CH. XI.

BURKE'S DISLIKE OF CHATHAM.

199

private correspondence that the extent of his dislike becomes fully apparent. The Court,' he wrote to Lord Rockingham in 1769, alone can profit by any movements of Lord Chatham, and he is always their resource when they are run hard.' 'By sending for Lord Chatham,' the King's friends can' mean nothing else than to patch a shred or two of one or more of the other parties upon the old Bute garment, since their last piecing is worn out. If they had been dissatisfied with the last botching of Lord Chatham, they would not have thought again of the same workman.' 'The style of Lord Chatham's politics is to keep hovering in air over all parties and to souse down where the prey may prove best.' 'The character of their party [that of Chatham] is to be very ready to plunge into difficult business ours is to go through with it.' The Tory Ministry of North, he wrote in 1774, has three great securities—the actual possession of power, chapter of accidents, and the Earl of Chatham. This last is the sacra anchora.' 'Lord Chatham,' he wrote to Rockingham in the same year, 'shows a disposition to come near you, but with those reserves which he never fails to have as long as he thinks that the closet-door stands ajar to receive him. The least peep into that closet intoxicates him, and will to the end of his life.' 'Lord Chatham is, in a manner, out of the question, and the Court have lost in him a sure instrument of division in every public contest.' 'Acquainted as I am with the astonishing changes of Lord Chatham's constitution (whether natural or political), I am surprised to find that he is again perfectly recovered. But so it is. He will probably play more tricks.' 'Lord Chatham's coming out is always a critical thing to your lordship.'1 In a letter written after the death of Chatham by Burke to his old schoolmaster, Shackleton, with whom he was accustomed to keep up an exceedingly intimate, affectionate, and unreserved correspondence, there is a character of Chatham which probably reflects

prived of his guiding influence his colleagues were whirled about, the sport of every gust and easily driven into any port; and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most directly opposite to his opinions, measures and character, and far the most artful and most powerful

of the set, they easily prevailed so as to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends, and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his policy.'

1 Burke's Correspondence, i. 179, 204, 206, 252, 475, 506; ii. 55, 63, 78.

the views of the writer much more faithfully than anything which was intended for the public. Shackleton had apparently written something about the moral dangers of party warfare. Burke answered that parties in politics were absolutely inevitable, and that he had only known three classes of men who kept free from them. There were a few country gentlemen who took no considerable part in public business; there were placehunters, whose scle object was the pursuit of their private interest; and there were 'ambitious men of light or no principles, who in their turns make use of all parties, and therefore avoid entering into what may be construed into an engagement with any.' 'Such,' he added, 'was in a great measure the late Earl of Chatham, who expected a very blind submission of men to him without considering himself as having any reciprocal obligation to them. It is true that he very often rewarded such submission in a very splendid manner, but with very little marks of respect or regard to the objects of his favour; and as he put confidence in no man he had very few feelings of resentment against those who the most bitterly opposed or most basely betrayed him.' 1

These passages will be sufficient to show the nature and extent of the dislike which Burke felt towards Chatham, and the chief reasons on which it was based. 'The Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents,' which was written by Burke in answer to a pamphlet by a follower of Grenville, exhibited in the most masterly manner the whole system of Rockingham's politics. In its original draught it contained a direct attack upon Chatham, which it was deemed politic to suppress, and it is impossible to read it with attention without perceiving that it implied a severe censure upon his whole past policy. Though one of the most valuable permanent contributions ever made to English political philosophy, its appearance at a time when Grenville, Chatham, and Rockingham were united on the questions growing out of the Middlesex election, was regarded with much reason as of very doubtful expediency.3 Chatham, in a letter to Rockingham, complained that it had done much hurt

277.

1 Burke's Correspondence, ii. 276,

2 Ibid. i. 200.

See the remarks of Walpole, Memoirs of George III. iv. 129

135.

CR. XI.

BURKE AS A REFORMER.

201

to the cause, and had dangerously narrowed the basis of opposition. In the wide and extensive public, the whole alone can save the whole against the desperate designs of the Court. Let us for God's sake employ our efforts to remove all just obstacles to a true public-spirited union of all who will not be slaves."

On the subject of parliamentary reform also, Burke differed widely from Chatham, and he manifested a far greater distrust of popular politics. In many respects, indeed, he may be justly regarded as a reformer. No one asserted more strongly that 'to give a direction, a form, a technical dress and a specific sanction to the general sense of the community is the true end of the Legislature;' that the Sovereign and the House of Lords, as well as the Commons, must be regarded as only trustees of the people; that the Lower House was not intended to be a control upon them, but a control for them. He quoted with full approval the saying of Sully that popular revolts never spring from a desire to attack, but always from an impatience of suffering, a saying which has lost much of its truth since the democratic agencies of modern times have begun to act powerfully, systematically, and habitually upon classes which were once wholly untouched by political agitations. In all disputes between the people and their rulers, he contended, the presumption is at least on a par in favour of the people, for they have no interest in disorder, while the governing classes

Rockingham's Memoirs, ii. 193195. This letter bears the following strange and very melancholy endorsement written by Burke more than twenty years later amid the excitement of the French Revolution.

July 13, 1792. Looking over poor Lord Rockingham's papers, I find this letter from a man wholly unlike him. It concerns my pamphlet (The Cause of the Discontents). I remember to have seen this knavish letter at the time. The pamphlet is itself by anticipation an answer to that grand artificer of fraud. He would not like it. It is pleasant to hear him talk of the great extensive public who never conversed but with a parcel of low toad-eaters. Alas! alas! how different the real

from the ostensible public man! Must all this theatrical stuffing and raised heels be necessary for the character of a great man? Edmund Burke. Oh! but this does not derogate from his great, splendid side, God forbid -E. B.' In Mrs. Crewe's Memoranda of Burke's Conversation there is the following more favourable character of Chatham. 'Lord Chatham was a great minister and bold in his undertakings. He inspired the people with warlike ardour when it was necessary. He considered mobs in the light of a raw material which might be manufactured to a proper stuff for their own happiness in the.end.'-Rogers's Recollections, p. 82.

have many sinister influences to determine their policy.1 No statesman defended more ably the rights of electors in the case of the Middlesex election. He supported Grenville's Bill for terminating the scandalously partial decisions of disputed elections. He was perhaps the first statesman who urged that lists of the voters in every important division should be published, in order that the people might be able to judge the conduct of their representatives. He advocated parliamentary reporting. He strenuously defended the right of free criticism in the debates upon the Libel Bill. He supported the disfranchisement of revenue officers. He was the author of one of the most comprehensive measures ever carried through Parliament for diminishing the number of those superfluous places which were a chief source of the corruption of Parliament, and when in opposition he advocated a much larger reduction than he was able in his short period of official life to effect.

All these were great measures of reform, but beyond these he refused to move. To the demand for short Parliaments he offered a strenuous opposition. He urged with great weight and truth the horrible disorder and corruption which constantly recurring elections would produce, as well as the inevitable deterioration of the character, influence, and competence of Parliaments that would arise from frequent breaches in the continuity of public business, and frequent changes in the men who conducted it; and he maintained that the remedy would rather aggravate than diminish the great evil of Court influence. Triennial Parliaments meant triennial contests of independent gentlemen with only their private fortunes to support them, with Court candidates supported by the money and influence of the Treasury; and members who felt their seats tottering beneath them, were at least as likely to lean for support upon the ministry as upon the people. It was noticed by every experienced politician that the influence of the ministry was much greater in the first and last sessions of a Parliament than in the intermediate sessions when members sat a little more firmly on their seats.2

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents. Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. Letter on the Duration of Parliament.

2 Speech on the Duration of Parliaments. It is curious to contrast this with the statement of Junius that 'the last session of a septennial Par

CH. XI.

INSTRUCTIONS TO MEMBERS.

203

A Place Bill, which was another favourite remedy, he almost equally disliked. It was quite right to prune the scandalous redundancy of sinecures and Court places which supplied the minister with such inordinate means of influencing votes. But to remove the responsible heads of the great civil departments and of the army and navy from Parliament, and to disconnect the greater part of those who hold civil employments from all parliamentary interest, could not fail to lower the position of the Legislature, and to endanger the safety of the Constitution.1

6

He was not less hostile to the doctrine, which was rapidly spreading over England, that representatives are simply delegates, and must accept, even against their own judgments, imperative instructions from their constituents. On his election for Bristol in 1774 his colleague spoke in favour of the coercive force of instructions, while Burke at once denounced them as resting upon an essential misconception of the nature of representative government. Your representative owes you,' he said, not his industry only, but his judgment, and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion. . . . Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests. It is a deliberative assembly of one nation with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purposes nor local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good. . . . You choose a member indeed, but when you have chosen him he is not member of Bristol, but a member of Parliament.' Electors are competent to select a man of judgment and knowledge to send into the great council of the nation; but they are not competent to determine the details of legislation, and an attempt to usurp this function would inevitably lower the character of Parliament. 'Government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment.' Every member is bound to decide upon the arguments that are placed before him what course is best for the whole community, and what

liament is usually employed in courting the favour of the people.'- Dedication to the English People. Charles I. thought long Parliaments specially hostile to royal influence. He wrote to Wentworth (January 22, 1634-5), 'Parliaments are of the nature of cats.

They ever grow curst with age; so that if you will have good of them, put them off handsomely when they come to any age, for young ones are ever most tractable.'

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents.