Page His acquittal did not weaken the lesson of his impeachment Change in the system of government Important difference between Burke's India Bill and Pitt's Not entirely such as publicists often represent. Burke's evil destiny in falling on this time. The manner of his hostility to the Revolution. This method a result of the predominance of the men of letters . 282 True character of the function of the speculative class The "methodising of anarchy," imputed to the men of letters, more justly applicable to the clergy and aristocracy Illustrated by the laws against the Calvinists The Proletarians and the Church EDMUND BURKE: A HISTORICAL STUDY. IT CHAPTER I. CHARACTERISTICS. is almost exactly one hundred years since Burke first took his seat in the House of Commons, and it is something like three-quarters of a century since his voice ceased to be heard there on great public questions. Since his death, as during his life, opinion as to the place to which he is entitled among the eminent men of his country has touched every extreme. Tories have extolled him as the saviour of Europe. Whigs have detested him as the destroyer of his party. One undiscriminating panegyrist calls him "the most profound and comprehensive of political philosophers that has yet existed in the world." Another and more distinguished writer insists that he is "a resplendent and far-seeing rhetorician rather B than a deep and subtle thinker." A third tells us that his works "cannot be too much your study if you mean either to understand or to maintain against its various enemies, open and concealed, designing and mistaken, the singular constitution of this fortunate island." A fourth, on the contrary, declares that it would be hard to find a single leading principle or prevailing sentiment in one half of these works to which something extremely adverse cannot be found in the other half. A fifth calls him one of the greatest men, and, Bacon alone excepted, the greatest thinker who ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics;" and yet, oddly enough, the author of this fifth verdict will have it that this great man and great thinker was actually out of his mind when he composed those pieces for which he has been most generally admired and revered. These diversities of opinion are not difficult to be accounted for, and they are very well worth considering, both because they are useful in illustrating the general position of English politics in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and because they bear with much force upon the probable course of English political opinion in the latter half of the nineteenth century. |