Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844

Burke's quarrel with Hamilton ended in his resigning his pension. His feelings appear to have been deeply hurt by Hamilton's superciliousness, and his demand for the right to employ the whole time of his private secretary. In a long explanatory letter to Hutchinson, a leading member of the Irish parliament, and father of the late Lord Donoughmore, he says, indignantly enough – "I flatter myself to let you see that I deserved to be considered in another manner than as one of Mr Hamilton's cattle, or as a piece of his household stuff. Six of the best years of my life he took me from every pursuit of literary reputation, or of improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune, a very great one; and he has also taken to himself the very little one which I had made. In all this time you may easily conceive how much I felt at being left behind by almost all my contemporaries. There never was a season more favourable for any man who chose to enter into the career of public life; and I think I am not guilty of ostentation in supposing my own moral character and my industry, my friends and connexions, when Mr H. first sought my acquaintance, were not at all inferior to those of several whose fortune is at this day upon a very different footing from mine."

It is evident that Burke's mind was at this period turned to authorship, and that his chief quarrel arose from the petty and pragmatical demand of Hamilton, that he should abandon it altogether. Burke soon had ample revenge, if it was to be found in the obscurity into which Hamilton rapidly fell, and the burlesque which alone revived his name from its obscurity. The contrast between the two must have been a lesson to the vanity of the one, as pungent as was its triumph. If ever the fate of Tantalus was realized to man, it was in the perpetual thirst and perpetual disappointment of Hamilton for public name. The cup never reached his lips but it was instantly dry; while Burke was seen reveling in the full flow of public renown – buoyant on the stream into which so many others plunged only to sink, and steering his noble course with a full mastery of the current. "Single-speech Hamilton" became a title of ridicule, while Burke was pouring forth, night after night, speech after speech, rich in the most sparkling and most solid opulence of the mind. He must have been more or less than man, to have never cast a glance at the decrepitude of the formal coxcomb whom he once acknowledged as his leader, and compared his shrunk shape with the vigorous and athletic proportions of his own intellectual stature. Hamilton, too, must have had many a pang. The wretched nervousness of character which at once stimulated him to pine for distinction, and disqualified him from obtaining it, must have made his life miserable. If the magnificent conception of the poet's Prometheus could be lowered to any thing so trivial as a disappointed politician of the eighteenth century, its burlesque might be amply shown in a mind helplessly struggling against a sense of its own inferiority, gnawed by envy at the success of better men, and with only sufficient intellectual sensibility remaining to have that gnawing constantly renewed.

Burke's letters to the chief Irishmen with whom his residence in Dublin had brought him into intercourse, long continued indignant. "Having presumed," said he, in one of those explanatory letters, "to put a test to me, which no man not born in Africa ever thought of taking, on my refusal he broke off all connexion with me in the most insolent manner. He, indeed, entered into two several negotiations afterwards, but both poisoned in their first principles by the same spirit of injustice with which he set out in his first dealings with me. I, therefore, could never give way to his proposals. The whole ended by his possessing himself of that small reward for my services which, I since find, he had a very small share in procuring for me. After, or, indeed, rather during his negotiations, he endeavoured to stain my character and injure my future fortune, by every calumny his malice could suggest. This is the case of my connexion with Mr Hamilton."

If all this be true – and whoever impeached the veracity of Burke in any thing? – the more effectually his enemy was trampled the better: malice can be punished sufficiently only by extirpation.

A powerful letter to Henry Flood, then one of the leading members of the Irish House of Commons, shows how deeply Burke felt the vexation of Hamilton's conduct, and not less explicitly administers the moral, of how much must be suffered by every man who enters into the conflicts of public life. Flood, too, had his share of those vexations; perhaps more of them than his correspondent. Henry Flood was one of the most remarkable men whom Ireland had produced. Commencing his career with a handsome fortune, he had plunged into the dissipation which was almost demanded of men of family in his day; but some accidental impression (we believe a fit of illness) suddenly changed his whole course. He turned his attention to public life, entered the House of Commons, and suddenly astonished every body by his total transformation from a mere man of fashion to a vigorous and brilliant public orator. He was the most logical of public speakers, without the formality of logic, and the most imaginative, without the flourish of fancy. For ten years, Flood was the leader of the House, on whichever side he stood. He was occasionally in opposition, and the champion of opposition politics in his earlier career; but at length, unfortunately alike for his feelings and his fame, he grew indolent, accepted an almost sinecure place, and indulged himself in ease and silence for full ten years. A loss like this was irreparable, in the short duration allotted to the living supremacy of statesmanship. No man in the records of the English parliament has been at his highest vigour for more than ten years; he may have been rising before, or inheriting a portion of his parliamentary distinction – enough to give dignity to his decline; but his true time has past, and thenceforth he must be satisfied with the reflection of his own renown. Flood had already passed his hour when he was startled by the newborn splendour of Grattan. The contest instantly commenced between those extraordinary men, and was carried on for a while with singular animation, and not less singular animosity. The ground of contest was the constitution of 1782. The exciting cause of contest was the wrath of Flood at seeing the laurels which he had relinquished seized by a younger champion, and the daring, yet justified confidence of Grattan in his own admirable powers to win and wear them. Flood, in the bitterest pungency of political epigram, charged Grattan with having sold himself to the people, and then sold the people to the minister for prompt payment. (A vote of £50,000 had been passed to purchase an estate for Grattan.) Grattan retorted, that "Flood, after having sold himself to the minister, was angry only because he was interrupted in the attempt to sell himself to the people." The country, fond of the game of partizanship, ranged itself under the banners of both, alternately hissed and applauded both, and at length abandoned both, and in its new fondness for change, adopted the bolder banners of revolution. Both were fighting for a shadow, and both must have known it; but the prize of rhetoric was not to be given up without a struggle. The "constitution" was rapidly forgotten, when Flood retired into England and obscurity; and Grattan, who had been left, if not victor, at least possessor of the field, grew tired of struggles without a purpose, and plaudits without a reward. The absurdity of affecting an independence which could not exist an hour but by the protection of England, and the burlesque of a parliament into which no man entered but in expectation of a job; the scandal of an Irish slave-market, and the costliness of purchasing representatives, only to be sold by them in turn, became so palpable to the national eye, that the nation contemptuously cashiered the legislature. The gamblers who had made their fortunes off the people, and had amused themselves with building a house of cards, saw their paper fabric fall at the first breath; and the nation looked on the fall with the negligent scorn excited in rational eyes by detected imposture. The attempt is once more prepared, but Ireland will have no house of cards, still less will she suffer the building of an hospital for decayed fashion and impotent intrigue – a receptacle for political incurables – and meritorious, in the sight even of its projectors, simply for affording them snug stewardships, showy governorships, and the whole sinecure system of emolument without responsibility.

Burke again repeats to Flood his wrath at Hamilton's provocation. – "The occasion of our difference was not any act whatsoever on my part, it was entirely on his – by a voluntary, but most insolent and intolerable demand, amounting to no less than a claim of servitude during the whole course of my life." He then alludes to the position of political parties, and gives a sketch of the great Earl of Chatham which shows the hand of a master. "Nothing but an intractable temper in your friend Pitt can prevent an admirable and most lasting system from being put together; and this crisis will show whether pride or patriotism be predominant in his character, for you may be assured that he has it now in his power to come into the service of his country upon any plan of politics he may choose to dictate; with great and honourable claims to himself and to every friend he has in the world, and with such a stretch of power as will be equal to every thing but absolute despotism over the king and kingdom. A few days will show whether he will take his part, or that of continuing on his bank at Hayes, (his country-seat,) talking fustian, excluded from all ministerial, and incapable of all parliamentary service; for his gout is worse than ever, but his pride may disable him more than his gout."

We then have an odd rambling letter from Dr Leland, the author of a History of Ireland, a heavy performance but an honest one, and by far the best and least unfortunate of the unfortunate attempts to rationalize the caprices and calamities of that unhappy country. Leland's letter is written in congratulation to the two brothers, Edmund and William Burke, the former having been appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham in July 1765, the latter one of the under secretaries of state. In speaking of Ireland, this writer says, sensibly enough, "Let who will come to govern us poor wretches, I care not, provided we are decently governed. I would not have his secretary a jolly, good-humoured abandoned profligate, (the most dangerous character in society,) or a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, cankered-hearted, envious reptile – though what matter who is either lieutenant or secretary?"

Burke was not at this time in Parliament, nor until the 26th of December in this year, when he was returned for the borough of Wendover, through the influence of Lord Verney. A letter from Dr Markham, afterwards archbishop of York, shows the degree of estimation in which his abilities were held, and the expectations which he excited among able men, at a period when his parliamentary faculties were still unknown. He says to William Burke, – "I was informed of Ned's cold by a letter from Skynner. I am very glad to hear it is so much better. I should be grieved to hear he was ill at any time, and particularly at so critical a time as this. I think much will depend on his outset. I wish him to appear at once in some important question. If he has but that confidence in his strength which I have always had, he cannot fail of appearing with lustre. I am very glad to hear from you that he feels his own consequence as well as the crisis of his situation. He is now on the ground on which I have been so many years wishing to see him. One splendid day will crush the malevolence of enemies, as well as the envy of some who often praise him. When his reputation is once established, the common voice will either silence malignity or destroy its effect."

This was written three days after Burke's entrance into Parliament. It is curious to see, in the letters of those early correspondents, most of them accomplished and practical men, how fully they were possessed with a sense of his promised superiority. "You are now, I am certain," says Leland, "a man of business, deeply immersed in public affairs, commercial and political. You will show yourself a man of business in the House of Commons, and you will not, I am certain, build your reputation and consequence there upon a single studied manufactured piece of eloquence, and then, like the brazen head, shut your mouth for ever. I trust I shall hear of your rising regularly, though rapidly; that I shall hear of ministers begging that you would be pleased to accept of being vice-treasurer of Ireland, and then of your soaring so high as to be quite out of view of such insects as I – and so good-night, my dear Ned. If ever chance should bring us together, we are quite ruined as companions. The saunterings, the readings, the laughings, and the dosings in Mount Gallagher (his country-seat) are all over. Your head is filled with questions, divisions, and majorities. My thoughts are employed on Louth and Warburton."

Burke began his parliamentary triumphs with but little delay. The colonies were the grand subject of the time, and Burke instantly devoted himself to that subject with the whole force of his capacious intellect. He was regarded by the House, on the first speech which he made on this voluminous topic, as exhibiting extraordinary knowledge, combined with a power of language unequalled save by Chatham himself. One of the letters of congratulations is from Dr Marriott, who was afterwards judge of the court of admiralty. "Permit me to tell you that you are the person the least sensible of the members of the House of Commons, how much glory you acquired last Monday night; and it would be an additional satisfaction to you that this testimony comes from a judge of public speaking, the most disinterested and capable of judging of it. Dr Hay assures me that your speech was far superior to that of any other speaker on the colonies that night. I could not refrain from acquainting you with an opinion, which must so greatly encourage you to proceed, and to place the palm of the orator with those which you have already acquired of the writer and the philosopher." Hay was afterwards judge of the admiralty. At his death he was succeeded by Marriott. He was of the Bedford party, which, as it was wholly opposed to the Rockingham, made the testimony more valuable.

Burke's second speech was equally the subject of admiration. A second letter from Marriott, with whom he had had some conversation expressive of his own diffidence, at least as to his manner, in addressing the House, mentions once more the opinion of Dr Hay, for whose taste Marriott seems to have had great deference. "His opinion," he writes, "is, that nothing could be more remote from awkwardness or constraint than your manner; that your style, ideas, and expression, were peculiarly your own; natural and unaffected, and so different from the cant of the House, or from the jargon of the bar, that he could not imagine any thing more agreeable; that you did not dwell upon a point till you had tired it out, as is the way of most speakers, but kept on with fresh ideas crowding upon you, and rising one out of another, all leading to one point, which was constantly kept in view to the audience; and, although every thing seemed a kind of new political philosophy, yet it was all to the purpose and well-connected, so as to produce the effect; and that he admired your last speech the more as it was impromptu. I thought he was describing to me a Greek orator, whose select orations I had translated four times when I first went to the university, and therefore marked the traits of this character. It was impossible for me not to communicate to you a decision from so great a master himself, though differing from you in party, that you may go on in a way you have begun, with such glory to yourself, and to which you add so much by being so little sensible of it."

In 1766 the Rockingham ministry was suddenly dashed to the ground, and all its connexions, of course, went down along with it. The marquis was a man of great estate and excellent intentions, but his ministry realized the Indian fable of the globe being painted on a tortoise – the merit of the political tortoise being, in this instance, to stand still, while its ambition unfortunately was to move. The consequence naturally followed, that the world took its own course, and left the tortoise behind. But Burke had distinguished himself so much that offers of office were made to him from the succeeding administration. Those he declined, and commenced that neutral existence which, with the majority of politicians, is worse than none. There was a weakness in Burke's character which did him infinite mischief for the first ten years of his political life. We shall not call it an affectation in the instance of so great a man, but it paid all the penalties of folly – and this was his propensity to feel, or at least to express, a personal affection for the men whom he politically followed. Even of Hamilton, the most supercilious and least loveable of mankind, Burke speaks with a tenderness absolutely ridiculous amongst politicians. Of Lord Rockingham he seldom speaks but in a tone of romance, singularly inapplicable to that formal and frigid figure of aristocracy. Of Fox, in latter days, he spoke in a sentimental tone worthy only of a lover on the French stage; and, in all these instances, he was doubtless laughed at, notwithstanding all his sensibilities. With the highest admiration of his genius, we must believe, for the sake of his understanding, that he adopted this style merely for fashion's sake; for familiarity, which is akin to fondness, as we are told by the poets that pity is akin to love, was much the foolish fashion of the day. Men of the highest rank, and doubtless of the haughtiest arrogance, were called Tom, and Dick, and Harry; and this silliness was the language of high life, until the French Revolution and the democratic war at home taught them, that if they adopted the phraseology of their own footmen, their footmen would probably take possession of their title-deeds. The hollowness of public life is as soon discovered as the haughtiness of public men. A man of heart like Burke ought to have disdained even the language of courtiership, and while he observed the decorums of society, scorned to stoop even to the phraseology of humiliation. But one of the most curious features of this obsolete day is the manner in which the country was disposed of. No game of whist, in one of the lordly clubs of St James's Square, was ever more exclusively played. It was simply a question whether his Grace of Bedford would be content with a quarter or a half of the cabinet, or whether the Marquis of Rockingham would be satisfied with two-fifths, or the Earl of Shelburne should have all or should share power with the Duke of Portland. In all those barterings and borrowings we never hear the name of the nation. No whisper announces that there is such a thing in existence as the people. No allusion ever proceeds from the stately lips, or offends the "ears polite," of the embroidered conclave, referring to either the interests, the feelings, or the necessities of the nation. All was done as in an assemblage of a higher race of existence, calmly carving out the world for themselves – a tribe of Epicurean deities, with the cabinet for their Olympus, stooping to our inferior region only to enjoy their own atmosphere afterwards with the greater zest, or shift their quarters, like the poet's Jupiter, when tired of the dust and clamour of war, moving off on his clouds and with his attendant goddesses, to the tranquil realms of the Hippomolgi.

And this highbred condition of affairs was the more repulsive, from the fact that the greater number of those disposers of office and dividers of empire were among the emptiest of mankind. The succession of ministers, from the days of Walpole, (unquestionably a shrewd, though a coarse mind, and profligate personage,) with the exception of Chatham, was a list of silken imbeciles; very rich, or very highborn, or very handsomely supplied with boroughs, but, in all other senses, the last men who should have been entrusted with power.

We have to thank the satirists, the public misfortunes, and even the demagogues, for extinguishing this smooth and pacific system. Junius, with his sarcastic pen, the American war, and even the gross impudence of Wilkes, stirred the public mind to remember that it had a voice in the state. A manlier period succeeded; and we shall no more hear of the government being divided among the select party, like a twelfth cake, nor see the interests of a nation which represents the interests of the globe, compromised to suit the contending claims of full-dressed frivolity.

As a specimen of this courtly affair, we give a few fragments from a confidential letter of Burke to the Marquis of Rockingham. "Lord Shelburne still continues in administration, though as adverse and as much disliked as ever. – The Duke of Grafton continues, I hear, his old complaints of his situation, and his genuine desire of holding it as long as he can. At same time, Lord Shelburne gets loose too. I know that Lord Camden, who adhered to him in these late divisions, has given him up, and gone over to the Duke of Grafton. The Bedfords are horridly frightened at all this, for fear of seeing the table they had so well covered, and at which they sat down with so good an appetite, kicked down in the scuffle. They find things not ripe at present for bringing in Grenville, and that any capital move just now would only betray their weakness in the closet and the nation." Thus, those noble personages had it all to themselves. Again —

"If Grenville was peculiarly exceptionable, another middle person might have the Treasury. I fancy their middleman to be the same they had in their thoughts this time twelve-month – Lord Gower. They talked of the Duke of Northumberland as a proper person for the Treasury, in case of the Duke of Grafton's going out. The truth is, the Bedfords will never act any part, either fair or amiable, with your lordship or your friends, until they see you in a situation to give the law to them." No doubt all this was perfectly true; the whole was selfish, supercilious, and exclusive; one red riband matched against another, one garter balanced against a rival fragment of blue; the whole a court-ball, in which the nation had no more share than if it had been danced in the saloon of Windsor; a masquerade in which the political minuet was gravely danced by the peerage in character, and of which the nation heard scarcely even the fiddles. But those times have passed away, and, for the honour of common sense, they have passed never to return.

The long contested authorship of "Junius's Letters" makes the subject of a brief portion of his correspondence. A letter from Charles Townshend, brother of Lord Sidney, says – "I met Fitzherbert last night, and talked to him on the subject of our late conversation. I told him that I had heard that he had asserted that you were the author of 'Junius's Letters,' for which I was very sorry, because, if it reached your ears, it would give you a great deal of concern. He assured me, that he had only said that the ministry now looked upon you as the author, but that he had constantly contradicted the report whenever it was mentioned in his company, particularly yesterday and the day before, to persons who affirmed that you were now fixed on as the writer of those papers. He declared that he was convinced in his own mind that you were not concerned in the publication, and that he had said so." This letter was written in 1771. Burke replies to it, in two days after, in a letter of thanks, unequivocally denying that he had any share in those letters. "My friends I have satisfied; my enemies shall never have any direct satisfaction from me. The ministry, I am told, are convinced of my having written Junius, on the authority of a miserable bookseller's preface, in which there are not three lines of common truth or sense. I have never once condescended to take the least notice of their invectives, or publicly to deny the fact on which some of them were grounded. At the same time to you or to any of my friends, I have been as ready as I ought to be in disclaiming, in the most precise terms, writings that are as superior, perhaps, to my talents, as they are most certainly different in many essential points from my regards and my principles." Burke seems to have been constantly bored on this subject, for he writes an angry letter to Markham, then bishop of Chester. Charles Townshend writes to him again to say that the Public require a more distinct disclaimer. Burke answers, "I have, I daresay to nine-tenths of my acquaintances, denied my being the author of Junius, or having any knowledge of the author, whenever the thing was mentioned, whether in jest or earnest. I now give you my word and honour that I am not the author of Junius, and that I know not the author of that paper, and I do authorize you to say so."

We believe that this is the first time in which Burke's disclaimer has been made public; but our only surprise in the matter is, how he could at any time have been considered as the author of Junius. We should have rather said that he was the last man in the kingdom who ought to have been suspected. The styles of Burke and Junius are totally different: the one loose and flowing, the other terse and pungent; the one lofty and imaginative, the other level and stern; the one taking large views on every subject, and evidently delighting in the largeness of those views, the other fixing steadily and fiercely upon the immediate object of attack, and shooting every arrow point-blank. Of course, we have no intention of wandering into a topic so thoroughly beaten as that of the authorship of Junius; but we must acknowledge, if Sir Philip Francis was not the man, no other nominal candidate for the honour has been brought forward with equal claims. The only objection which we have ever heard to his title as author is, his not making it in person; for he was said to be a man of such inordinate admiration of his own powers, that he could not have kept the secret. It has been said, too, that no fear, after the lapse of twenty years, could have prevented its being divulged. But there are other motives than fear which might act upon a proud and powerful spirit. The author of a work like Junius was clearly contemptuous of mankind, and more contemptuous in proportion to the rank of his victims. To such a man even the excitement produced by the general enquiry into the authorship might be a triumph in itself. Though a solitary, it might be a high gratification to a morbid spirit of disdain, to see himself a problem to mankind, to hear perpetual arguments raised on his identity, and see the puzzled pens of the pamphleteering word all busy in sketching an ideal likeness which each fancied to be the original. If we could imagine the shade of Swift or Shaftesbury, of Scarron or Rabelais, to walk invisibly through the world playing its bitter and fantastic tricks in the ways of men, stinging some, astounding others, and startling all, we perhaps would approach nearest to the feelings which might, now and then, have indulged the habitual scorn and stimulated the conscious power of Junius.

It has also been said that Sir Philip Francis was not equal to the composition of those masterly letters; and it must be acknowledged that, though he made some very powerful and pointed speeches in the House of Commons, they wanted the penetration and the polish of Junius. But there are several letters by Sir Philip Francis in these volumes, which, though evidently written in the haste and desultoriness of private correspondence, exhibit conceptions strongly resembling the sarcastic strength and high-wrought point of Junius.

The Hastings' trial brought Francis full before the public; and we have a letter from Burke describing one of his speeches on this subject, which, with his usual good nature, he sent to the orator's wife. It is dated April 20, 1787. – "My dear madam, I cannot, with all honest appetite, or clear conscience, sit down to my breakfast, unless I first give you an account, which will make your family breakfast as pleasant to you, as I wish all your family meetings to be. I have the satisfaction of telling you, that, not in my judgment only, but in that of all who heard him, no man ever acquitted himself, on a day of great expectation, so well as Mr Francis did yesterday. He was clear, precise, forcible, and eloquent, in a high degree. No intricate business was ever better unravelled, and no iniquity ever placed so effectually to produce its natural horror and disgust. * * * * All who heard him were delighted, except those whose mortification ought to give pleasure to every good mind. He was two hours and a half on his legs, and he never lost attention for a moment."

We give a curious specimen of the daring criticism which this applauded personage now and then ventured, even on the authorship of Burke. In 1790, Burke had prepared his celebrated work on the French Revolution for the press early in the year, and appears to have sent fragments of it to several of his friends. Casual circumstances delayed the work until October. Francis's letter was written in February. It begins – "I am sorry you should have the trouble of sending for the printed paper you lent me yesterday, though I own I cannot much regret even a fault of my own, that helps to delay the publication of that paper. [This was probably a proof sheet of the Reflections.] It is the proper province, and ought to be the privilege, of an inferior to criticise and advise. The best possible critic of the Iliad, would be, ipso facto, and by virtue of that very character, incapable of being the author of it. Standing as I do in this relation to you, you would renounce your superiority, if you refused to be advised by me. Remember that this is one of the most singular, that it may be the most distinguished, and ought to be one of the most deliberate acts of your life. Your writings have hitherto been the delight and instruction of your own country. You now undertake to correct and instruct another nation; and your appeal in effect is to all Europe." After then objecting to Burke's exposure of Price and his fellow pamphleteers, as beneath the writer and his subject, he attacks him for his panegyric on the Queen of France. He then sneeringly asks, "Pray, sir, how long have you felt yourself so desperately disposed to admire the ladies of Germany?" This was an allusion to Queen Charlotte, whom Burke's particular friends had long regarded as one of their impediments to power. He proceeds – "The mischief you are going to do yourself, is to my apprehension, palpable. It is visible. It will be audible. I snuff it in the wind. I taste it already. I feel it in every sense; and so will you hereafter." This letter certainly wants the polish of Junius, but it has the power of bitter thought, and it sneers with practised piquancy. Of course, a broad line is to be drawn between a work of study and the work of the moment – between the elaborate vigour which prunes and purifies every straggling shoot away, and exhibits its production for a prize-show, and the careless luxuriance which suffers the tree to throw out its shoots under no direction, but that of the prolific power of nature. Yet the plant is the same, and though we by no means say, that even this letter gives demonstration, yet the arrogant ease of the style is such, as we should have expected to find in the familiar correspondence of Junius. His letter obviously excited in Burke a mixture of pain and indignation.