sense of dignity will oblige them to conceal the cause of their resentment. Very few men of great families, and extensive connexions, but will feel the smart of a cutting reform in some close relation, some bosom friend, some pleasant acquaintance, some dear, protected dependent. Emolument is taken from some, patronage from others, objects of pursuit from all. Men forced into an involuntary independence, will abhor the authors of a blessing which in their eyes has so very near a resemblance to a curse. Services of the present sort create no attachments. The cold commendation of a public advantage never was, and never will be, a match for the quick sensibility of a private loss. When many people have an interest in railing, sooner or later they will bring a considerable degree of unpopularity upon the measure. The Reformation will act against the reformers, and revenge will produce all the effects of corruption."

After having thus gone through his preliminary positions, he lays down a long series of principles, all important, and generally curious, and some containing the cypher of his public life. We shall wander through this political sylva, and throw to gether a few of its more characteristic products.

"If there is any sacrifice to be made of either estimation or fortune, the smallest is the best; Commanders-in-Chief are not to be put upon the forlorn hope.

"If dawnings of success serve to

animate our diligence, they are good; if they tend to increase our presumption, they are worse than defeats.

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions; any bungler can add to the old. But is it altogether wise to have no other bounds to your impositions, than the patience of those who are to bear them?"

His observations on French finance form a striking contrast to his ideas in after times. But it is to be observed, that he now spoke only from a slight and general knowledge, that his panegyric was merely episodical, that Neckar was then exhibiting only the bright side of his policy, and that the time was still to come when that policy changed its phase, and by the course of nature fell deeper into eclipse hour by hour, until total darkness overhung the land. "When I look to the other side of the water," said Burke, in alluding to the new financial experiments of France, "I cannot help recollecting what Pyrrhus said, on reconnoitring the Roman camp

Those barbarians have nothing barbarous in their discipline.' When I look into the proceedings of the French King, I see nothing of the character and genius of arbitrary finance, none of the bold frauds of bankrupt power, none of the wild struggles and plunges of despotism in distress, no lopping off from the capital of debt, no suspension of interest, no robbery under the name of loan, no raising the value, no debasing the substance of the coin. I see neither Louis the Fourteenth, nor Louis the Fifteenth. On the contrary, I behold with astonishment, rising before me, by the very hands of arbitrary power, and in the very midst of war and confusion, a regular methodical system of public credit; I behold a fabric laid on the natural and solid foundation of trust and confidence among men, and rising by fair gradations, order over order, according to the just rules of symmetry and art. What a reverse of things! Principle, method, regularity, economy, frugality, justice to individuals, and care of the people, are the resources with which France makes war upon Great Britain."

In this fine declamation there was a display of all the prominent features of Burke's mind; his natural

delight in the developement of human resources, even in an enemy; his fondness for those larger financial pursuits, which, leaving the exigencies of the day to meaner intellects, extend their view over the wants and energies of posterity, and the quick and sensitive feeling of all that was bold, dazzling, and magnificent in speculation. Burke could never have been a Frenchman. The ready recourse to subtlety, the rash ostentation and the narrow performance, the theatrical pomp of the project, and the meagre dexterity of the details, which characterised the financial system of the school of Neckar, must have rapidly disgusted his pure and powerful mind. But he was an Irishman, not more in his birthplace than in his spirit, captivated by brilliancy of prospect, until he forgot the roughness of the ground beneath his feet, giving public men credit to the full amount of their declarations, and dreaming that the possession of power must naturally impel the possessor to objects of the noblest ambition. He was still in the vigour of his early imaginations-a poet bringing his fervours into politics, a philosopher inventing Utopias, a man of genius investing the whole vast and diversified scene of public affairs in the colours of his own creative mind. But he speedily found lamentable reason to distrust the miracles of French finance. And no man more gallantly retrieved his error by the candour of his confession. There had been large room for deception in the system of the French economists. All was shewy, though all was unnatural. The formation of public confidence out of universal discredit, the announcement of solid funds extracted from coffers emptied by the fifty years' profligacy of Louis XV., the laws of political nature reversed by the touch of a Genevese magician's wand, all threw France into the rapture which France always feels at the exhibition of a melodrama. All was bright, bold, and illusory. She had her rainbow before the

storm.

As a document of a state of things now almost forgotten, but worthy of perpetual remembrance, and as a warning to political speculators in all after times, if such men are to be warned, or are worth warning,-the promises of Neckar must be quoted,

even though they should involve a compliment to the sagacity of Lord North, the most ill-used of British Ministers.

"The Noble Lord in the blue ribbon," says Burke," last year treated all this with contempt. He never could conceive it possible that the French minister of finance could go through the year with a loan of but seventeen hundred thousand pounds, and that he should be able to find that loan without any tax. The second year, however, opens the very same scene. A small loan, a loan of no more than two millions five hundred thousand pounds, is to carry our enemies through the service of this year also. No tax is raised to fund that debt; no tax is raised for the current services. I am credibly informed there is no anticipation whatever. Compensations are correctly made, old debts continue to be sunk, as in the time of profound peace. Even payments

which their treasury had been authorized to suspend during the time of war, have not been suspended."

One of Neckar's contrivances for popularity was an attack on the expenses of the Crown. Even this attack shewed his deficiency in the wisdom of a statesman. The Court of Louis XV. had been undeniably wasteful and profligate, and nothing could be more deserving of restraint as a matter of public example; but nothing could be more trifling as an experiment in finance, even in its most prodigal time. The little Republican banker could not discover that the expenditure of the Court was actually pleasing to the nation. It was loudly exclaimed against, because it was a time when popular writers seized on exciting topics, and loved to lavish their eloquence on the vices of the great, while those writers, and every man in France besides, were practising the same vices to the full extent of their means. But the nation loved the shew, even at the expense; were proud of the superior splendours of their Court, and felt the pomps of the Tuileries an honour which raised every man of France in the eyes of Europe. A parsimonious Court in France must always be an ineffectual, feeble, and unpopular authority. But, in the time of Neckar, the personal vice, the grand objection to the former

system, had almost wholly disappeared. Louis XVI. was as domes tic a father of a family as any in Europe. The lopping and pruning system could only have impaired his means of individual benevolence, of kingly popularity, and of that strength which the distribution of wealth, and the attachment of its expectants and sharers, gives to the Crown. Neckar, short-sighted and self-sufficient, cut down the offices and stopped the royal revenue. He thus shewed that he understood nothing of that popular feeling to which he bowed down. He went on in his career of meagre saving and capacious ruin. The stoppage of the royal expenditure was instantly felt by the thousands and tens of thousands, in their various shapes of artists, traders, architects, the whole multitude who wait on taste, fashion, and public ornament, in a land where display was, and will be for ever, the great business of existence. Thus discontent was the first-fruits of the philosophic reform which was to make all men happy. Then came Parisian bankruptcy. The artistes, supported no longer by the Court, and calling for their debts in vain to the courtiers who had been so summarily mulcted of their means, fell into ruin. Such was the next result of the measure which was to make all Paris a bed of gold. Still, Neckar was to remain the presiding genius of French restoration. Here, too, his hopes were equally fugitive. His changes rapidly began to turn the tide of public opinion against himself. The people grew sick of the perpetual saving that stripped them of their fêtes, and gave them nothing but the bankrupt list in their stead. The courtiers exclaimed, half in indignation and half in despair, against the charlatanry which had conjured away their emoluments; the King, weary of perpetual complaints, apprehensive of being deprived of all the faces to which he had been accustomed, and unable to discover any more fortunate result of the solitude of his palace than the clamours of his people, found no consolation in the assurances of the Swiss banker that all would be well in the course of twenty or thirty years. Political economy is a prodigious provider for the comforts of the future; pays the

present generation by the happiness of posterity, and rigidly speculates upon the grave. The universal outcry at length turned upon the great renovator, and Neckar was sent back to Geneva in disgrace; a fate which he bore in the usual style of foreign magnanimity, with the most pitiful and pusillanimous dejection. He had thus, by the rashness of his projects, given the deathblow to all that they possessed of value; and if he were a sincere patriot, must have felt the bitterness of seeing his good extinguished by his folly. If his object were ambition, he only met the punishment which he merited. But, even to Burke's foreseeing eye, this catastrophe was hidden for the time. He talks, with the lavish grandeur of his style, of the regeneration of France.

"A general reform, executed through every department of the revenue, creates an annual income of more than half a million, while it facilitates and simplifies all the functions of administration. The King's household, at the remotest avenues to which all reformation has been hitherto stopped-that household which has been the stronghold of prodigality, the fortress which was never before attacked, has been not only not defended, but it has, even in the forms, been surrendered by the King to the economy of his Minister. No capitulation, no reserve. Economy has entered in triumph into the public splendour of the monarch, into his private amusements, into the appointments of his highest and nearest relations. Economy and public spirit have made a beneficent and an honest spoil; they have plundered from extravagance and luxury, for the use of substantial service, a revenue of near four hundred thousand pounds. The reform of the finances, joined to the reform of the Court, gives to the public nine hundred thousand pounds a-year. The Minister who does these things is a great man. But the King who desires that they should be done is a far greater. We must do justice to our enemies. Those are the acts of a Patriot King. I am not in dread of the vast armies of France. I am not in dread of the gallant spirit of its brave and numerous nobility. Iam not alarmed even at the great navy