powerful. In short, if it ought to be the effort of an English statesman, at all times and in all places, to promote the comparative force as well as the positive welfare of the British Empire, the course which Burke insisted on was the right one. Constitutionalism would have had a triumph such as never rewarded any other principle or system in this world, if the thirteen colonies had parted from the Mothercountry upon friendly and kindly terms, and had become foreign nations without ceasing to be friends.

The imperial side of Burke's policy was no doubt its strong side. The relations between the inferior and the dependent parts of an empire must always be principally of the constitutional kind, unless the empire is exclusively military; but in the internal government of a nation it is barely possible that so complicated and intricate an arrangement as that of which Burke was the great prophet and poet shall be otherwise than exceptional. Political institutions must depend upon the social condition of the country to which they belong. They must also be based upon principles which may be true or false, and it is equally impossible to secure the permanence of any state of society, and to prevent, on mere grounds of momentary expediency, the discussion of fundamental principles. Such changes and such discussions are fatal to constitutions. They must and do modify them, and the only question is whether the modifications shall be more or less abrupt, and more or less violent.

VIII

BURKE ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 1

BURKE'S writings on the French Revolution are probably less known than they deserve to be by every one who cares to understand the nature of his political philosophy. We have shown that his general theory upon constitutional questions might be resolved into a belief that every constitutional arrangement must be accepted as an existing fact, and so managed, by the application of the general maxims of political prudence, that the greatest possible public advantage might be derived from it. We have also tried to point out the limitation under which this is quite true, and even self-evident; which limitation is that the constitutional compromise must represent an actually existing state of society, and that the principles on which it is founded must be regarded as true.

In all the questions which had come under Burke's notice in reference to the British Empire and the English nation these conditions had been observed.

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

The King of England, the Lords, and the House of Commons were each real powers in the State, and represented, by no means unfairly, different branches of English society as it was then organised. The Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland, and the various Colonial Assemblies, also represented, with sufficient accuracy, real independent sections of the empire competent to enter into relations and treaties with each other; and the various questions which from time to time arose between them were in all cases either matters of practical arrangement, or else questions of principle which it was possible to discuss without going to the very foundations of civil society.

Though the Americans chose to dignify their contest with England by the enunciation of general principles about the inalienable rights of man, it was quite possible to advocate their cause upon much narrower grounds; and even in America, and amongst the Americans themselves, the principles announced obviously went very considerably further than the actual necessities of the case required. The difference between such questions as these and the questions which were agitated by the French Revolution is too broad and too well known to require to be pointed out.

The French Revolution brought at once into issue all the deepest questions as to the nature of society, and the position and destinies of the human race, which can exercise men's minds. The Revolution was essentially opposed to every maxim and every

dogma, on which existing forms of society in France and in Europe at large had theretofore been based; and when Burke came to consider it with his usual shrewdness and clear-sightedness and practical ac- 1 quaintance with facts, he found himself obliged to do what he had never found it necessary to do before -to descend to the foundations of things, and throw into a distinct and more or less systematic form his own political creed. He must no doubt have held it all along, but it is nowhere to be found in his works in a definite systematic shape till we come to the Reflections on the Revolution in France, and the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. Burke's later writings on the French Revolution are so little read in the present day that, in order to set his political creed in the relief which properly belongs to it, and to show its practical nature, it will be necessary to follow rather more fully than we have hitherto done the course of his teaching on the subject.

The Reflections on the Revolution in France, which begin the series, are sufficiently well known. The glories of the British Constitution, the absolute satisfaction of the British nation in its perfections, and the magnificence of its results, are first held up to the admiration of the French with a contemptuous 'Go and do thou likewise,' and with a pitying admonition to the effect that if they had been wise they might have done likewise. The course of events in France is then depicted with infinite scorn and indignation, and the new Constitution is criticised

with merciless severity. The nature of the British Constitution is unfolded and explained in order to point the contrast between it and the proceedings in France.

The Reflections are vehement enough, but they are tame to the writings which followed. The Letter to a Member of the National Assembly goes much further. France is mad-'the deluded people of France are like other madmen who to a miracle bear hunger and thirst, and cold and confinement, and the chains and lash of their keeper, whilst all the while they support themselves by the imagination that they are generals of armies, prophets, kings, and emperors.' 'These madmen, to be cured, must first . . be subdued.' This must be 'an act of power' by men who will lay the foundation of a real reform in effacing every vestige of that philosophy which pretends to have made discoveries in the terra australis of morality; men who will fix the State upon those bases of morals and politics which are our old, our immemorial, and I hope will be our eternal, possession.' France is 'a college of armed fanatics for the propagation of the principles of assassination, robbery, rebellion, fraud, faction, oppression, and impiety.' The princes of Europe should interfere, not, indeed, for the annihilation of France, but for its punishment. Moreover, unless the system of terror is given up (this was written in 1791, long before the Reign of Terror began), 'if ever a foreign prince enters into France, he must