are known, and often as they are quoted, are only a sort of introduction to those which are most completely characteristic of Burke, though to many readers at the present day they will appear less creditable than his earlier performances. We refer, of course, to his attacks on the French Revolution. They are thirteen in number: The Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790); A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791); The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791); Thoughts on French Affairs (1791); Heads for Consideration on the Present State of French Affairs (November 1792); Remarks on the Policy of the Allies (1793); Observations on the Conduct of the Minority (1793); A Letter to Mr. Elliot (May 1795); the famous Letter to a Noble Lord in answer to a Speech of the Duke of Bedford (1796); and lastly, three letters published during his lifetime. On a Regicide Peace (1796), with one posthumous letter on the same subject.

It is in these writings that Burke shows his whole soul, and puts forth his powers of every kind to the very utmost to a point indeed at which the intensity of the effort is sometimes so painfully obvious as greatly to detract from the effect. We shall not here criticise these writings-partly because their general tenor is so well known; partly because we propose to try to extract and discuss, on a future occasion, the theory which runs through them all. We shall therefore content ourselves with reminding our readers in the fewest possible words of their general scope.

They begin by depicting the principles and character of the Revolution in the blackest colours which Burke's genius enabled him to lay on; whilst, on the other hand, the principles of the old French Government are described in the most attractive light, and those of the English Constitution are almost deified. This, in a few words, is the general scope of the Reflections; the same topic is followed up in the Letter to a Member of the National Assembly. The Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs supports and develops the special point that Burke's view of the English Constitution was in accordance with party precedent; but it states the very foundations of that view with a power and depth elsewhere unequalled by the author.

The subsequent pamphlets are all in one direction. The Thoughts on French Affairs are a solemn shaking of the head. England is becoming infected with French principles, which must be kept out. The Heads for Consideration urge vigorous offensive war. The Policy of the Allies is a sermon for a crusade ; the Letters on a Regicide Peace continue the same subject with a passionate vehemence, we might almost say ferocity, which strikes the reader even at this day as something almost frightful. The personal quarrel with the Duke of Bedford which called. forth the Letter to a Noble Lord is almost a relief, though it certainly carries impassioned and furious eloquence to a pitch seldom equalled before or since.

We conclude this slight catalogue of Burke's works

with a short reference to those which were published after his death. The tracts on the penal laws against the Irish Roman Catholics, with which must be classed a letter on the same subject written to Sir Hercules Langrishe in 1792, are eminently characteristic, especially the latest of them, in which Burke contrasts the Roman Catholics with the Jacobins, and pleads for a payment of the Roman Catholic priesthood, on the ground that their creed is infinitely preferable to Jacobinism. Some, too, of his notes for speeches, and in particular his notes for a speech on the Unitarian Petition and on the Act of Uniformity, are full of principles of the widest interest at the present day as to the legal character of the Church of England. His Abridgment of English History contains chapters better than almost anything written upon the subject in the eighteenth century; and if it is true that he wrote it in early youth, it is one of the most remarkable performances in literary history.

These observations are intended to give a sort of index map of the works of an author who is very much quoted, but comparatively little studied. We hope to try to extract from the various sources to which we have referred something in the nature of a connected body of doctrine, and to discuss a few of the many interesting problems which it suggests.

VII

BURKE ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 1

THERE are two ways in which the theories of Burke may be regarded in such a manner as to invest them with a certain degree of unity. In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, he observes of himself, ‘I believe, if he could venture to value himself upon anything, it is on the virtue of consistency that he would value himself the most. Strip him of this, and you leave him naked indeed.'

This observation we think was both sincere and just. It would be quite possible to take the broadest expositions of his views those, namely, which are to be found in the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, and the Reflections on the Revolution in Francethen to show, by a comparison of them with his earlier works, that there was a true consistency in the whole of his political speculations, and that the apparent contrast between the earlier and the later ones was apparent only.

There is, however, another way of considering the

1 Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke. London : 1815.VOL. III

I

subject, which, if less systematic, is on the whole more instructive. It is to take his works in that which is at once their natural and, with very few exceptions, their chronological order also, and to collect from each division of them, the principal doctrines which he taught upon political and moral subjects.

It is this second plan which we propose to adopt. One advantage of it is that the nature of the classification which it implies is self-evident. Considered in reference to it, Burke's works fall into two great divisions those which preceded, and those which related to, the French Revolution. The speeches and writings on Indian affairs form a separate and special department, which, though eminently characteristic of the man and of his genius, throw less light than either of the other sets of writing on his theories and principles. We now propose to state, and to some extent discuss, his theory of the English Constitution as it is developed in his earlier speeches and writings.

As we have already shown, none of Burke's earlier writings contain any systematic statement of his political views. He was, indeed, from first to last, a pamphleteer; and his principles have to be collected from the particular cases in reference to which they were originally stated, much in the same manner in which legal principles must be collected from reported cases. Like almost all the principal writers, on what may broadly be called the orthodox side, in the eighteenth century, Burke was