objects of curious conjecture, or of contemptuous neglect. Regard our inheritance in its true light, as a precious thing that we should fear to lose, and we begin to estimate it at its true value. Regard our own title to it as a solemn trust for the benefit of our descendants, and we shall understand how foolishly and immorally we act in tampering with it. How such anticipations as Burke's wrought on kindred minds, might be aptly illustrated from Wordsworth's well-known Dream of the Arab1, who, forewarned by prophecy, is hastening to bury, for preservation from the approaching deluge, the precious talisman that Had voices more than all the winds, with power Through every clime, the heart of human kind.' This conception of great intersecular duties devolving upon humanity, generation after generation, reflects on a large scale an instinct which has undoubtedly been strong in the English people. The disposition rather to recur in thought upon the value of the social life and social character which we inherit, than to strain discontentedly for some imaginary ideal, has largely entered into the temperament of those races which have been chiefly instrumental in superinducing civilised society over the face of the earth. 'Moribus antiquis res stat Romana, virisque,' says Ennius. So says Burke, in effect, of the civilised life which the English race have now spread over the four quarters of the globe. With the English race have universally gone the old English ideas on religion, on politics, and on education; America and the rest of the new world haye taken them from us and are giving them a new and fruitful development. After the lapse of nearly a century, America and England still exhibit on the whole the highest political and social ideals. The English type, during the present century, has been more widely imitated than the Greek or the Roman at the height of their fame. Our social ideas, poor as they may be by comparison with the creations of ingenious speculation, clearly have some very remarkable value of their own. One element of this value is that effect upon the individual which is attributed to them by Burke. They tend to, or at any rate favour the development of a certain 'native plainness and directness of character.' They keep a man face to face with life 1 Prelude, Book v. and reality. They include a moral code which fits all times and seasons, all ranks and conditions of life; which hardens a man where it is good that he should be hardened, and softens him where it is good that he should be softened. The same may perhaps be said, in a less degree, of some moral codes of the ancient world; but it certainly cannot be said of those of modern paganism. The lives of some of the best and most earnest of modern Englishmen may not be fairly comparable with that of Socrates; but we may justly boast of a standard far transcending that of Rousseau and of Goethe. A high standard of character cannot be independent of some corresponding standard of politics; and every name which keeps the name of England respected throughout the world, will be found, in a greater or less degree, to confirm that aspect of English character, private and public, which Burke puts forward. Burke is at his best when enlarging thus on the general philo, sophy of society: he breaks down when he proceeds to its application. There are few topics in the present volume of which this is not true: and, as has been already noticed, it is conspicuously true of the opening argument on the British Constitution. Pitiful as it is to see the fine mind of Burke self-devoted to the drudgery of Tory casuistry, it is even more so to find his usually ready and generous sympathies, as the work advances, remorselessly denied to the cause of the French people. It was not for any liberal-minded Englishman, rich in the inheritance of constitutional wisdom and liberty, to greet the dawn of representative institutions in France with nothing but a burst of contempt and sarcasm. Least of all was this attitude towards the National Assembly becoming to Burke. His opening address to the French politicians1 is more than ungenerous: it is unjust. It seems incredible that any one should have been found to declare that the path of reform in France was 'a smooth and easy career of felicity and glory,' which had been recklessly abandoned. To 1 Page 41. 2 In the opinion that France possessed all the elements of a good constitution, which only required to be cleared of rust and obstructions and put in working condition, Burke erred with many intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen. We can now see that such was not the case, and further that France was not at that time in a condition to adopt any political system of the kind which was then meant by the term constitutional. The boasted English constitution of Burke's time was a notorious sham. It has do Burke justice, he quickly saw how falsely he had judged in discerning no effect of the Revolution upon France save mutilation and disaster. Two years more, and we hear nothing about the 'fresh ruins of France,' and the French nation 'not politically existing.' Under that guidance which at first appeared so contemptible, France speedily acquired a power far more formidable than had been known in the most vigorous period of the monarchy. Burke then ceased to call the leaders of the Revolution fools, and declared them to be fiends. Burke's contemptuous parallel of the representatives of the now been exploded; England, as every one knows, is a democracy ruled by the delegates of the Commons. But it was that very pasteboard show of interdependent powers which was fast losing its credit in England, which Burke wished to see imitated in France. Montesquieu was more clearsighted. Intensely as he affected to admire the political system of England, his doctrine was that France ought to be left alone. 'Leave us as we are,' is the constant theme of that hypothetical speaker by whom Montesquieu (De l'Esprit des Lois, Liv. xix. ch. 5-8) expresses his own opinions. Nature compensates for everything.' Many smiled contemptuously when they heard people talk of liberty and a constitution. Montesquieu had said that a free nation only could have a liberator, an enslaved nation could only have another oppressor. He little knew the terrible awakening which was reserved for the French nation: but he was probably right in counselling that such an awakening should not be anticipated by a false political reformation. The reform which France wanted was a social one: the need penetrated to the very roots of the nation's life. The selfishness and cruelty of whole classes had to be exorcised: a slumbering nation had to be aroused to a sense of political duty. It is hard in the present day to imagine how completely public spirit had vanished from the mass of the French nation, and how utterly void the French were at that time of political knowledge or experience. Turgot was as solitary a being in France as if his lot had been cast in the Sandwich islands. Except a few men of the type of Sieyes, probably few French politicians cared for politics otherwise than as an amusement, or a path to distinction. The Frenchman was repelled by what Burke calls the 'severe brow of moral freedom.' Voltaire at Ferney looked on the political affairs of Geneva merely as a matter for satire and ridicule. 'It is impossible,' said a Frenchman to Groenfelt, in 1789, 'for a Frenchman to be serious: we must amuse ourselves, and in pursuit of our amusements we continually change our object, but those very changes prove us always the same. Our nation is naturally gay. Political liberty requires a degree of seriousness, which is not in our character: we shall soon grow sick of politics.' (Letters on the Revolution, P. 4.) This gay incuriosity is still the characteristic of the vast majority; and hence France has ever since been, though in a diminishing degree, the prey of petty and interested factions. Tiers Etat with the English House of Commons' is typical of the whole argument. This herd of country clowns and pettifoggers, as he declares it to have been, certainly forms an effective contrast by the side of the British Parliament in the days of Pitt and Fox. We trace here the beginning of a secondary thread of sentiment which runs quite through the book. A sense of triumphant hostility to the French as a nation had been produced by a century of international relations: and Burke could hardly avoid displaying it on the present occasion. His purpose was not merely to instruct the French nation, but to humiliate, if not to insult it. Englishmen had long looked on the French as a nation of slaves he now strove to show that a nation of slaves could produce nothing worthy of the serious attention or sympathy of a nation of freemen. Burke might have taken the opportunity of exhibiting that keen sympathy for freedom by which most of his political career, as he himself declares in a moment of compunction 2, had been guided. He knew that France was peopled by a race as oppressed and down-trodden as Ireland or India. Was freedom to be the monopoly of England? Had Burke no sympathy for any sufferings but those of royalty? Here we touch another point of some interest. Popular instinct at once seized on Burke's famous description of the transportation to Paris of the 6th of October3 as the key to the whole work. That picturesque incident had inspired the jubilations of Dr. Price and Burke naturally invested it at once with the very opposite character. But his description was borrowed from prejudiced witnesses. The people still trusted the King, however much they may have distrusted the Queen: and there was nothing extraordinary in their insisting on the abandonment of Versailles. Burke frankly admits that this gloomy foretaste of the change in the royal fortunes coloured his whole conception. Endowed with the imagination and sensibility of the poet, this melodramatic spectacle sank deeply into his mind; and the consciousness that it yet remained undenounced was too much for one ever swayed, as Burke was, by ". . stormy pity, and the cherished lure Of pomp, and proud precipitance of soul".' Philip Francis at once declared this exhibition of sympathy for the Queen to be mere affectation, or in his own phrase, 'foppery.' He knew Burke well; better, perhaps, than any contemporary: but this particular charge Burke declared to be false. He averred that in writing this famous passage tears actually dropped from his eyes, and wetted the paper. It is likely enough. Burke carried the strong feelings which were natural to him into most things that he did: and his tears for Marie Antoinette were as much part of the inspiration of the moment as his triumphant declaration, when his own lawful sovereign was stricken down by the saddest of maladies, that 'the Almighty had hurled him from his throne.' Burke's persistency exposed him to a keen repartee from Francis. 'No tears,' wrote the latter, 'are shed for nations.' This was altogether unjust, and Francis knew it, for he had long been associated with Burke in the gigantic effort that was being made to ameliorate the condition of the oppressed millions of India by the prosecution of Warren Hastings. But it was in vain to beguile Burke from his chosen attitude. There was the tyranny of the despot, and the tyranny of the mob: and he declared that it was his business to denounce the one as well as the other. If the champion of Ireland and of India had to choose between the French people and the French queen, he would choose the latter: and he declared that history would confirm his decision1. It has not been so: history has transferred the world's sympathies, engaged for a while on the opposite side by the eloquence of Burke, to the suffering people. Nor can it be said that history has confirmed Burke's judgment on a political question which he treats at some length, and which concerned England far less than it concerned France. The Church question, which in different shapes has ever since the French Revolution vexed the whole Christian world, had been suddenly raised from the level of speculation to that of policy by the attempted reforms of Joseph in Austria. It needed no great sagacity to foresee the impending storm, when the ancient principle of ecclesiastical establishments was repudiated in its very stronghold. Burke here carries to the extreme his principle of saying all that could be said in favour of whichever side of a doubtful question is most in need of support. Burke's vindication of Church establish 1 Page 83. |