Page images
PDF
EPUB

Treasurer of Chelsea Hospital, he was entitled to the profits of clothing the pensioners, amounting to 700l. per annum, and managed to save 6007. more, which sums he threw into the treasury; by which reforms 47,000l. per annum were saved to the public, of which 25,300l. were the usual perquisites of the office.*

UNIVERSAL TAXATION.

In animadverting on the difficulty of proposing New Taxes, March 6, 1782, Burke felicitously observed, that on looking over the blessed fruits of Lord North's administration, he found the country loaded with ten new taxes—beer, wine, soap, leather, horses, coaches, post-chaises, stamps, and servants; recollecting that he had omitted sugar in his enumeration, he remarked, that since St. Christopher's was lost, and Barba

* In these reforms Burke had been greatly assisted by Messrs. Powell and Bambridge, whom he had reinstated in their offices, as cashier and accountant, in the Army Pay Office, from which they had been dismissed for malversation. On Mr. Martin having said, in the House of Commons, that he looked on their restoration as a gross and daring insult to the public, Mr. Burke rose in great heat, and exclaimed, "It is a gross and daring- -" but before he proceeded further, Mr. Sheridan pulled him down on his seat. This took place on May 2. On the 19th Sir Cecil Wray expressed his astonishment that the new Paymaster should have reinstated two persons suspected of embezzling the public money. Mr. Burke apologized for the violence he had displayed on the former evening; but said that "nothing was further from his intention than to offer an excuse for what he had done relating to the two unfortunate gentlemen; he felt such a sunshine of content within, that if the act was undone, he was convinced he should do it again." He called Messrs. Powell and Bambridge two unfortunate men, and said they had been committed to his protection by Providence: one of them had been with him, and appeared almost distracted; he was absolutely afraid that the poor man would lose his senses; this much he was sure of, that the sight of his grey hairs, and the condition in which he had seen him, had so affected and overcome him, that he was scarcely able to come down to the House. Several members expressed their strong disappro bation of Mr. Burke's conduct, and the business would have been agitated anew, had not Powell, a few days after, put an end to his existence with a razor, and Mr. Rigby announced that Bambridge was removed from his situation. The latter was subsequently tried, and found guilty of conniving at the concealment of 48,000l., for which he was sentenced to fine and imprisonment.-Wright's Note to Walpole's Letters.

does and Jamaica must follow, the omission was of small importance, as we should soon have no sugar to tax. What fresh burdens can the noble Lord add to this taxed and taxing nation? We are taxed in riding and in walking, in staying at home and in going abroad, in being masters or in being servants, in drinking wine or in drinking beer; in short, in every way possible."

HORACE WALPOLE'S INTERVIEW WITH MR. BURKE.

Walpole, in his Last Journals, records a strange interview with Burke, immediately after the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, and the appointment of Lord Shelburne as his successor in the premiership.

First, Walpole pours a vial of wrath upon the Burkes collectively. "I had seen," writes the carping Journalist, "more than one circumstance that made me question the immaculate purity of Edmund Burke's views. Still, he stood in the highest light of integrity with the Rockingham party; for though reduced to almost indigence by the failure of his stockjobbing, he had preserved incorruptible attachment to his party. Lord Rockingham had immediately on becoming Minister a second time heaped on him and his family the most lucrative offices. Himself was made Paymaster in the room of Rigby, though, according to his own Reforming Bill, with a salary of only 4000l. a year. His son was made DeputyMaster, and had a small sinecure for life added. His brother was appointed Secretary to the Treasury; and his cousin. William was sent to India with a very rich office created on purpose for him. Such opulence, scarce touched, it was hard to give up-yet he did not hesitate. Nor, as usual, did he take his part with temper, the enthusiasm of his luxuriant imagination presented every measure to him in the most vivid colours. In truth, it had been suspected for above a year that his intellects and sensations had mutually overheated each other his behaviour in the ensuing year did not remove the suspicion.

:

"At the very moment when the Cavendishes sounded highest their encomiums on the sacrifices Mr. Burke was going to make, I received a letter from him to desire an interview with me the very next morning.

"Burke's business with me was to propose to my brother, Sir Edward Walpole, Clerk of the Pells, (an employment for life, which during the war had been stated by the Commissioners of Accounts to produce him 7000l. a-year), to resign that office, on consideration of receiving the full yearly value 'of it during Sir Edward's life (and I think there was an additional offer of it to Sir Edward of the disposal of the junior Burke's place). The resignation was to be made that very day, that Lord Cavendish might bestow it upon Edmund Burke, the father, before his Lordship resigned office. Full security, Burke assured me, would be given to Sir Edward, that he should be no loser; unless the office should be reduced by Parliament, as it probably would be, and then Sir Edward should receive the full of the reduced value.

"So frantic a proposal, I suppose, was never made. I had at no time lived in friendship with Mr. Burke, and latterly we had had no intercourse, though always on civil terms when we met by acccident. With Sir Edward, Mr. Burke, I believe, had never exchanged a syllable. How was it possible to expect that a man possessed of the second most valuable office in the Exchequer for life would resign it in favour of a man with whom he had not the slightest acquaintance-and merely to leave the disposal of another very trifling place to another person ? However, astonished as I was at the absurdity of the request, I commanded myself enough to make the following temperate answer: that I would acquaint my brother with Mr. Burke's request, though I would not bind myself to advise it; and I added, that I must be so frank as to tell Mr. Burke that Sir Edward was a most warm antiAmerican, and did not speak with much patience of those who disapproved the American war.

"Mr. Burke was much disheartened at so unexpected a state of the case, and chose to say no more himself on this

subject but he made his son write to me that night, and come to me next morning to persuade me of the goodness of the security; but I so amply exposed to him the improbability of a man's resigning 7000l. a-year for no reason, and merely on a promise of indemnification, that the son saw the folly of the proposal and gave it up.

"One passage the son dropped that was very memorable. He said his father had always intended to get the office of Clerk of the Pells. This struck me, and explained what I had never comprehended-which was why, in Mr. Burke's reforming bill that office had not been mentioned among the great sinecures that were to be annihilated on the deaths of the present incumbents. Can one but smile at a reformer of abuses reserving the second greatest abuse for himself ?"

HOW TO DISPERSE THE HOUSE.

Among the zealous adherents of the Rockingham party in 1783, was David Hartley, member for Hull, the intolerable length and dulness of whose speeches rendered him a nuisance even to his friends. His rising always operated like a dinnerbell. One day when he had thus wearied out the patience of his audience, having nearly reduced a House from 300 to about 80 persons, half asleep,-just when he was expected to close, he moved that the Riot Act should be read, as a document necessary to prove some of his assertions. Burke, who sat close by him, and who, wishing to speak to the Question under discussion, had been almost bursting with impatience for nearly an hour and a half, finding himself so cruelly disappointed, bounced up, exclaiming, "The Riot Act! my dear friend, the Riot Act! to what purpose? don't you see that the mob is already dispersed ?" The sarcastic wit of this remark, in the state of the House, nearly empty, increased by the manner and tone of despair in which Burke uttered it, convulsed with laughter every person present except Hartley, who never changed countenance, and actually insisted on the Riot Act being read by one of the clerks.

BURKE AND THE GRASSHOPPER.

Sir Philip Francis once waited upon Burke, by appointment, to read over to him some papers respecting Hastings' delinquencies. He found Burke in his garden, holding a grasshopper: "What a beautiful animal is this!" said Burke; "observe its structure; its legs, its wings, its eyes." "How can you," said Sir Philip, "lose your time in admiring such an animal, when you have so many objects of moment to attend to ?" "Yet Socrates," said Burke, "according to the exhibition of him in Aristophanes, attended to a much less animal; he actually measured the proportion which its size bore to the space it passed over in its skip. I think the skip of a grasshopper does not exceed its length: let us see." "My dear friend," said Sir Philip, "I am in a great hurry; let us walk in, and let me read my papers to you." Into the house they walked; Sir Philip began to read, and Mr. Burke appeared to listen. At length, Sir Philip having misplaced a paper, a pause ensued. "I think," said Burke, "that natu

ralists are now agreed that locusta, not cicada, is the Latin word for grasshopper. What is your opinion, Sir Philip ?" "My opinion," answered Sir Philip, putting up his papers and preparing to move off, "is, that till the grasshopper is out of your head, it would be idle to talk to you of the concerns of India."

Francis seems to have excelled in rude humour; for when Burke sent him two proof sheets of his Reflections on the French Revolution, which Sir Philip had seen in manuscript, and he found that he could not induce Burke to suppress the publication, he wrote to him, like a thoroughly vexed friend, "I wish you were at the devil, for giving me all this trouble."

* Francis acted an important part in the getting-up of the Impeachment; and but for his animus, and the cool malignity with which he toiled, there might have been no proceedings at all. The circumstance that Francis was the intimate friend of Burke had also great influence on the origin of the Trial.

« PreviousContinue »