by this action wrought the people up to the pitch of rioting, the government, in order to quell disturbances, called out a military force which killed some twenty people. When the question of excluding Wilkes was pending, Burke in several speeches defended the right of a constituency to elect whom it pleases. The dispute, he said, was not "between the House and the freeholders of Middlesex, but between the House and all the voters in England, who would easily perceive their franchises invaded." The matter of the riot Burke also brought before the House in a motion for a committee of inquiry. In the debate he declared: "When this House shall be found . . . ready to punish the excesses of the people, and slow to listen to their grievances; . . . ready to entertain notions of the military power as incorporated with the Constitution, . . . then the House of Commons will change that character which it receives from the people only." 3 Since these sentiments were, in general, those of the Letters of Junius, and since Burke was known to be one of the most powerful writers of the day, he was by many suspected of being Junius. This accusation, however, he denied, and when he published his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents in 1770, he presented convincing evidence to all doubters. For aside from differences of opinion between the Letters and the Thoughts, Burke did not use as his weapon the railing and invective of Junius, but argument. In this pamphlet Burke reviewed the whole policy which led to the outbreak. He showed how the king and his small knot of secret advisers were building up authority for themselves. He argued that the powers 1 Parliamentary History, XVI, 587. Speech on the Middlesex Election, Works, VII, 59-67. See also 35 4 and the note on this line, and 17 8, note. 2 Compare 31 34, note. 3 Morley's Burke, 45. 4 Correspondence, I, 265-269, 272–275. 5 See 1924, note; 17 8, note; Works, I, 496. of the government are held in trust for the people,1 and, therefore, popular impatience must be indulged. True to his conservative instincts, he rejected the commonly proposed reforms, -universal suffrage, the disfranchisement of "rotten boroughs," representation for the new trading towns, triennial Parliaments, and the exclusion from the House of men holding offices under the crown. These plans he regarded as too radical. "Our Constitution," he urged, "stands on a nice equipoise, with steep precipices and deep waters upon all sides of it. In removing it from a dangerous leaning towards one side, there may be a risk of oversetting it on the other." " He therefore contented himself with suggesting that the people be stimulated to scrutinize more closely the conduct of their representatives, and that lists of votes in Parliament be published. But above all he emphasized the truth upon which he dwells so often in the Speech on Conciliation, the necessity of adapting the government to the circumstances and temper of the people. A government not so adapted he held to be merely "a scheme upon paper, and not a living, active, effective constitution." During the years immediately following 1770, Burke devoted his energies to keeping the Rockingham Whigs united against the efforts of the king to win them over. Without Burke, says Morley, "the Rockingham connection would undoubtedly have fallen to ruin, and with it the most upright, consistent and disinterested body of men then in public life." 5 For the sake of this party Burke refused a flattering offer to go to India as one of three commissioners to overhaul the affairs of the East India Company; for the sake of this party he drummed up his 6 1 See 4 8 and the note on this line. 2 Works, I, 520. Compare also 51 27, note. 8 See 9 31 and the note; 19 8 and the note. 4 Works, I, 470. 5 Burke, 62. 6 Correspondence, I, 339. associates by letter and personal appeal. In carrying out this task he reproached the Duke of Richmond for being "somewhat languid. . . and unsystematic";1 and the latter made the admission: " Indeed, Burke, you have more credit than any man in keeping us together." Even in this employment as a political whip Burke did not advance the usual cheap arguments for temporary partisan success, but, with that conservatism which deepened with his advancing years, he dwelt rather on the considerations of permanent policy. "Persons in your station of life," he wrote to the Duke of Richmond, "ought to have long views. You people of great families and hereditary trusts and fortunes, if you are what you ought to be, are in my eye the great oaks that shade a country, and perpetuate your benefits from generation to generation. The immediate power of a Duke of Richmond or a Marquis of Rockingham is not so much of moment; but, if their conduct and example hand down their principles to their successors, then their houses become the public repositories and offices of record for the Constitution; not like the tower or Rolls-chapel, where it is searched for and sometimes in vain, in rotten parchments under dripping and perishing walls, but in full vigor, and acting with vital energy and power, in the character of the leading men and natural interests of the country.' From this political activity Burke withdrew for a little while in 1773 for a trip to France. There he saw those royal splendors against which the populace had even then begun to mutter, and he observed in the brilliant society into which he was cordially received two things which he strongly dreaded, atheism and an eager questioning of the "allowed opinions which contribute so much to the public tranquillity." 994 This atheism and this speculation, he perceived, and he was one of the few who were so clear-sighted, were working toward revolution. His fear of these tendencies he passionately expressed in Parliament' not long after his return. When a bill was pending to abolish the penalties inflicted on religious teachers and schoolmasters who dissented from the doctrines of the Church of England, Burke favored such toleration on the ground that the men from whom the country stood in danger were not the dissenters, but the atheists. "These," he cried, "are the people against whom you ought to aim the shaft of the law; these are the men to whom, arrayed in all the terrors of government I would say, 'You shall not degrade us into brutes!' . . . The infidels are outlaws of the constitution, not of this country, but of the human race. They are never, never to be supported, never to be tolerated. Under the systematic attacks of these people, I see some of the props of good government already begin to fail."" By this time Burke had won a substantial reputation throughout the United Kingdom. Indeed, as early as the autumn of 1766 several Irish municipalities had voted him the freedom of the city, whereupon his gratified mother had written, “I assure you that it's no honor that is done him that makes me vain of him, but the goodness of his heart, which I believe no man living has a better." During the succeeding years a number of English mercantile organizations also passed resolutions commending his labors in behalf of commerce. Finally, in 1774, when the troubles with America were thickening, Bristol, the trading centre of the west of England, the city which had everything to lose and nothing to gain from a war with the colonies, honored him by electing him as its representative in Parliament. This election from Bristol furnished Burke with an opportunity to prove that in character as well as in abilities he was removed from the ordinary politician by a whole world of dif 1 Mar. 17, 1773. 2 Speech on the Relief of the Protestant Dissenters, Works, VII, 35-37. 3 Correspondence, I, 112. 4 Ibid., 455, 456. 1 ... ference. At the conclusion of the poll his colleague had promised obedience to the instructions of his constituents. Burke, however, with unexampled boldness, declared his independence: "His [the representative's] unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man or to any set of men living. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays you instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. . . . Government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination ; and what sort of reason is that in which the determination precedes the discussion, in which one set of men deliberate and another decide, and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?" These principles he heartily followed in practice. For example, in 1778 a bill was proposed for relaxing some of the restrictions upon Irish commerce. At once the English merchants, those of Bristol among the rest, with short-sighted jealousy raised a cry of protest. But Burke was unmoved. He boldly spoke and voted for the right side; and when his constituents besought him to advocate their ideas, he gave such an answer as few representatives in England or any other country have ever dared to give: "Is Ireland united to the crown of Great Britain for no other purpose than that we should counteract the bounty of Providence in her favor? ... Indeed, Sir, England and Ireland may flourish together. The world is large enough for us both. Let it be our care not to make our.. You obligingly lament that you are not to have me for your advocate; but if I had been capable of acting as an advocate in opposition to a plan so perfectly consonant to my known principles and to the opinions I had publicly declared on an hundred occasions, I should only disgrace selves too little for it.2 . 1 Speech at the Conclusion of the Poll, Works, II, 95, 96. |