Edmund Burke - Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America

Lord North's ministry came to an end in 1782, immediately after the battle of Yorktown, and Lord Rockingham was chosen prime minister. Burke's past services warranted him in expecting an important place in the cabinet, but he was ignored. Various things have been suggested as reasons for this: he was poor; some of his relations and intimate associates were objectionable; there were dark hints of speculations; he was an Irishman. It is possible that any one of these facts, or all of them, furnished a good excuse for not giving him an important position in the new government. But it seems more probable that Burke's abilities were not appreciated so justly as they have been since. The men with whom he associated saw some of his greatness but not all of it. He was assigned the office of Paymaster of Forces, a place of secondary importance.

Lord Rockingham died in three months and the party went to pieces. Burke refused to work under Shelburne, and, with Fox, joined Lord North in forming the coalition which overthrew the Whig party. Burke has been severely censured for the part he took in this. Perhaps there is little excuse for his desertion, and it is certainly true that his course raises the question of his sincere devotion to principles. His personal dislike of Shelburne was so intense that he may have yielded to his feelings. He felt hurt, too, we may be sure, at the disposition made of him by his friends. In replying to a letter asking him for a place in the new government, he writes that his correspondent has been misinformed. "I make no part of the ministerial arrangement," he writes, and adds, "Something in the official line may be thought fit for my measure."

As a supporter of the coalition, Burke was one of the framers of the India Bill. This was directed against the wholesale robbery and corruption which the East India Company had been guilty of in its government of the country. Both Fox and Burke defended the measure with all the force and power which a thorough mastery of facts, a keen sense of the injustice done an unhappy people, and a splendid rhetoric can give. But it was doomed from the first. The people at large were indifferent, many had profitable business relations with the company, and the king used his personal influence against it. The bill failed to pass, the coalition was dismissed, and the party, which had in Burke its greatest representative, was utterly ruined.

The failure of the India Bill marked a victory for the king, and it also prepared the way for one of the most famous transactions of Burke's life. Macaulay has told how impressive and magnificent was the scene at the trial of Warren Hastings. There were political reasons for the impeachment, but the chief motive that stirred Burke was far removed from this. He saw and understood the real state of affairs in India. The mismanagement, the brutal methods, and the crimes committed there in the name of the English government, moved him profoundly, and when he rose before the magnificent audience at Westminster, for opening the cause, he forced his hearers, by his own mighty passion, to see with his own eyes, and to feel his own righteous anger. "When he came to his two narratives," says Miss Burney, "when he related the particulars of those dreadful murders, he interested, he engaged, he at last overpowered me; I felt my cause lost. I could hardly keep my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance toward a man so accused as Mr. Hastings; I wanted to sink on the floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his favor remained." The trial lasted for six years and ended with the acquittal of Hastings. The result was not a surprise, and least of all to Burke. The fate of the India Bill had taught him how completely indifferent the popular mind was to issues touching deep moral questions. Though a seeming failure, he regarded the impeachment as the greatest work of his life. It did much to arouse and stimulate the national sense of justice. It made clear the cruel methods sometimes pursued under the guise of civilization and progress. The moral victory is claimed for Burke, and without a doubt the claim is valid.

The second of the great social and political problems, which employed English statesmen in the last half of the eighteenth century, was settled in the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The affairs of America and India were now overshadowed by the French Revolution, and Burke, with the far-sighted vision of a veteran statesman, watched the progress of events and their influence upon the established order. In 1773 he had visited France, and had returned displeased. It is remarkable with what accuracy he pointed out the ultimate tendency of much that he saw. A close observer of current phases of society, and on the alert to explain them in the light of broad and fundamental principles of human progress, he had every opportunity for studying social life at the French capital. Unlike the younger men of his times, he was doubtful, and held his judgment in suspense. The enthusiasm of even Fox seemed premature, and he held himself aloof from the popular demonstrations of admiration and approval that were everywhere going on. The fact is, Burke was growing old, and with his years he was becoming more conservative. He dreaded change, and was suspicious of the wisdom of those who set about such widespread innovations, and made such brilliant promises for the future. But the time rapidly approached for him to declare himself, and in 1790 his Reflections on the Revolution in France was issued. His friends had long waited its appearance, and were not wholly surprised at the position taken. What did surprise them was the eagerness with which the people seized upon the book, and its effect upon them. The Tories, with the king, applauded long and loud; the Whigs were disappointed, for Burke condemned the Revolution unreservedly, and with a bitterness out of all proportion to the cause of his anxiety and fear. As the Revolution progressed, he grew fiercer in his denunciation. He broke with his lifelong associates, and declared that no one who sympathized with the work of the Assembly could be his friend. His other writings on the Revolution [Footnote: Letter to a Member of the National Assembly and Letters on a Regicide Peace.] were in a still more violent strain, and it is hard to think of them as coming from the author of the Speech on Conciliation.

Three years before his death, at the conclusion of the trial of Warren Hastings, Burke's last term in Parliament expired. He did not wish office again and withdrew to his estate. Through the influence of friends, and because of his eminent services, it was proposed to make him peer, with the title of Lord Beacons field. But the death of his son prevented, and a pension of twenty-five hundred pounds a year was given instead. It was a signal for his enemies, and during his last days he was busy with his reply. The "Letter to a Noble Lord," though written little more than a year before his death, is considered one of the most perfect of his papers. Saddened by the loss of his son, and broken in spirits, there is yet left him enough old-time energy and fire to answer his detractors. But his wonderful career was near its close. His last months were spent in writing about the French Revolution, and the third letter on a Regicide Peace—a fragment—was doubtless composed just before his death. On the 9th of July, 1797, he passed away. His friends claimed for him a place in Westminster, but his last wish was respected, and he was buried at Beaconsfield.

There is hardly a political tract or pamphlet of Burke's in which he does not state, in terms more or less clear, the fundamental principle in his theory of government. "Circumstances," he says in one place, "give, in reality, to every political principle, its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what renders every civil and political scheme beneficial or obnoxious to mankind." At another time he exclaims: "This is the true touchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs of men; does it suit his nature in general, does it suit his nature as modified by his habits?" And again he extends his system to affairs outside the realm of politics. "All government," he declares, "indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter."