acts of the Cabinet. George Onslow, who probably thought he had now some chance of distinction by grappling with Burke, and showing, if not his wisdom, at least his zeal, started up, and said, haughtily, that he must call the honourable member to a sense of his duty, and that no man should be suffered, in his presence, to insult the Sovereign. Burke listened, and when Onslow had disburthened himself of his loyalty, gravely addressed the Speaker: "Sir, the honourable member has exhibited much ardour, but little discrimination. He should know that, however I may reverence the King, I am not at all bound, nor at all inclined to extend that reverence to his Ministers. I may honour his Majesty, but, Sir, I can see no possible reason for honouring," and he glanced round the Treasury bench, "his Majesty's man-servant and maid-servant, his ox and his ass !"

INCREASE OF AMERICA WITHIN A LIFETIME.

We have already recorded Mr. Burke's eloquent speech, in 1775, on "American Conciliation" (see page 206). This speech, which was shortly afterwards reported and published by himself, is one of his most celebrated compositions; and no passage is perhaps entitled to higher admiration than the one portraying the friend in early days of Pope and Swift, the father of Lord Chancellor Apsley-the still surviving veteran Earl Bathurst. "The growth of our commercial and colonial. prosperity," said Burke, "has happened within the short period of the life of man. There are those alive-Lord Bathurst, for example-whose memory might touch the two extremes. Suppose, then, in 1704," thus did Burke continue, -"suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate, men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that when in the fourth generation the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils, was to be made

Z

Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary fortune to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one if amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little peak, scarce visible in the mass of national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him: 'Young man, there is America, which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners, yet shall before you taste of death show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day!"'*

BURKE'S "ECONOMICAL REFORM."

The speech upon this motion was revised and published by Mr. Burke, and ranks among the highest of his oratorical productions. "One of the ablest speeches I ever heard," said Lord North in reply; "a speech such as no other member could have made." Here his rich fancy imparts form and colour, and even life, to the very dry bones of financial calcu

* On the 16th of September following, and at 91 years of age, Lord Bathurst died.

lation. Here the very details of the Exchequer grow amusing. Thus lightly, for example, does Burke play on the defect of the five lesser sovereign jurisdictions of the realm: "Ours is not a monarchy in strictness; but as in the Saxon times this country was an heptarchy, so now it is a strange sort of pentarchy. Cross a brook, and you lose the King of England; but you have some comfort in coming again under His Majesty, though shorn of his beams, and no more than Prince of Wales. Go to the north, and you find him dwindled to a Duke of Lancaster; turn to the west of that north, and he pops upon you in the humble character of Earl of Chester. Travel a few miles on, the Earl of Chester disappears, and the King surprises you again as Count Palatine of Lancaster. If you travel beyond Mount Edgcumbe, you find him once more in his incognito, and he is Duke of Cornwall. So that, quite fatigued and satiated with this dull variety, you are infinitely refreshed when you return to the sphere of his proper splendour, and behold your amiable Sovereign in his true, simple, undisguised, native character of Majesty."

Burke proposed that these five lesser jurisdictions should be wholly swept away. "When the reason of old establishments is gone," then (says Lord Mahon) with the truest Conservative wisdom he spoke on another branch of his subject," it is absurd to keep nothing but the burthen of them. This is superstitiously to embalm a carcase not worth an ounce of the gums that are used to preserve it."

In the same spirit did Burke apply himself to the abuses in the great departments of the Royal Household. One attempt to arrest them had, indeed, been made in the present reign. Lord Talbot, as High Steward, observing the lavish expense of the King's kitchen, had reduced several tables, and put the persons entitled to them upon board-wages. But subsequent duties requiring constant attendance, it was not found possible to prevent the King's servants being fed where they were employed. "And thus unluckily," said Burke, "this first step towards économy doubled the expense."

That Burke's ideas of reform were as yet too extensive, and not sufficiently matured, may be asserted on the authority of Burke himself; since, at a later period, and when invested with the responsibilities of office, and allowed a longer time for reflection, he thought proper to recede from a large portion of his scheme. However, the reform of his own office, Paymaster of the Forces, proved his sincerity; as do also other parts of his scheme which have been carried into execu tion with the happiest effect. "Yet," says Lord Mahon, "this was the man whom the superior genius of Lord John Cavendish, or the Marquis of Rockingham, did not deem worthy to sit in Cabinet with them, and whom they consigned to a second place! How high an office in the State would Burke have been summoned to fill, had either birth or marriage made him even a third cousin of His Grace the Duke of Devonshire!"

In 1782, Burke renewed his measure. A message was brought down to both Houses of Parliament from the King, recommending an effectual plan of retrenchment and economy, to be carried through all branches of the Public Expenditure, and to include His Majesty's own Civil List. In the House of Commons, Burke was lavish of his praises. "This," he cried," is the best of messages to the best of people from the best of Kings!" But (says Lord Mahon) though Burke might be blamed for the exuberance of his panegyric, he incurred far heavier censure shortly afterwards by the curtailment of his Bill. When his measure was brought in, it was found to spare several of those institutions against which he had inveighed with the greatest energy two years before. Thus, besides a host of smaller offices, once denounced and now retained, both the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster | were left wholly unreformed. Some of these modifications in his original design might, no doubt, be prompted by Burke's own matured thoughts; in others it is probable that he was merely called on to fulfil the decisions of the Cabinet in which he had no share. Here was one of the many evils of excluding that great genius from the Councils of the State.

This measure, dignifying and dignified by the great name of Burke, as it seems to a later age, passed the House of Commons at the time with little or no resistance from his enemies, but with quite as little celebration from his friends. When it reached the Peers, Lord Thurlow found great fault with it, and did his utmost to defeat his colleagues; happily, however, in vain.

Burke, twenty-four years after, 1796, describes the difficulties with which in this Bill he had to struggle: he adds, "I was loaded with hatred for everything that was withheld, and with obloquy for everything that was given."

CHARACTER OF THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM.

On the 1st of July, 1781, died, to the grief of the nation, this high-minded nobleman, whom Burke deeply mourned as a friend and generous patron.

Some years after, Mr. Burke associated with Lord Rockingham's family, in raising to his memory a superb mausoleum in the grounds of Wentworth, the seat of the Earl Fitzwilliam, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, about four miles north-west of Rotherham. This elegant memorial occupies an elevated situation, and is itself 90 feet high. Its upper story, of the Ionic order, consists of a circle of columns supporting a dome, next is an open arch, and beneath it a sarcophagus. In the interior basement is an apartment, consisting of a dome supported by eight columns, in four recesses between which are placed eight busts of the Marquis's attached associates: namely, Edmund Burke, the Duke of Portland, Frederick Montague, Sir George Savile, Charles James Fox, Admiral Keppel, John Lee, and Lord George Cavendish. In the centre is a white marble statue of the Marquis in his robes, the size of life, by Nollekens. The statue has a square pedestal. There, as well as the titles of the good statesman, may be read his eulogium in verse and prose, by two of those whose effigies grace the space around. The poetry, by Frederick Montague, is as follows: