Therefore, as the colonies prospered, . . . it was natural that they should attribute to assemblies so respectable . . . some part of the dignity of the great nations which they represented. No longer tied to by-laws, these assemblies made acts of all sorts and in all cases whatsoever." Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, W., II, 232. 21 7. popular. Used in the primary sense of belonging directly to the people. See Bryce's American Commonwealth, New York, 1888, I, 562: "Each [early New England settlement] was a religious as well as a civil body politic, gathered round the church as its centre; and the equality which prevailed in the congregation prevailed also in civil affairs, the whole community meeting under a president or moderator to discuss affairs of common interest. Each such settlement was called a town, or township, and was in fact a miniature commonwealth, exercising a practical sovereignty over the property and persons of its members, — for there was as yet no state, and the distant home government scarcely cared to interfere, --but exercising it on thoroughly democratic principles." merely. Wholly. Compare, "The one sort we may for distinction call mixedly, and the other merely human." Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, i, 10. (Payne.) 21 11. 21 18. 22 3. aversion from. Aversion to is now more common. Burke has a fondness for this mode of phrasing. See the next two lines. Compare also the following passages: "The first fruits of that insurrection grafted on insurrection and of that rebellion improving upon rebellion." Preface to Brissot's Address to his Constituents, W., V, 85, 86. “They have apostatized from their apostasy." Fourth Letter on a Regicide Peace, W., VI, 86. 22 6. 22 11. 22 15. communion. Union in doctrine and discipline. this spirit was high. See 19 25, note. establishments. Churches supported by the state. 22 21. has a regular establishment. Is the formally established state church. 22 26. vast multitude. See 10 9, note. 22 31. as broad and general as the air. Compare Macbeth, iii, 4, 23: "As broad and general as the casing air." 23 7. Gothic. A word which Burke and other eighteenth-century writers often use in the general sense of Germanic or Teutonic. Compare, "The whole of the polity and economy of every country in Europe has been derived from the same sources. It was drawn from the old Germanic, or Gothic, custumary." First Letter on a Regicide Peace, W., V, 319. The English are not descended from the Goths, properly so called. 23 8. Poles. Till the partition of Poland in 1772, the peasants were serfs attached to the soil. See A. R., 1763, 45: "Each noble Pole . . . is absolute master of life and death on his own estate, all his tenants being in the strictest sense his slaves." 23 15. law. Among the papers presented to Parliament in 1766, relating to the disturbances over the Stamp Act, is one written from New York, December 13, 1765, containing the following passages : "The gentlemen of the law, both the judges and the principal practitioners at the bar, are either owners or strongly connected in family interest with the proprietors in general. The gentlemen of the law some years since entered into an association, with intention among other things to assume the direction of government upon them by the influence they had in the assembly, gained by their family connection and by the profession of the law, whereby they are unavoidably in the secrets of many families. Many court their friendship, and all dread their hatred; by these means, though few of them are members, they rule the house of the assembly in all matters of importance. ... By this association, united in interest and family connections with the proprietors of the great tracts, a domination of lawyers was formed in this province, which for some years past has been too strong for the executive powers of government." P. H., XVI, 125. Lecky, in chapter xii, discusses the influence, not only of the study of law, but of general education in the colonies. III, 315–317. Sir William Blackstone was born 23 25. Blackstone's Commentaries. in 1723 and died in 1780. His Commentaries on the Laws of England was published in 1765-1769, and is still the great authority on the subject. 23 26. General Gage. Thomas Gage was born in 1721 and died in 1787. His part in the Revolutionary War is pretty well known to every schoolboy. In 1760 he became governor of Montreal. Three years later he was appointed commander-in-chief of the English forces in America. Then in 1774 he was made governor-in-chief and captain-general of Massachusetts. See D. N. B. ernor. 23 27. letter on your table. During the previous session, Parliament, acting on the idea that town-meetings were likely to stir up sedition, passed an act forbidding them in Massachusetts, except by permission of the gov-. This act Governor Gage was called upon to enforce. A letter which he wrote from Salem, August 27, 1774, and which Lord North laid before the House January 19, 1775, tells of the result of his attempts: "My former letters have acquainted your lordship that the acts in question had been published here, and people have had leisure to consider means to elude them, in doing which they are very expert. At a town-meeting held in Boston in July, in order to avoid the calling a meeting afterwards, they adjourned themselves to the ninth of August, and adjourned again on that day to some time in October. I assembled the selectmen in Boston, had the clause read respecting town-meetings, told them I expected their obedience to it, that I should put the act in force, and that they would be answerable for any bad consequences. They replied they had called no meeting, that a former meeting had only adjourned themselves. I laid the affair of adjournments before the new council, and found some of opinion that the clause was thereby clearly evaded, and nearly the whole unwilling to debate upon it, terming it a point of law which ought to be referred to the crown lawyers, whose opinion is to be taken upon it, and by which I must govern myself." P. H., 90, 91. In a letter of September 2, General Gage writes: With regard to the clause in the new acts relative to townmeetings, so many elusions are discovered under various pretensions of adjournments, electing to vacant offices, people assembling peaceably without notification, upon their own affairs, and withal no penalty, that no persons I have advised with can tell what to do with it; at a distance they go on as usual, but worse transactions make that matter of little conse quence in the present moment." P. H., 95. See 21 7, note. 24 1. friend. Lord Edward Thurlow, who was appointed attorneygeneral in 1771, and who was a warm supporter of Lord North. He was the first speaker to reply to Burke. floor. The benches of the House of Commons are arranged in tiers. The lowest, that on the floor, to the right of the Speaker, is occupied by cabinet members, in which number the attorney-general is included. 24 8. Abeunt studia in mores. One's studies (or pursuits) become a part of one's character. Ovid, Heroides, xv, 83. Compare Bacon's essay Of Studies: "Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores." 24 25. winged ministers. Ships, which are compared to the eagle that carried Jupiter's thunderbolts in its pounces, or talons. The image may have been suggested to Burke by Lord Chatham, who in a speech, January 22, 1770, said of the army: "They [the ministers] have disarmed the imperial bird, the 'ministrum fulminis alitem.' [Horace, Odes, iv, 4, 1.] The army is the thunder of the crown. The ministry have tied up the hand which should direct the bolt." P. H., XVI, 750. (Goodrich.) 24 29. "So far shalt thou go." Compare Job, xxxviii, 11: "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." Payne and Selby think there is a reference to the story of Canute, popularized by Hume about a dozen years before. In order to teach his flatterers a lesson, the king ordered his chair to be set on the seashore while the tide was rising, and then commanded the waves to retire. "But when the sea still advanced towards him, and began to wash him with its billows, he turned to his courtiers and remarked to them that every creature in the universe was feeble and impotent, and that power resided with one being alone, in whose hands were all the elements of nature; who could say to the ocean, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther; and who could level with his nod the most towering piles of human ambition." History of England, chapter iii. 24 30. fret and rage. This phrase occurs in one of the earliest known 25 3. Crimea. Under Russian rule since 1783. Algiers. In control of the French since 1830. 25 4. truck. Barter. 25 5. huckster. A verb from the noun huckster, a peddler of small wares. Huckster is in turn from the old verb huck, to haggle in trading. 25 16. first mover. Burke must have had in mind the primum mobile of the Ptolemaic astronomy. According to this system the heavenly bodies were set in a series of spheres revolving about the earth as a common centre. The outermost sphere, called the primum mobile, or "first moved," communicated its motion to the inner spheres. 25 18. grown with the growth. Compare Pope's Essay on Man, ii, 136: "Grows with his growth and strengthens with his strength." with all its imperfections. Compare Hamlet, i, 5, 78, 79: 26 2. 26 7. 26 12. 26 15. But sent to my account With all my imperfections on my head. a little stability. See 4 18, note. unnatural contention. See 18 21. not been. The Second Edition reads "been not," which later editors have agreed in changing. 26 17. popular part. The reference is to the representative assemblies which were convoked by the governors, who were in turn nominated by the crown. 26 25. none but an obedient assembly. The Virginia Assembly was dissolved by Governor Dunmore in May, 1774, because on receiving news of the closing of the port of Boston, this body had passed resolutions denying the authority of Parliament. The result, to which Burke refers a few lines below, is told by Governor Dunmore in a letter sent from Williamsburg, December 24, 1774, and laid before the House February 15, 1775: "As to the power of government which your lordship . . . directs should be exerted to counteract the dangerous measures pursuing here, I can assure your lordship that it is entirely disregarded, if not wholly overturned. There is not a justice of peace in Virginia that acts, except as a committee man [under direction of the local committees organized to carry out the nonimportation and non-exportation agreements of the Continental Congress]. The abolishing the courts of justice was the first step taken, in which the men of fortune joined equally with the lowest and meanest. The general court of judicature of the colony is much in the same predicament; for though there are at least a majority of his Majesty's council who, with myself, are the judges of that court, that would steadily perform their duty, yet the lawyers have absolutely refused to attend, nor indeed would the people allow them to attend, or evidences to appear. . . . Independent companies, etc., so universally supported, who have set themselves up superior to all other authority, under the auspices of their Congress, the laws of which they talk of in a style of respect, and treat with marks of reverence which they never bestowed on their legal government or the laws proceeding from it, — I can assure your lordship that I have discovered no instance where the interposition of government, in the feeble state to which it is reduced, could serve any other purpose than to suffer the disgrace of a disappointment, and thereby afford matter of great exultation to its enemies, and increase their influence over the minds of the people." P. H., 314, 315. ... 26 26. humors. An allusion to the old theory that the body contained various humors, or fluids, which might become diseased, and, finding no vent in natural channels, break out in boils or other eruptions. 26 34. Lord Dunmore. John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore: born, 17:32; died, 1809. In 1770 he was appointed governor of New York, and later of Virginia. In 1775 the feeling against him ran so high that he had to flee for refuge to a man-of-war. For a time he carried on hostilities against the colony, burning the important town of Norfolk. See D. N. B. 27 3. Obedience. See 4 8, note. Compare also, "Whether the immediate and instrumental cause of the law be a single person or many, the remote and efficient cause is the consent of the people, either actual or implied; and such consent is absolutely essential to its validity." Tract on the Popery Laws, W., VI, 320. This suggests a sentence in the Declaration of Independence, "To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 27 18. abrogated. The reference is to an act passed May 11, 1774, entitled "An Act for the better regulating the government of the province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." See 58 23. By this act, |