hospitality, if they should invite us to join the standard of our king, our laws, and our religion, if they should give us a direct promise of protection; if, after all this, taking advantage of our deplorable situation, which left us no choice, they were to treat us as the lowest and vilest of all mercenaries? If they were to send us far from the aid of our king and our suffering country, to squander us away in the most pestilential climates for a venal enlargement of their own territories, for the purpose of trucking them, when obtained, with those very robbers and murderers they had called upon us to oppose with our blood? What would be our sentiments, if in that miserable service we were not to be considered either as English, or as Swedes, Dutch, Danes, but as outcasts of the human race? Whilst we were fighting those battles of their interest, and as their soldiers, how should we feel if we were to be excluded from all their cartels? How must we feel, if the pride and flower of the English nobility and gentry, who might escape the pestilential clime and the devouring sword, should, if taken prisoners, be delivered over as rebel subjects, to be condemned as rebels, as traitors, as the vilest of all criminals, by tribunals formed of Maroon negro slaves, covered over with the blood of their masters, who were made free and organised into judges for their robberies and murders? What should we feel under this inhuman, insulting, and barbarous protection of Muscovites, Swedes, or Hollanders? Should we not obtest Heaven, and whatever justice there is yet on earth? Oppression makes wise men mad; but the distemper is still the madness of the wise, which is better than the sobriety of fools. The cry is the voice of sacred misery, exalted, not into wild raving, but into the sanctified frenzy of prophecy and inspiration. In that bitterness of soul, in that indignation of suffering virtue, in that exaltation of despair, would not persecuted English loyalty cry out with an awful warning voice, and denounce the destruction that waits on monarchs who consider fidelity to them as the most degrading of all vices; who suffer it to be punished as the most abominable of all crimes;

and who have no respect but for rebels, traitors, regicides, and furious negro slaves, whose crimes have broke their chains? Would not this warm language of high indignation have more of sound reason in it, more of real affection, more of true attachment, than all the lullabies of flatterers, who would hush monarchs to sleep in the arms of death? Let them be well convinced, that if ever this advantage should prevail in its whole extent, it will have its full operation. Whilst kings stand firm on their base, though under that base there is a sure-wrought mine, there will not be wanting to their levees a single person of those who are attached to their fortune, and not to their persons or cause; but hereafter none will support a tottering throne. Some will fly for fear of being crushed under the ruin, some will join in making it. They will seek, in the destruction of royalty, fame, and power, and wealth, and the homage of kings, with Reubel, with Carnot, with Revellière, and with the Merlins and the Talliens, rather than suffer exile and beggary with the Condés, or the Broglios, the Castries, the D'Avrais, the Serrents, the Cazalés, and the long line of loyal, suffering, patriot nobility, or to be butchered with the oracles and victims of the laws, the D'Ormesons, the D'Espremenils, and the Malesherbes. This example we shall give, if instead of adhering to our fellows in a cause which is an honour to us all, we abandon the lawful government and lawful corporate body of France, to hunt for a shameful and ruinous fraternity with this odious usurpation that disgraces civilised society and the human race.

"And is, then, example nothing? It is every thing. Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. This war is a war against that example. It is not a war for Louis the Eighteenth, or even for the property, virtue, fidelity of France. It is a war for George the Third, for Francis the Second, and for all the dignity, property, honour, virtue, and religion of England, of Germany, and of all nations."

RETIREMENT OF BURKE FROM PARLIAMENT.

273

In parliament Burke also sustained by his eloquence the drooping spirits of government until his final retirement from the house in 1794. The report of a committee to inspect the Lords' journals, relative to the proceedings on the trial of Warren Hastings, was brought up in the April of that year. It occupied nearly two hundred pages, and according to the eminent conveyancer Charles

Butler, is one of the most learned and able legal summaries in the language. It was the work of Mr. Burke. On the 20th June following, a motion, by Mr. Pitt, for the thanks of the house to the managers of Hastings' trial was carried. Mr. Burke acknowledged the honour in a speech which touched in honest explanation

on what had passed, and warmly expressed his own grateful feelings. He immediately afterwards accepted the Chiltern Hundreds ; and thus he departed from that august assembly-quorum pars magna fuit-from that British House of Commons, which for more than a quarter of a century he had dignified with his virtue, enchanted with his words, and enlightened with his wisdom. Orators have since come and gone; but ages may pass before parliament listens to his like again-before such another voice, uttering eloquence not only of the tongue but of the thought, falls upon and vivifies, with dewy freshness, the great council of the nation..

About

Burke, on vacating his seat for Malton, obtained the immediate election of his son to represent that borough in his room. the same time, through Burke's agency, government acquired a considerable and important reinforcement. In July 1794 Burke's eminent friend and intimate ally of more than twenty years' standing, William Henry Cavendish, Duke of Portland, joined the ministry and became third Secretary of State. Other friends of Burke, on his advice, followed the same example. Earl Fitzwilliam, first as President of the Council, and then as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Earl Spencer, as Lord Privy Seal; and the manly, highminded William Windham, as Secretary-at-War, took office in Mr. Pitt's administration. Burke's son, the new member for Malton, was appointed secretary to Lord Fitzwilliam. Burke, of course, might have been a minister; but he now sought retirement for himself, and looked only to his son's advancement, that darling object of his life, apparently on the eve of accomplishment. peerage was talked of for the orator; the title-Lord Burke, of Beaconsfield-was even mentioned; and the patent was reported to be in contemplation. Alas, the vanity of human things! the event of the next month swept away all Burke's worldly hopes, happiness, and anxiety for honours.

A

DEATH OF EDMUND BURKE'S SISTER AND BROTHER-DEATH OF HIS SON: HIS GRIEF IN CONSEQUENCE-EDMUND BURKE'S PENSION: HIS LETTER TO THE DUKE OF BEDFORD RELATIVE TO IT-BURKE'S DECLINING HEALTH-HIS DEATH, FUNERAL, AND WILL-DR. KING, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER; SIR RICHARD BOURKE EDMUND BURKE'S FAMILY AND REPRESENTATIVES-SALE OF HIS ESTATE AT BEACONSFIELD, AND ACCIDENTAL DESTRUCTION BY FIRE OF HIS SEAT-PERSONAL DESCRIPTION OF BURKE CONCLUDING. REMARKS,