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mour. Some, even of those who agreed with the opinions of Mr. Fox, threw forth whatever they could of a conciliatory kind to Mr. Burke and his connections. They profefsfed, and appeared, to be fincerely afflicted at the consequences likely to flow from the expected difcuffion. They did not hesitate to accufe Mr. Fox of imprudence for declaring that which, if he had not declared, the fame men would probably have condemned him for pufillanimity. On the other hand, many, who abhorred the French revolution little less than Mr. Burke himself, yet were decided on the expediency of paffing over, for the prefent, the dangerous sentiments, as they thought them, which they had recently heard. They did not hold it neceffary to separate from their great leader on account of mere speculations, hitched into a digression, whatever might be the mischief of their tendency, and in whatever terms of pernicious eloquence they were conveyed. They confidered it as more just to wait until the direct collision of these principles with the public weal of the state should force forward fome measure that might be made a teft, not of opinions, but of conduct. In the mean time they were willing to flatter themselves that the train of events ftill proceeding in France, might develope the attrocious effects of those doctrines in so convincing a manner, as fufficiently to prove the radical fallacy or iniquity of the whole system, to a man like Mr. Fox, who was understood, even then, to admire only in the grofs, and disapprove in the detail.

In these reasons, it is not improbable that without being confcious of it to themselves, they may have been influenced in fome degree by feeling how much it would coft them at once to disentangle themselves from the ties of friendship and the trammels of party. Mr. Burke had more fortitude. Though he had always been the champion of party, in the pure and genuine fenfe of the word, and had a longer and more intimate friend hip with Mr. Fox, than most others of the fame connection,

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connection, yet he now heard, or believed he heard, the imperious call of a public duty, more sacred than all the dearest and strongest bonds of perfonal and political attachment.

His resolution was fixed. The only remaining confideration was, how it was to be executed. He did not think the time yet come for a direct question on the matter; and to have brought it prematurely forward in that shape, and then to have failed in it, might have had a fatal effect on puplic opinion. The Quebec bill afforded a fair and regular occafion of difcuffing inciden-. tally the principles of all conftitutions, especially the American, the French, and the English; and as it was to be in a committee, he could speak as often as he pleased, in explanation or defence of himself: he could (as he says) bring the questions from generalities to facts.

He now went to fome of the members of administration, and acquainting them with enough of his purpose to fatisfy them, that what he meant to say was strictly in order, he defired their protection so far as to fecure him from being again filenced by clamour. To his friend, himself, he was more explicit. For when, on the day appointed for the re-commitment of the Quebec bill, Mr. Fox, for the last time, paid him a vifit, accompanied by a common friend, he talked over with them the plan of all which he intended to fav, opened the different branches of his argument, and explained the limitations which he meant to impofe on himself. Mr. Fox, on his part, treated him with confidence, and mentioned to him a political circumftance of some delicacy. What it precifely was, Mr. Burke declined telling, even in the heat of altercation. But from the tenor of the charge which he seems most anxious to refute, and from some intimations in one of Mr. Fox's answers, we may form a reasonable conjecture. They walked, however, to Westminster together, and together entered the house, where they found that Mr.

Mr. Sheridan, in the mean time, had moved to poftpone the re-commitment till after the holidays. In Tupporting his motion, he declared that his objections were not to any particular regulations; they were fundamental, they went to the principle of the bill itself. He feems to have been understood by the minifter as announcing an oppofition founded on abstract principles of government; fomething in the tone already given by Mr. Fox, that the bill was not fufficiently accommodated to the new lights and modern philofophy of liberty. But this was afterwards denied by Mr. Sheridan, who trusted alfo that when the bill did come under confideration, every other difcuffion, but that arifing from the subject of the bill itself, would be averted. Mr. Taylor caught up the intimation, and carried it a little further. He observed, that the bufiness had been improperly treated, as involving the confideration of general principles of government, and the constitutions of other countries: on which ground infinuations had been thrown out against some members of the oppofition party. But he gave notice, that if the minifter, or any other right honourable gentleman, should wander from the proper difcuffion of the fubject, he should call him to order, and take the fenfe of the house upon the occafion.

Here was a palpable allufion to Mr. Burke. Yet hë did not rife to anfwer.

During the recefs, some common friends tried one or two mere unavailing experiments on Mr. Burke's affections: others, despairing to shake his refolution, inveighed againft him with very little referve. The daily prints, in the intereft of the oppofition-party, opened all their fluices upon him. The plot for the exclufion of Mr. Fox from power was bruited about, notwithstanding it had already been in effect denied and refuted by Mr. Burke; while, on the other hand, the papers favourable to the minifter re echoed another and more

criminal plot, in which they held up Mr. Burke, not mach

much more honourably, in the character of king's evidence, who had impeached his accomplices. The pencil too was called into the aid of the pen, and paragraphs were embodied in caricatures. In the mean time, however, Mr. Fox enjoyed one folid advantage from that which had passed immediately before the holidays, as the explanation which he thought right to give of his former speeches, was left unaccompanied by a fingle adverse remark of Mr. Burke or Mr. Pitt, to imprefs itself on the minds of all by its own weight. Accordingly his party represented him as having removed every imputation against him. Mr. Burke, therefore, muft have felt so much the less delicacy in bringing the fubject forward, as it could no longer prove a personal injury to his friend.

Our limits are at variance with our inclinations; and we cannot follow these extraordinary men through those interesting difcuffions which the Quebec bill produced. Mr. Fox made no scruple of avowing his admiration of the French revolution; nor Mr. Burke of defending that attachment which he had felt from infancy for the forms and constitution of his ancestors. In reply to the speeches of Mr. Fox, Mr. Burke did not take notice of being represented as a vain man, a troublesome member of the house, and a dreamer of visionary dangers; but simply remarked, that having passed his youth without encountering any party disgrace, he had been so unfortunate indeed as to incur it in his age; nevertheless he wished it to be understood, that he folicited not the friendship of any man, or of any party in that house. If he consented to accept the return of old friendship from those with whom he had acted till now, he would enjoy it from their esteem, not from their weakness; from their justice, not from their humanity. It was proposed to him to repent, as the condition of being again respected and loved; but he would never, with contrition and penitence, court a reconciliation to which, as a preliminary, he must make a facrifice of those prinles of the constitution in which he had been educaed, and which through life he had approved, admired, and defended.

During the recefs of 1794, Mr. Burke quitted the fenate in favour of his fon. If we estimate the merits of this young man by the terms in which his father has mentioned him, we shall find no difficulty in the process: but we must abate something of parental partiality. Whatever were the talents of young Burke, he did not live to evince them according to the hopes of an indulgent father. Mr. Burke, in his letter to the duke of Bedford, has spoken of this bereavement in very affecting language. He certainly doated on his only child: he never could be prevailed upon to enter the church of Beaconsfield, after the remains of his fon had been interred in that place; and he has left in MS. a few memorials of that life which was by far dearer to him than his own.

But his mind was yet unimpaired. And he seemed, towards the close of his career, to act with all the promptitude of genius, and the energy of a decisive soul. His own forrows were great, but the forrows of Europe were greater. Nurtured as he was in the first principles of independence, and ingrafted with his country, he could not liften to that humiliating system; that fyftem of littleness and speculation, which, obtaining faft hold in the politics of modern courts, threatened an utter deftruction to all the regulating principles of English profperity and glory. Under these important confiderations he published his Letters on a Regicide Peace. These, with his Three Memorials, will convince this nation, if prejudice does not prove fatal to truth, that Mr. Burke was unbiaffed and independent: he was truly independent in his conduct, and unbiaffed by any considerations, except the feelings of a generous humanity, the collected experience and the digested wisdom of

ages.

The admiration which he had won in early life, as an interesting and amiable companion in private society, increased

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