ant, it certainly did nothing, even in the slightest degree, to qualify this forecast. The result followed. His religious faith in the providence of God in history, which we might expect would have allayed his fears, had an opposite effect. It intensified them. As the manifest object of revolutionary assault, it gave a deeper and more menacing significance to the radical attack upon political institutions. For it is never to be forgotten that a religious faith was, for Burke, far more than the source of all hope and all comfort' to private lives; it was also, and always, the foundation upon which all our laws and institutions stand as upon their base.' This must be already evident; but it will be more evident still when we turn to his uncompromising insistence upon the limits of Discussion and Toleration.

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CHAPTER VII

THE LIMITATIONS OF DISCUSSION AND TOLERATION

(a) The Limits of Political Discussion

THERE is much in Burke's life to encourage the expectation that he would prove himself an apostle of free discussion. Few men of his day, not even Johnson, indulged in discussion more than he. We know from Boswell how discussion ranged and raged at the club: the sound of it re-echoes still. And none of us can forget that tribute, wrung from the dictator who nightly bore all down before him, though to be sure it was only because he felt himself below par when he made the admission: ‘That fellow calls forth all my powers. Were I to see Burke now, it would kill me.' Nor were these evenings of the gods limited to topics political. For though the keen wits and good-fellowship that gathered together at the Turk's Head were in a measure restrained from the audacities, irresponsibilities and levities which, among the illuminati of French salons, as well as in the obscurer circles of the English free-thinkers, of whom Godwin and his friends were typical, pushed argument and epigram

freely into the spiritual world, even a cursory glance at Boswell's pages is proof that the range was wide. And, when we turn to politics, we have already seen how, all his life through, Burke could not deal with any question without pushing it far into the region of principles. No man, it is safe to say, ever discussed politics as he did, none so persistently, none with such eloquence and penetration, none with more determination to go to the root of the matter. In his later years, when the Revolution had still more freely opened up the ways of utterance, he could hardly discuss anything else than the very foundations of civil society. Whatever the topic, it was always, in these later days of fiery controversy, sure to return to that.

And yet it is not to Burke that we must go to find the case for freedom of discussion. He is not to be classed, in this respect, with Milton or Mill. Not freedom to discuss, but the limits which discussion is bound to recognise this is the central theme.

This was doubtless due, in part at any rate, to what he saw on a visit to France. For he had gone over to Paris in 1773, and had seen there at close quarters the spectacle of a society in which everything was discussed-a society which, to use Lord Morley's words, 'babbled about God and state of nature, about virtue and the spirituality of the soul, much as Boswell may have done when Johnson

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complained of him for asking questions that would make a man hang himself.'1 The impression left on the reverent spirit of Burke was indelibly repulsive. And, in due season, though not without a reinforcing revulsion against similar tendencies in England, it bore its fruit in the decisive declaration: It has been the misfortune (not, as these gentlemen think it, the glory) of this age that everything is to be discussed.' 2

Why did he think so? Why did this protagonist in discussion thus lift up his testimony against discussion ?

Partly, one can see, it is simply that familiar phenomenon, the practical man's impatience of endless debate, born of the perception that the zealot for criticism and discussion, in his fanatical inability to know when to desist, may, by the assertion of freedom to discuss, fatally obstruct that freedom to act which is of the essence of all liberty that is not to be volubly barren of deeds. Burke has put the point in a passage which might with advantage be engraved on the lintels of all latter-day legislative assemblies. Is it because it is so well known and taken for granted, that it has been so seldom quoted? I must first beg leave just to hint to you that we may suffer very great detriment by being open to every talker. It is not to be imagined how much of service is lost from spirits full of 1 Morley's Rousseau, p. 130. 2 Reflections.

activity, and full of energy, who are pressing, who are rushing forward to great and capital issues, when you oblige them to be continually looking back. Whilst they are defending one service, they defraud you of a hundred. Applaud us when we run; console us when we fall; cheer us when we recover; but let us pass on-for God's sake let us pass on.'1 Seldom has the case against verbose obstruction and obstructive verbosity been so forcibly put.

This, however, is rather a question of common sense and tactics than of principle. It is a different and a more serious matter when we turn to the kind of discussion that takes the form of political casuistry; for of political casuistry Burke has not only a rooted but a reasoning suspicion. Not that he could, or would, rule it altogether out. Like every student of history and every man of affairs, he is well aware that cases occur-difficult cases, critical cases, casuistical cases, in which it seems impossible to do the right without doing violence to some timehonoured obligation. It is so, clearly enough, in the hour of impending revolution, when men are asking themselves fearfully if the Rubicon has to be crossed; and, far short of this, it is so also when the honest citizen finds himself in conscientious conflict with the behests of his party, the policy of his country, and the law of the land. None knew 1 Speech at Bristol, 1780.