mortifying to look forward to a glory for America which, if statesmen had been prescient and nations. just, might have been added to the abundant glories of England. Burke, we may be sure, had none of that speculative fortitude which enabled Adam Smith to anticipate with composure the possible removal of the seat of empire to that part of the empire which in a century (from 1776) would probably contribute most to the general defence.' He was intellectually capable of foreseeing much which he was not morally capable of allowing himself fully to realise, and certainly not of constraining himself to dwell upon.

To the student of human history who lives in later times, there are few objects of meditation so interesting as the probable course of evolution in the great empire whose origin we have been considering. The conditions are in some respects so profoundly different from those which have to be taken into account in observing the development of European civilization, while at the same. time there has been such a constant and reciprocal action at work between America and Europe, that our usual historic apparatus misses its hold and application. It is comparatively simple to trace the elements which America contributes to the decomposition of the old,

1 Wealth of Nations, bk. iv. c. vii. pt. 3, p. 282 (ed. of 1855).

and the construction of the new state in Europe. But how, with our ordinary methods, can we discern the main currents of the history of a country, first incongruously colonized by Swedes, Dutch, French, Spanish, and English; which has never undergone the harmonizing and binding influence of an uniform spiritual belief; which daily receives enormous bodies of immigrants with as many ways of thinking as there are bodies, about religion and government, about the past and the future; whose territorial consolidation is not yet accomplished,-how can we analyse, or understand, or characterise, a national organization that exists under such conditions as these? how attempt as yet to assign a place in the history of mankind to the event which propelled America far out of the grooves along which we continue our course, into new and unfamiliar channels of its own? For the philosophy of American history, the exposition of its moral forces, its rootideas, its expanding elements,-for this we shall have long to wait.

CHAPTER V.

ECONOMICAL REFORM, IRELAND, AND INDIA.

HE statesman who resists all projects for the reform

THE

of the constitution, and yet eagerly proclaims how deplorably imperfect are the practical results of its working, binds himself to vigorous exertions for the amendment of administration. Burke devoted himself to this duty with a fervid assiduity that has not often been exampled, and has never been surpassed. Just as an Irish clansman would have anxiously explained the crimes of his chieftain by evil counsellors and unhappy circumstance, so Burke insisted on explaining the disorders which abounded on every side of him by the wickedness or folly of individuals, rather than he would allow any slur to rest on the constitution for which he had so devoted an affection. This made him indefatigable in his enmity to everything that savoured of abuse and mal-administration. He went to work with the zeal of a religious enthusiast, intent on purging his

church and his faith of the corruptions which lowered it in the eyes of men. There was no part or order of government so obscure, so remote, or so complex, as to escape his acute and persevering observation.

Apart from his intense faith in the constitution, Burke had, what is the emphatically distinctive mark of the great statesman-the Richelieu, the Cromwell, the Charles III-a passion for good, wise, and orderly government. For all that wore the look of confusion, he had an abhorrence that made other men marvel, and he detected the elements and seed of confusion with a perspicacity that made other men despair. This temper was not the product of any innate and reckless sympathy with the firm and energetic exercise of power for power's own sake. The modern barbarous, immoral, and retrograde cant of hero-worship would have filled him with repugnance. Warren Hastings was thought the most successful administrative genius of his time, but he was violent and unscrupulous. Burke pursued him with merciless indignation, and covered him with embarrassment and ruin. He detested folly and cruelty in high places, everything that was either imbecile or arbitrary, because his vivid imagination and excessive sensibility revealed to him in their fullest size and most striking colours the sufferings which were thus

entailed on those who dwelt in lower place. His keen feeling for good government was the fruit of his zeal for the happiness and well-being of every creature within the sphere of government. In the three fields of his activity over which we shall now but too quickly proceed, nothing is so conspicuous and impressive as this loftily social point of view. The most wearisome details of questions, now this long while settled and forgotten, receive a suffusion of interest and colour from the constant play around them of wide and rich human wisdom. Whatever he handled,-the flagitious expenditure of the public resources, the wrongs of the Irish merchant or the Irish Catholic peasant, the rapacity of English adventurers in India, the crimes of the imperial Hastings,-all was treated with that nobility of idea and expression which mere talent is invariably the better for studying, but which is only inborn, familiar, and perfect, in a few men of fine

genius and deep morality of nature.

Passion left flaws

to offend a fastidious taste, and too frequently marked his gravity with exaggeration and his humour with clumsiness. But these were mainly accidents of atmosphere. Notwithstanding them, we look in vain elsewhere in the history of English politics for the illumination of such questions as those before us, by