from motives of charity, and had confidentially employed to transcribe the only fair copy he had ever taken of it. This had been prepared in the early part of 1793, and communicated solely to the Duke of Portland and to Earl Fitzwilliam, before they had seceded from the Whig Club. In a letter, dated Sept. 29, 1793, which was sent along with it to the former, Burke says: "I now make it my humble request to your Grace that you will not give any sort of answer to the paper I send, or to this letter, except barely to let me know that you receive them. I even wish that at present you may not read the paper which I transmit; lock it up in the drawer of your library-table; and when a day of compulsory reflection comes, then be pleased to turn to it. Then remember that your Grace had a true friend, who had, comparatively with men of your description, a very small interest in opposing the modern system of morality and policy; but who, under every discouragement, was faithful to public duty and to private friendship. I shall then probably be dead. I am sure I do not wish to see such things; but whilst I do live I shall pursue the same course."

Swift, however, had surreptitiously taken a copy of the MS. for his own use. As soon as the publication appeared, an injunction was obtained to stop its sale; but it was notwithstanding reprinted immediately both in Scotland and Ireland, and about 3000 copies of it are supposed thus to have got into circulation. Burke was at the time at Bath, and considered to be on his deathbed. The appearance of the paper, espe cially under such a title, annoyed him greatly.

"I never," he says, in a letter which he wrote to Dr. Laurence at the moment, "communicated that paper to any out of the very small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed nothing. But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in that memorial, which was, and is, my justification addressed to the friends for whose use I intended it. Had I designed it for

the public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club, which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned our secession from that club, which is the last act of my life that I shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations there would have been, if ever I had a notion that it should meet the public eye."

ON PAPER CURRENCY.-BURKE AND CANNING.

The opinions of Mr. Burke on the circulating medium seem to have been of that prophetic character by which so many of his views are characterized. In a debate, (Feb. 13, 1826,) on Country Banks, Mr. Canning observed: “There was no period of our history at which there was a greater distress, or greater difficulty and dismay than in 1795. At that period there was published by Mr. Burke, a gentleman of no ordinary or doubtful authority, a book, every point and sentence of which was questioned at the time, but the truth of which was subsequently most fully established. Mr. Burke, in describing the French revolutionary proceedings, pointed out the mistakes into which they fell with respect to our paper currency, and observed, that they seemed to imagine that the prosperity of Great Britain grew out of her paper currency, whereas, in point of fact, the paper currency grew out of her prosperity!" "It had

been his (Mr. Canning's) fortune to hear and to know Mr. Burke-a man whose eloquence and whose soundness of opinions distinguished him as a member of that House. Unfortunately, however, he had only known him but two years before his death; he received a letter from him, when confined at Bath to a sick bed, from which he never arose, on the subject of the stoppage of cash payments by the Bank, in which the concluding sentence was to the fol

*

* This is a mistake, as Mr. Burke recovered sufficiently to be able to quit Bath for Beaconsfield, where he died.

lowing effect: "Tell Pitt that if he circulates one-pound notes at the same time with guineas, he will never see the guineas again!' This was the observation of that great man, who in giving utterance to this sentiment, seemed to exercise a spirit of prophecy which had so very recently been verified."

BURKE'S LAST ILLNESS.

The career of the patriot and philosopher was now about to close. His health had been for some time in a declining state, which terminated in general debility and loss of muscular energy. He could not take his accustomed exercise, and his mind had not recovered from the sorrowings for the loss of his only son. His close application to literary pursuits, his former laborious Parliamentary exertions, and the great excitement of the closing events of his political career, had, doubtless, hastened this premature decay. His intellectual powers were still bright, but their earthly tenement was giving way.

Towards the close of the year he was confined principally to his couch, and no longer able to write himself, he dictated his letters to any relative or intimate friend who happened to be stopping in the house. Hence his correspondence continued to be extensive, and his thoughts flowed with their accustomed impassioned brilliancy. His Letters to Dr. Hussey, on Roman Catholic and Irish affairs, written about this time, are full of energy. From Lord Fitzwilliam several letters were received at Beaconsfield, condemning Mr. Pitt's financial scheme, his precipitate solicitations for peace, and his general conduct of the war. You, my dear Burke," says the Earl, "by the exertion of your great powers, have carried three-fourths of the public, but you have not carried him, and I fear all the rest. will go for nothing." Mr. Windham, though in office, writes to Mr. Burke nearly in a similar strain. He corresponded upon lively subjects with the accomplished Mrs. (afterwards Lady) Crewe, who sketched most agreeably the parties, politics, and squires of Cheshire and other places. To one of this lady's

visitors, then rising fast in public opinion, he sent this mes sage: "Tell Mr. Canning that I am very much flattered in finding that a man of his genius and his virtue finds anything to tolerate in my feeble and belated endeavours to be useful, at a crisis of the world which calls for the efforts of a rich mind like his, in the full vigour of all his mental and all his bodily powers: but I am soothed in seeing that I continue the object of his early partiality."

Burke's declining health now alarmed his friends; and from the beginning of 1797, his existence was merely a struggle with dissolution. A visit to Bath was proposed, but he shrunk from the publicity of the place, and declined to go; until Mr. Windham earnestly and affectionately remonstrated with him upon his disregard for his recovery, at length he consented to the journey, upon Mr. Windham promising to accompany him.

In February, Mr. Burke was carried to Bath, for the benefit of the waters; they were found to be ineffectual; but he continued here till the end of May. In a letter to one of his friends, at this time, he says: "My health has gone down very rapidly; and I have been brought hither with very faint hopes of life, and enfeebled to such a degree, that those who had known me some time ago, could scarcely think credible. Since I came hither, my sufferings have been greatly aggravated, and my little strength still further reduced; so that though I am told that the symptoms of my disorder began to carry a more favourable aspect, I pass the far larger part of the twenty-four hours, indeed almost the whole, either in my bed or lying upon the couch from which I dictate this." In this letter, written on the affairs of Ireland, and indited by snatches, amidst pain and suffering, he hints at something like the Union which took place in three years after, by urging that the seat of her superior or Imperial politics should be in England. "There is," he said, "a great cry against English influence. I am quite sure that it is Irish influence which dreads English habits." The Union was the only alternative, when Separation was the watchword of the Republican

faction which convulsed Ireland. Burke's judgment in this case was decided: "Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland. But as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation, Ireland would be the most completely undone country in the world, the most wretched, the most distracted, and in the end, the most desolate point of the habitable globe."

Thus, we see that his counsels on English politics were of the same direct, lofty, and uncompromising spirit which had made his voice as the sound of a trumpet to the heart of England. He exhibits to the last that high reliance on the power of the empire to continue the conflict, and that unshaken confidence in her achieving the victory, which formed, in the early part of the war, so strong a contrast with the despondency of public men, and in the close so proudly anticipated the triumphs of the British arms.

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While at Bath, he was visited by Mr. Wilberforce, who was then staying there. He writes in his Diary thus of (take him for all and all,) the greatest luminary of the eighteenth century "_" Poor Burke came down quite emaciated. Evening.-Called on Burke, and sat an hour; no serious talk." Again he writes: "Burke is come here but very poorly, and Windham is visiting him. His faculties are as fresh as ever. He abstains from talking politics."

Yet, prostrated as he was, the vigour of his mind sometimes burst out with patriotic fire. It was the Mutiny in the Fleet. Wilberforce records: "Heard (April 17th) of Portsmouth meeting; consultation with Burke." "The only letter which reached Bath that day by the cross-post from Portsmouth was one from Captain Bedford, of the Royal Sovereign, to Patty More. She brought it to me, and I took it at once to Burke. He could not then see me; but at his desire called again at two o'clock. The whole scene is now before me. Burke was lying on a sofa much emaciated; and Windham, Laurence, and some other friends, were around him. attention shown to Burke by all the party was just like the

The