from generation to generation. Hurrying as his conceptions rise from the fervour of the moment, and transitory as may be the circumstances of their origin, they have in them nothing transitory, nothing of the meteor; they take their place at a height above the vapours of the time, and minister illumination to every age to He thus powerfully speaks of the fatal facility with which public men slide into apostacy-(The Bedford party had at this period seceded from their old friends, and joined the administration) —

come.

"It is possible to draw even from the very prosperity of ambition, examples of terror, and motives to compassion. I believe the instances are exceedingly rare, of men immediately passing over the clear, marked line of virtue, into declared vice and corruption. There are a sort of middle tints and shades between the two extremes; there is something uncertain on the confines of the two empires, which they first pass through, and which renders the change easy and imperceptible. There are even a sort of splendid impositions, so well contrived, that at the very time when the path of rectitude is quitted for ever, men seem to be advancing into some higher and nobler road of public conduct. Not that such impositions are strong enough in themselves; but that a powerful interest, often concealed from those whom it affects, works at the bottom and secures the operation. Men are thus debauched away from those legitimate connexions, which they had formed on a judgment, early perhaps, but sufficiently mature, and wholly unbiassed."

His picture of the bond slaves of party, who begin by sacrificing their principles, and then sacrifice their friends, is incomparable. "People not well grounded in the principles of public morality, find a set of maxims in office ready made for them, which they assume as naturally and inevitably as any of the insignia or instruments of the situation. A certain tone of the solid and practical is immediately acquired. Every former profession of public spirit is to be considered as a debauch of youth, or, at least, as a visionary scheme of unattainable perfection. The very idea of consistency is exploded. The convenience of the business of the day is to furnish the principle for doing it. Then the whole ministerial cant is quickly got by heart.-The prevalence of faction is to be lamented.-All opposition is to be regarded as the effect of envy and disappointed ambition.-All administrations are declared to be alike.-Flattering themselves that their power is become necessary to the support of all order and government, every thing which tends to the support of that power is sanctified, and becomes a part of the public interest.

"Growing every day more formed to affairs, and better knit in their limbs; when the occasion (now their only rule) requires it, they become capable of sacrificing those very persons to whom they had before sacrificed their original friends. It is now only in the ordinary course of business to alter an opinion, or to betray a connexion. Frequently relinquishing one set of men and adopting another, they grow into

a total indifference to human feeling, as they had before to moral obligation, until, at length, no one original impression remains on their minds, every principle is obliterated, every sentiment effaced.

"In the meantime, that power which all these changes aimed at securing, remains still as tottering and uncertain as ever. They are delivered up into the hands of those who feel neither respect for their persons, nor gratitude for their favours; who are put about them in appearance to serve, in reality to govern them; and when the signal is given, to abandon and destroy them, in order to set up some new dupe of ambition, who in his turn is to be abandoned and destroyed. Thus living in a state of continual uneasiness and ferment, softened only by the miserable consolation of giving now and then preferments to those for whom they have no value, they are unhappy in their situation, yet find it impossible to resign; until at length, soured in temper, and disappointed by the very attainment of their ends, in some angry, in some haughty, in some negligent moment, they incur the displeasure of those upon whom they have rendered their very being dependent. Then, 'perierunt tempora longi servitii;' they are cast off with scorn, emptied of all natural character, of all intrinsic worth, of all essential dignity, and deprived of every consolation of friendship. Having rendered all retreat to old principles ridiculous, and to old regards impracticable; not being able to counterfeit pleasure, or to discharge discontent, it is more than a chance, that in the delirium of

the last stage of their distempered power, they make an insane political testament, by which they throw all their remaining weight and consequence into the scale of their declared enemies, and avowed authors of their destruction. Thus they finish their course. Had it been possible, that the whole, or even a great part of those effects on their fortunes, could have appeared to them in their first departure from the right, it is certain that they would have rejected every temptation with horror."

We shall now have to follow Burke through more various and elevated transactions; in which he was no longer the contemplatist, but the leader, of the contest. The sounds of war and anarchy were coming from America, they were reverberating from Ireland, they were preparing to be answered by a tenfold roar from France; every principle of national stability was about to be tried in its turn. Morals, Loyalty, and Government, were to undergo the fiercest ordeal known in history; and at every trial, the genius and wisdom of Burke were to be among the most conspicuous guides of the land.

CHAPTER III.

Death of George II.-Fall of Chatham-Origin of the Modern Whigs -Burke's Pamphlet His Eloquence-Purchased BeaconsfieldSpeech on Subscription to the Articles-Letters to Barry.

name.

THE death of George II., in 1760, closed one of the most successful reigns of England. At home, the popularity of the Stuarts, first broken on the field of battle, had been extinguished on the scaffold; abroad, the continental hostilities, long threatening the overthrow of British influence, had closed in a series of encounters which gave new honours to the British military The capture of Calcutta by Clive, in 1757, had laid the foundations of an empire in India. The successes of Amherst and Johnson at Crown-point and Niagara, followed by the capture of Quebec, in 1759, had completed the conquest of Canada, and laid the foundations of an Empire in the West. To complete the circle of triumph, the victory of Hawke in Quiberon Bay, had destroyed the chief fleet of France, within sight of her own shore. In the midst of all those prospects of national prosperity, the old King suddenly died, at the age of seventy-seven, after a reign of thirty-three years.