Select Works of Edmund Burke: Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents and The Two Speeches on America. Edmund Burke

independent people in both Houses, it is holding out a banner for them to come to, where, surely, interest cannot be said to point out the way, and where nothing but public good is to be sought for on the plainest, honestest, and most disinterested terms.

      Internal evidence shows that the work was accommodated to circumstances which occurred early in 1770, and it does not appear to have been published until the month of April. Two quarto and two octavo editions were sold in that year, besides an [lv] Irish reprint. A fifth edition was published in 1775, and a sixth in 1784.

      The pamphlet contains indications of that relaxation of the formal literary manner which we have noted above. A literary friend in Ireland remarked that the business of the House of Commons had had its effect on Burke’s style, and that the phraseology was “not so elegant as usual. ” He erred, however, in ascribing this to the author’s admitting insertions from other hands, to which he did not take the trouble to give his own colouring; for every line of the work is unmistakeably from the pen of Burke.

      The pamphlet had little or no effect on the position of the Court party. They were even pleased with the liberal hostility it displayed.⁶⁰ Compared with the scorpionlike flagellations of Junius, the stripes of Burke seemed like the chastisement of one who loved them. It was otherwise with the popular party. The “Answer” of Mrs. Macaulay, which was published in May 1770,⁶¹ embodies their opinions of it. This otherwise worthless production is valuable as a testimony to Burke’s political consistency. In it he is considered to be as determined and formidable an enemy to democracy as in the “Rights of Man,” twenty years afterwards.

      Lord Chatham, the professed champion of an ideal antifactious Whiggism, declared in a letter to Lord Rockingham, that the pamphlet had “done much hurt to the cause.” On the back of this letter the following memorandum, dated July 13, 1792, was written by Burke:

      Looking over poor Lord Rockingham’s papers, I find this letter from a man wholly unlike him. It concerns my pamphlet (“The Cause of the Discontents”). I remember to have seen this knavish letter at the time. The pamphlet is itself, by anticipation, an answer to that great artificer of fraud.⁶²He would not like it. It is pleasant to hear him talk of the great extensive public, who never conversed but with a parcel of low toad-eaters. Alas! alas! how different the real from the ostensible public man! [lvi] Must all this theatrical stuffing and raised heels be necessary for the character of a great man?

      EDMUND BURKE.

      Oh! but this does not derogate from his great, splendid side. God forbid!

      E. B.

      The Speech on American Taxation was delivered in the debate on the Repeal of the Tea-duty, the sole remnant of the taxes imposed by Townshend in 1767, purposely left to assert the right of taxation, when the rest were repealed in 1770, and in itself nothing, in the words of Lord Rockingham, but “an uncommercial, unproductive, pepper-corn rent.” The attempted enforcement of this duty produced that resistance which terminated in American independence.

      The first official notice of this resistance was contained in an ominous message from the throne, May 7, 1774, produced by the advices of the outrages committed on board the teaships at Boston. A mob, disguised as Mohawk Indians, had boarded the ships, broken open the tea-chests, and poured their contents into the sea. In this message, and the address which was voted upon it, the objects aimed to be secured by the Boston Port Bill were only too clearly shadowed forth. This fatal measure, which removed the custom-house officers of Boston, and prohibited the “landing and discharging, lading and shipping of goods, wares and merchandizes at the said town of Boston or within the harbour thereof,” passed the House on the 25th, was immediately carried up to the Lords, and received they royal assent on the 31st of March. The more statesmanlike politicians, however, entertained the gravest apprehensions of the results of this measure: and, with the concurrence of some who had voted for it on general grounds, the motion in the debate upon which this speech was made, which had been so often proposed in former sessions, was again brought forward. It was negatived: and the numbers in its favour were much smaller than upon former occasions. The policy of coercion was further followed up by the monstrous attempt to subvert the constitution of the province of which the offending port was the capital, which appeared in due time under the form of a “Bill for the better regulating government in the Province of Massachusett’s Bay.” The purpose of this bill was, in the words of Burke in [lvii] the Annual Register, “to alter the constitution of that province as it stood in the charter of King William; to take the whole executive power out of the hands of the democratic port, and to vest the nomination of counsellors, judges, and magistrates of all kinds, including sheriffs, in the Crown, and in some cases in the King’s governor, and all to be removable at the pleasure of the Crown.”

      Burke consented to the publication of this speech at the earnest solicitation of his friends. It is difficult to realise the great effect which it seems to have produced. Colonel Barré declared, in his excitement, that if it could be written out, he would nail it on every church door in the kingdom. Sir George Savile called it the greatest triumph of eloquence within his memory. Governor Johnstone said on the floor of the House that it was fortunate for the noble lords (North and Germaine) that spectators had been excluded during that debate, for if any had been present, they would have excited the people to tear the noble lords in pieces on their way home.

      It seems to have been from a generous wish to give the ministry an opportunity of doing their best to restore tranquillity, and from an indisposition to appear in the light of a demagogue, while equally unwilling to soften down the terms in which he had spoken, that Burke deferred the publication of the Speech until the beginning of the ensuing year. It was several times reprinted, and, like most of Burke’s publications, provoked an “Answer,” which is not worthy of attention.

      As to the Speech on Conciliation with America, and its relation to the former, the student is commended to the following note by Dr. Goodrich:

      It would hardly seem possible that in speaking so soon again on the same subject, he could avoid making this speech to some extent an echo of his former one. But never were two productions more entirely different. His stand-point in the first was England. His topics were the inconsistency and folly of the ministry in their “miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expedients” for raising a revenue in America. His object was to recall the House to the original principles of the English colonial system—that of regulating the trade of the colonies and making it subservient to the interests of the mother country, while in other resects she left them “every characteristic mark of a free people in all their internal concerns.” [lviii] His stand-point in the second speech was America. His topics were her growing population, agriculture, commerce, and fisheries; the causes of her fierce spirit of liberty; the impossibility of repressing it by force, and the consequent necessity of some concession on the part of England. His object was (waiving all abstract questions about the right of taxation) to show that Parliament ought “to admit the people of the colonies into an interest in the constitution” by giving them (like Ireland, Wales, Chester, Durham) a share in the representation; and to do this by leaving internal taxation to the Colonial Assemblies, since no one could think of an actual representation of America in Parliament at the distance of three thousand miles. The two speeches were equally diverse in their spirit. The first was in the strain of incessant attack, full of the keenest sarcasm, and shaped from beginning to end for the purpose of putting down the ministry. The second, like the plan it proposed, was conciliatory; temperate and respectful towards Lord North; designed to inform those who were ignorant of the real strength and feeling of America; instinct with the finest philosophy of man and of social institutions; and intended, if possible, to lead the House through Lord North’s scheme, into a final adjustment of the dispute, on the true principles of English liberty. It is the most finished of Mr. Burke’s speeches; and though it contains no passage of such vividness and force as the description of Hyder Ali in his Speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s debts, it will be read probably more than any of his other speeches, for the richness of its style and the lasting character of the instruction it conveys. Twenty years after Mr. Fox said, in applying its principles to the subject of parliamentary reform, “Let gentlemen read this speech by day, and meditate on it by night; let them peruse it again and