some time here.' The practice of using words of disproportionate magnitude, is, no doubt, too frequent everywhere; but, I think, most remarkable among the

time was so much displeased with the performances of a nobleman's French cook, that he exclaimed with vehemence, 'I'd throw such a rascal into the river;' and he then proceeded to alarm a lady at 5 French, of which, all who have traveled

in France must have been struck with innumerable instances.

We went and looked at the church, and having gone into it, and walked up to the altar, Johnson, whose piety was constant and fervent, sent me to my knees, saying, 'Now that you are going to leave your native country, recommend yourself to the protection of your Creator and Re

whose house he was to sup, by the follow-
ing manifesto of his skill:-‘I, madam,
who live at a variety of good tables, am
a much better judge of cookery, than any
person who has a very tolerable cook, but 10
lives much at home; for his palate is
gradually adapted to the taste of his cook;
whereas, madam, in trying by a wider
range, I can more exquisitively judge.'
When invited to dine, even with an inti- 15 deemer.'
mate friend, he was not pleased if some-
thing better than a plain dinner was not
prepared for him. I have heard him say
on such an occasion. This was a good
dinner enough to be sure; but it was not 20
a dinner to ask a man to.' On the other
hand, he was wont to express, with great
glee, his satisfaction when he had been
entertained quite to his mind.

While we were left by ourselves, after 25 the Dutchman had gone to bed, Dr. Johnson talked of that studied behavior which many have recommended and practised. He disapproved of it; and said, I never

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together, of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that everything in the universe is merely ideal. I observed that, though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, I refute it thus.'

* * *

My revered friend walked down with

considered whether I should be a grave 30 me to the beach, where we embraced and

man, or a merry man, but just let inclination, for the time, have its course.'

Next day we got to Harwich, to dinner; and my passage in the packet boat to Helvoetsluys being secured, and my baggage 35 put on board, we dined at our inn by ourselves. I happened to say it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place. JOHNSON: 40 'Don't, sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained

parted with tenderness, and engaged to correspond by letters. I said, 'I hope, sir, you will not forget me in my absence.' JOHNSON: Nay, sir, it is more likely you should forget me, than that I should forget you.' As the vessel put out to sea, I kept my eyes upon him for a considerable time, while he remained rolling his majestic frame in his usual manner; and at last I perceived him walk back into the town, and he disappeared.

(1791)

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

a firm

The career of Burke belongs to the history of English politics, its memorials to English literature. His father was a Dublin solicitor and a Protestant; his mother was Catholic, and he spent a part of his school days under the tuition of a Quaker. He was himself brought up a Protestant, but on this as other subjects preserved a large and open mind. He took his bachelor's degree at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1748, and later read law at the Middle Temple in London. For upwards of a decade after his removal to England, in 1750, his ambition pointed to literature. In 1756 he published A Vindication of Natural Society, an ironical imitation of Bolingbroke intended to throw ridicule upon the political theories of that writer. 'Burke foresaw from the first,' an English statesman of our own day has said, 'what, if rationalism were allowed to run its course, would be the really great business of the second half of his century.' The same year he printed his youthful essay On the Sublime and Beautiful and three years later became editor of Dodsley's Annual Register. But his literary abilities soon marked him out for the public service. In some way, not very well understood, his financial disability was overcome, and he entered upon a career in Parliament, making his first speech in January, 1766. His Observations on the Present State of the Nation (1769) showed his grasp of economic detail, and his pamphlet, entitled, Thoughts on the Present Discontents, the following year, for the first time exhibited the full breadth of his political philosophy. Four years later the struggle with the American colonies which had been going on ever since Burke entered Parliament had reached the stage of threatened war. It was in the debate upon this great occasion that Burke's mastery of economic detail, and his broad and lucid command of principle were welded together by his gift of passionate exposition into the three documents of political philosophy which will be cherished wherever the race flourishes in whose language they were delivered. The Speech on American Taxation was given in April, 1774, The Speech for Conciliation, March 22, 1775, and the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol was issued in 1777. The other subjects upon which Burke distinguished himself as an orator were the Impeachment of Warren Hastings and the incidents of the French Revolution. His views in regard to the latter were such as sometimes to perplex his party and his friends and he was often almost solitary in his position. In spite of Goldsmith's accusation that he 'to party gave up what was meant for mankind,' Burke's gifts were not those of the successful politician. He retired from Parliament in 1794, having wielded great power at times, but having won no official position of high dignity. His achievements were such as grow more lustrous with the passage of time.

FROM THE SPEECH FOR CONCILIA-
TION WITH THE COLONIES

These, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force, by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated. But there is still behind a third consideration concerning this ob- 10 ject, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce, I mean its temper and 15 character.

In this character of the Americans, a

love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your colonies become sus5 picious, restive, and untractable, whenever they see the least attempt to wrest from them by force or shuffle from them by chicane, what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth; and this from a great variety of powerful causes; which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely.

5

Liberty might be safe, or might be endangered, in twenty other particulars, without their being much pleased or alarmed. Here they felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, they thought themselves sick or sound. I do not say whether they were right or wrong in applying your general arguments to their own cause. It is not easy indeed to make a monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The fact is, that they did thus apply those general arguments; and your mode of governing them, whether through lenity or indolence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed them in the imagination, that they, as well as you, had an interest in these common principles.

They were further confirmed in this pleasing error by the form of their provincial legislative assemblies. The governments are popular in a high degree; some are merely popular; in all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share of the people in their ordinary

with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends to deprive them of their chief importance.

First, the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which still I hope respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you, when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to to English ideas, and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object; and every nation has formed to itself some favor- 15 ite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness. It happened, you know, sir, that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon 20 the question of taxing. Most of the contests in the ancient commonwealths turned primarily on the right of election of magistrates; or on the balance among the several orders of the state. The 25 government never fails to inspire them question of money was not with them so immediate. But in England it was otherwise. On this point of taxes the ablest pens and most eloquent tongues have been exercised; the greatest spirits have acted 30 and suffered. In order to give the fullest satisfaction concerning the importance of this point, it was not only necessary for those who in argument defended the excellence of the English constitution to in- 35 sist on this privilege of granting money as a dry point of fact, and to prove that the right had been acknowledged in ancient parchments and blind usage to reside in a certain body called a House of Commons. They went much farther; they attempted to prove, and they succeeded, that in theory it ought to be so, from the particular nature of a House of Commons as an immediate representative 45 of the people, whether the old records had delivered this oracle or not. They took infinite pains to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, that in all monarchies the people must in effect themselves, 50 them, and received great favor and every mediately or immediately, possess the power of granting their own money, or no shadow of liberty could subsist. The colonies draw from you, as with their lifeblood, these ideas and principles. Their 55 love of liberty, as with you, fixed and attached on this specific point of taxing.

If anything were wanting to this necessary operation of the form of government, religion would have given it a complete effect. Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it. I do not think, sir, that the reason of this averseness in the dissenting churches, from all that looks like absolute government, is so much to be sought in their religious tenets as in their history. Every one knows that the Roman Catholic religion is at least coeval with most of the governments where it prevails; that it has generally gone hand in hand with

40

kind of support from authority. The Church of England too was formed from her cradle under the nursing care of regular government. But the dissenting interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers of the world; and could justify that opposition

of man. The fact is so; and these people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, 5 than those to the northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves who are not slaves

haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it, and renders it invincible.

only on a strong claim to natural liberty. Their very existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim. All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent. But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion. This religion, 10 themselves. In such a people, the under a variety of denominations agreeing in nothing but in the communion of the spirit of liberty, is predominant in most of the northern provinces, where the Permit me, sir, to add another circumChurch of England, notwithstanding its 15 stance in our colonies, which contributes legal rights, is in reality no more than no mean part towards the growth and a sort of private sect, not composing most effect of this untractable spirit. I mean probably the tenth of the people. The their education. In no country perhaps colonists left England when this spirit in the world is the law so general a study. was high, and in the emigrants was the 20 The profession itself is numerous and highest of all, and even that stream of powerful; and in most provinces it takes foreigners, which has been constantly the lead. The greater number of the flowing into these colonies, has, for the deputies sent to the Congress were lawgreatest part, been composed of dissenters yers. But all who read (and most do from the establishments of their several 25 read), endeavor to obtain some smattering countries, and have brought with them a in that science. I have been told by an temper and character far from alien to eminent bookseller, that in no branch of that of the people with whom they mixed. his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honorable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honors and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious.

Sir, I can perceive by their manner, that some gentlemen object to the latitude 30 of this description, because in the southern colonies the Church of England forms a large body, and has a regular establishment. It is certainly true. There is, however, a circumstance attending these 35 colonies, which, in my opinion, fully counterbalances this difference, and makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the northward. It is, that in Virginia and the 40 Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only 45 an enjoyment, but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, 50 with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean, sir, to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, 55 which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature

Abeunt studia in mores [studies de-
velop into habits]. This study renders
men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt
in attack, ready in defense, full of re-
sources. In other countries, the people,
more simple, and of a less mercurial cast,
judge of an ill principle in government
only by an actual grievance; here they
anticipate the evil, and judge of the pres-
sure of the grievance by the badness of 10
the principle. They augur misgovern-
ment at a distance; and snuff the ap-
proach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.

5

Then, sir, from these six capital sources; of descent; of form of government; of religion in the northern provinces; of manners in the southern; of education; of the remoteness of situation from the first mover of government; from all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has grown with the growth of the people in your colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth; a spirit, that unhappily meeting with an exercise of power in England, which, however lawful, is not reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much less with theirs, has kindled this flame that is ready to consume us.

The last cause of this disobedient spirit in the colonies is hardly less powerful 15 than the rest, as it is not merely moral, but laid deep in the natural constitution of things. Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this dis- 20 tance in weakening government. Seas roll, and months pass, between the order and the execution; and the want of a speedy explanation of a single point is enough to defeat a whole system. You 25 have, indeed, winged ministers of vengeance,' who carry your bolts in their pounces to the remotest verge of the sea. But there a power steps in, that limits the arrogance of raging passions and furious 30 elements, and says, So far shalt thou go, and no farther.' Who are you, that you should fret and rage, and bite the chains of Nature? - nothing worse happens to you than does to all nations who have extensive empire; and it happens in all the forms into which empire can be thrown. In large bodies, the circulation of power must be less vigorous at the extremities. Nature has said it. The 40 Turk cannot govern Egypt, and Arabia, and Kurdistan, as he governs Thrace; nor has he the same dominion in Crimea and Algiers which he has at Brusa and Smyrna. Despotism itself is obliged to truck and huckster. The Sultan gets such obedience as he can. He governs with a loose rein, that he may govern at all; and the whole of the force and vigor of his authority in his center is derived 50 from a prudent relaxation in all his borders. Spain, in her provinces, is perhaps not so well obeyed as you are in yours. She complies too; she submits; she watches times. This is the immutable 55 practice, that has not been shaken. Until

condition, the eternal law, of extensive and detached empire.

I do not mean to commend either the spirit in this excess, or the moral causes which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth and accommodating spirit of freedom in them would be more acceptable to us. Perhaps ideas of liberty might be desired more reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless authority. Perhaps we might wish the colonists to be persuaded that their liberty is more secure when held in trust for them by us (as their guardians during a perpetual minority) than with any part of it in their own hands. The question is, not whether their spirit deserves praise or blame, but what, in the name of God, shall we do with it? You have before you the object, such as it is, with all its glories 35 with all its imperfections, on its head. You see the magnitude, the importance, the temper, the habits, the disorders. By all these considerations we are strongly urged to determine something concerning it. We are called upon to fix some rule and line for our future conduct, which may give a little stability to our politics, and prevent the return of such unhappy deliberations as the present. Every such return will bring the matter before us in a still more untractable form. For, what astonishing and incredible things have we not seen already! What monsters have not been generated from this unnatural contention! Whilst every principle of authority and resistance has been pushed, upon both sides, as far as it would go, there is nothing so solid and certain, either in reasoning or in

45

very lately, all authority in America seemed to be nothing but an emanation