great and laudable designs. If I have had my "share in any measure giving quiet to private "property and private conscience; if, by my vote, I "have aided in securing to families the best possession

-peace; if I have joined in reconciling kings to "their subjects, and subjects to their prince; if I "have assisted to loosen the foreign holdings of the "citizen, and taught him to look for his protection to "the laws of his country, and for his comfort to the

goodwill of his countrymen; if I have taken my "part with the best of men in the best of their "actions, I can shut the book. I might wish to read "a page or two more, but this is enough for my 66 measure. I have not lived in vain.

"And now, gentlemen, on this serious day, when I come, as it were, to make up my account with you, "let me take to myself some degree of honest pride "on the nature of the charges that are against me. "I do not here stand before you accused of venality,

or of neglect of duty. It is not said that, in the "long period of my service, I have, in a single "instance, sacrificed the slightest of your interests "to my ambition, or to my fortune. It is not alleged "that to gratify any anger or revenge of my own, or

"of my party, I have had a share in wronging or

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oppressing any description of men, or any one man "in any description. No! the charges against me

are all of one kind—that I have pushed the prin

ciples of general justice and benevolence too far, "further than a cautious policy would warrant, and "further than the opinions of many would go along "with me. In every accident which may happen "through life-in pain, in sorrow, in depression, and

distress, I will call to mind this accusation, and be “comforted."

CHAPTER VI.

APHORISMS

HAVING now presented to the reader a view of Burke's teachings which we think will have fully justified our claim that he was pre-eminently the apostle of Justice and Liberty, we will conclude our excerpts with one hundred dicta and aphorisms taken at random from his speeches and writings:

Party divisions, whether on the whole operating for good or evil, are things inseparable from free government.

It is very rare indeed for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculation upon the cause of it.

Every age has its own manners and its politics dependent upon them, and the same attempt will not be made against a constitution fully formed and matured that was used to destroy it in the cradle, or to resist its growth during its infancy.

It was soon discovered that the forms of a free and the ends of an arbitrary government were things not altogether incompatible.

Whatever be the road to power, that is the road which will be trod.

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No lines can be laid down for civil or political wisdom. But though no man can draw a stroke between the confines of day and night, yet light and darkness are upon the whole tolerably distinguishable.

War is a situation which sets in its full light the value of the hearts of a people.

The virtue, spirit, and essence of a House of Commons consists in its being the express image of the feelings of the nation.

Party is a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

There is no knowledge which is not valuable.

Interested timidity disgraces as much in the Cabinet as personal timidity does in the field. But timidity with regard to the well-being of our country is heroic virtue.

Great men are the guide-posts and land-marks of the State.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, v is not given to men.

An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery.

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

The question with me is, not whether you have a right to

render your people miserable, but whether it is not your interest to make them happy.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

Plain, good intention, which is as easily discovered at the first view as fraud is surely detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean force in the government of mankind.

Virtue will catch, as well as vice, by contact.

The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man.

The extreme of liberty (which is its abstract perfection, but its real fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain anywhere......But it ought to be the constant aim of every wise public counsel to find out......with how little, not how much, of this restraint the community can subsist.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity...... Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissensions and animosities of mankind.

A State without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.

No experience has taught us that, in any other course or method than that of an hereditary Crown, our liberties can be regularly perpetuated and preserved sacred as our hereditary rights.