collecting the rents of a country squire. They were the field, in his expressive phrase, of mock jurisdictions and mimic revenues, of difficult trifles and laborious fooleries. "It was but the other day that that pert factious fellow, the Duke of Lancaster, presumed to fly in the face of his liege lord, our gracious sovereign-presumed to go to law with the King. The object is neither your business nor mine. Which of the parties got the better I really forget. The material point is that the suit cost about 15,000l. But as the Duke of Lancaster is but agent of Duke Humphrey and not worth a groat, our sovereign was obliged to pay the costs of both."1 The system which involved these costly absurdities, Burke proposed entirely to abolish. In the same spirit he wished to dispose of the Crown lands and the forest lands, which it was for the good of the community, not less than of the Crown itself, to throw into the hands of private owners.

One of the most important of these projected reforms and one which its author did not flinch from carrying out two years later, to his own loss, related to the office of Paymaster. This functionary was accustomed to hold large balances of the public money in his own hands, and for his own profit, for long periods, owing

1 Economical Reform, Works, i. 236, a.

to a complex system of accounts, which was so rigorous as entirely to defeat its own object. The Paymaster could not, through the multiplicity of forms and the exaction of impossible conditions, get a prompt acquittance. The audit sometimes did not take place for years after the accounts were virtually closed. Meanwhile, the money accumulated in his hands, and its profits were his legitimate perquisite. The first Lord Holland, for example, held the balances of his office from 1765, when he retired, until 1778, when they were audited. During this time he realized, as the interest on the use of these balances, nearly two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Burke diverted these enormous gains into the coffers of the state. He fixed the Paymaster's salary at four thousand pounds a year, and was himself the first person who accepted the curtailed income.

The economical reforms which were actually effected when the Whigs came into power on the fall of Lord North, fell short by a long way of those which Burke had so industriously devised and so forcibly recommended. Patrician Whigs in power have seldom shown themselves inferior in rapacity to their rivals. In 1782, while Burke declined to spare his own office,

1 Economical Reform, Works, i. 242-3.

the chief of the cabinet which Burke was not highborn enough to enter, conferred upon Barré a pension of over three thousand a year; above ten times the amount, as has been said, which, in Lord Rockingham's own judgment, as expressed in the new Bill, ought henceforth to be granted to any one person whatever.1 This shortcoming, however, does not detract from Burke's distinguished merit. The eloquence, industry, ingenuity, above all, the sagacity and the justice of this great effort of 1780, are none the less worthy of our admiration and regard because, in 1782, his patrician chiefs, partly in accordance with their own predatory traditions, partly perhaps out of a revived deference for the feelings of their royal master, showed that the possession of office had sensibly cooled the ardent aspirations proper to Opposition.

Not the most fervid or brilliant of Burke's pieces yet the speech on economical reform is certainly not the least instructive or impressive of them. It gives us a suggestive view of the relations existing at that time between the House of Commons and the Court. It discloses to us the sordid and unpatriotic spirit of No A the monarch and the ministers who could resist proposals so reasonable in themselves, and so alleviating

Earl Stanhope's History of England. vii. 165.

in their effects, at a time when the nation was suffering the heavy and distressing burdens of the most disastrous war that this country has ever carried on. It is especially interesting as the most perfect illustration of its author's political capacity. At a moment when committees, and petitions, and great county meetings showed how thoroughly the national anger was roused against the existing system, Burke came to the front. of affairs with a scheme, the most striking characteristic of which proved to be that it was so profoundly temperate. Bent on the extirpation of the system, he had no demagogic ill-will towards the men who had happened to grow up and to flourish in it. "I never will suffer," he said, "any man or description of men to suffer from errors that naturally have grown out of the abusive constitution of those offices which I propose to regulate. If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all." Exasperated as he was by the fruitlessness of his opposition to a policy which he detested from the bottom of his soul, it would have been little wonderful if he had resorted to every weapon of his unrivalled rhetorical armoury, in order to discredit and overthrow the entire scheme of government. Yet nothing could have been further from his mind than any violent or extreme idea of

this sort. Many years afterwards he took credit to himself less for what he did on this occasion, than on what he prevented from being done. People were ready for a new modelling of the two Houses of Parliament, as well as for grave modifications of the Prerogative. Burke resisted this temper unflinchingly. "I had," he says, a state to preserve, as well as a state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not to inflame or to mislead." He then recounts without exaggeration the pains and caution with which he sought reform, while steering clear of innovation. "I heaved the lead every inch of way I made."1 It is grievous to think that a man who could assume such an attitude at such a time, who could give such proof of his profound skill in the great, the difficult, art of governing, was allowed to do no more than hold a fifth-rate office for some time less than a twelvemonth.

II. Unlike too many Irishmen, Burke was never so absorbed in other public affairs as to forget the peculiar interests of his native country. We have his own word, which his career does not belie, that in the elation with which he was filled on being elected a member of Parliament, what was first and uppermost

1 Letter to a Noble Lord, Works, ii. 262.

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