shown, and ought with some probability to be car-
ried home to them. If in conversation, the in-
former ought to appear, and make good the matter
he relates. In no other way than one of these
three, can these persons have committed the
offence your lordship mentions to be charged upon
them.
Avoiding all offensive terms, or any kind of
recrimination on their accusers, I simply say they
deny the truth of the charge, and I trust nobody
can bring a shadow of proof for it. I am sorry
296 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
that amongst your lordship's numerous friends,
you could find no one man under personal obliga-
tions to the leader of that respectable party, who
might long since have removed those impressions
from your lordship's mind, and rendered my poor
defence unnecessary.
I have said all I mean to say in vindication of
my having gloried in my political connexions, and
in the part I have taken along with them. My
principles, indeed the principles of common sense,
lead me to act in corps. Accident first threw me
into this party. When I was again at liberty,
knowledge and reflection induced me to re-enter
it; principle and experience have confirmed me
in it. Your lordship will find it difficult to show
where a man, who wished to act systematically in
public business, could have arranged himself more
reputably. By arranging myself with them, I
trust I have given some sort of security to the
public for my good behaviour. That versatility,
those sudden evolutions, which have something
derogated from the credit of all public professions,
are things not so easy in large bodies, as when
men act alone, or in light squadrons. A man's
virtue is best secured by shame, and best improved
by emulation in the society of virtuous men.
Most of my public proceedings have been in the
strictest concurrence with that party ; and to your
lordship's candour and mature consideration, I
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 297
hope I may safely leave both the party and its
proceedings.
I now pass to the separate account you have
opened with myself, for matters of my own private
conduct. Here, my lord, you accuse me of mal-
treating the greatest men in the kingdom ; you
particularize, &c. &c., and you seem to think that
I have not sufficiently " distinguished myself from
useless declaimers who are valued only for bear-
garden talents ;" and that I have given the world
an " impression of me, as a man capable of things
dangerous and desperate."
This is the peculium of blame, which your lord-
ship has portioned out to me, and separated from
the common stock. Pardon me, if I think you
have your accounts of me from men of little
moderation; indeed, from a kind and class of
enemies, far below the common generosity of that
adverse character. Has your lordship then found
me, in the innumerable conversations that we have
had together for many years (which I now remem-
ber with a melancholy pleasure), an " useless de-
claimer " and distinguished by " bear-garden "
talents ? If your lordship has not found this in
my conversation, (you will not affirm that you
have,) w r hy will you so easily give credit to those,
who assert that I am of another character wherever
you do not happen to see me ?
My lord, I have written some trifles. They are,
indeed, full of imperfections, but they are not alto-
298 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
gether " useless declamations ;" nor have they, I
think, a great deal of the scurrilities of the " bear-
garden." Some of them are written, too, on a
subject of public controversy. But there I am
safe enough. What a man writes, defends or
accuses itself; what he speaks, is but too much at
the mercy of narrators, and I have fallen amongst
the very worst of that odious band.
Hypocrisy is no cheap vice ; nor can our natural
temper be masked for many years together. I
have not lived, my lord, at any period of my life,
nor do I live at present, in societies where the
talents your lordship alludes to are in any sort of
request. I live, and have lived, in liberal and
humanized company; who, as they could never
endure such a character, would be infinitely sur-
prised at this imputation upon a person whom, at
least, they tolerate.
As to some little occasional sallies out of serious
business, which you have been ready to commend
in other men, and which, when not ill-executed,
have been commended by all ancient and modern
critics, I am sure they are not without their use
in popular debates. For my own part in them, I
can only say, that if I could receive any comfort
under your lordship's displeasure, I have the con-
solation not to be equally ill-thought of by every
body. You know, I am sure, a person of rank 8 ,
8 The Earl of Chesterfield.
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 299
long removed from public business in which he
had much distinguished himself, and who was
equally distinguished for the elegance of his man-
ners and the well-bred felicity of his wit, has a
great deal more than once repeated, without any
very harsh censure, some of the trifles which less
grave occasions have drawn from me in the house.
He has even condescended to say most obliging
things to myself upon the subject. That person,
I assure your lordship, is not so poor in the
resources of real politeness, as to be driven to
supply his deficiencies out of the fund of ill-placed
flattery. He is no way connected with me, in
party or otherwise. He is too considerable to be
one of my admirers ; and all I shall say is, he did
not find in any of my little pleasantries, the relish
of that celebrated academy from which your lord-
ship is pleased to derive them.
The attacks I have made are specified to be on
Mr. Grenville, Mr. Rigby, Sir William Bagot 9 ,
and Lord Barrington 10 . You could lengthen, you
say, the catalogue ; certainly you could ; for I
have had rather more altercations than are men-
tioned in this list, and your lordship as certainly
9 Sir William Bagot, member of parliament for Stafford-
shire, afterwards Lord Bagot.
William Wildman, Viscount Barrington, at this time
secretary-at-war, an appointment which his lordship held for
many years.
300 CORRESFONDENCE OF THE
supposes me the aggressor in all of them. As to
the first, I only desire, in common justice to me,
and even to Mr. Grenville, that his court friends
will not be too superfluously kind to his memory;
that they will not resent any injuries done to him,
for which he had no resentment himself. Perhaps
your lordship does not know, that I had the
honour of being on the best terms with Mr. Gren-
ville, which continued uninterrupted to his death ;
that he gave to my kinsman, William Burke,
and to me, a pressing invitation to his house in
the country ; that in his house in town, upon a
business too which most people would think deli-
cate, we had a long conversation, wherein, without
any dereliction of principle on either side, we set-
tled the matter to mutual satisfaction ; and that
he afterwards was so obliging as to enter upon a
very curious and interesting conversation, relative
to many of the most essential particulars of his
ministry and life. His brother, Lord Temple, is
known to cherish the most affectionate reverence
for his memory. I have the pleasure to assure
your lordship, that I am at this instant in intimacy
and on terms of friendship with Lord Temple, who
most assuredly would not do me that honour, if
he thought my difference in opinion with him, or
his brother, had ever carried me to lengths unjus-
tifiable among gentlemen.
As to my supposed attack on Mr. Rigby, your
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 301
lordship is then of opinion that, of course, I must
have been the aggressor, and that it is impossible
the known urbanity of Mr. Rigby's style of de-
bating could have given just offence. I am at your
lordship's mercy on the subject, and no disculpa-
tion can avail me ; only I am to do justice to the
very handsome behaviour of your friend, Mr. Rice,
on that occasion.
Sir William Bagot, my lord, made two several
wanton and utterly unprovoked attacks upon me :
I did nothing more than repel them; the first time
with great good humour, at neither time with ill-
temper or ill-manners. On the latter occasion, Lord
John Cavendish, a man not more remarkable for
his firmness than his great moderation, interrupting
my defence, declared if I had not spoken on the
first occasion, he would have done it himself, and
have taken nearly the same ground. Sir William
Bagot seemed sensible that he had gone too far ;
he made some apology for it. I could name a line
of witnesses to you on this business, above all sus-
picion of partiality to me, who know I was not the
aggressor in the beginning of the dispute, nor the
most bitter in the prosecution of it ; and whether,
on the whole, I did any discredit, on so unexpected
a provocation, to my own character or to good
manners, the House, who heard me with every
mark of approbation, must judge. Since that time
I have often met Sir William Bagot on various
302 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
business, and neither of us appeared to have any
remembrance of the altercation. But my offence,
it seems, is perfectly recorded elsewhere, along
with the rest of my indelible transgressions.
You are kind enough to tell me, as the end of
the list, of my execrations of Mr. Yorke during
his last illness. I wish, my lord, you had not put
my patience and prudence to so sore a trial. But
they will endure even that test. No man honoured
Mr. Yorke, living and dead, more than myself. I
hold his memory in a reverence that is almost
superstitious. I know him to have possessed a
wonderful erudition in all kinds. I knew him to
be a person of the purest principles and morals,
and of a strict and punctilious sense of honour,
and that he was one who felt for fame with but
too fatal a sensibility. Let me add, that I have
myself a large part in his loss : he was much my
friend. I say so, because I should count it impious
to distrust the frequent professions of regard which
I had from him. When your lordship gives me
leave to know, that you hold me utterly incapable
of the base act you charge upon me, I will tell you
what it was that gave rise to that most malicious
of all calumnies. Till then, I must content my-
self with assuring you, that the story, as you have
heard it, is absolutely false.
Now, my lord, at the black tail of this black
catalogue of accusations, let me stir up the prin-
RIGHT HOX. EDMUND BURKE. 303
ciple of candour, which all this slander has, for a
moment, smothered in you, and ask you seriously,
whether you believe that, in coming into the House
of Commons, " I entered like a wolf into a fold
of lambs ;" and with ferocious and savage fury,
"snapped now at one, now at another" of those
meek and passive creatures, without mercy, fear,
or shame ?
Does not your lordship think it possible that, in
such a place, where such matters are agitated as
will call out all of the wild beast that lurks in
human nature, there are other animals with fangs
and claws besides me ? Does your lordship
think it absolutely incredible, that attempts might
be made to pull me down, and that I may have
been necessitated to make some strong efforts to
keep myself up? Do you seriously think that the
understandings of your narrators are better dis-
ciplined in the duties and decorums of public life
than mine ? Do you imagine that they are not
equally liable to passions similar to mine, which
may mislead them in the representation, possibly
in the conception of my conduct ? Have they not
interests far more considerable than mine, which
may as naturally bias them from the straight line
of their duty ? You were " overborne," you say,
when you did me the very great honour of becom-
ing my advocate, "by the number of charges
against me." I am sorry that you threw up your
304 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
brief so early, and that I lost, on such an insuffi-
cient ground, all the advantage of your lordship's
goodness and ability ; because it is evidently not
the number, but the truth of the charges, that ought
to prevail in any equal tribunal. If it should be
otherwise, nothing will save me, either now or in
future ; for you may be very sure that, as many as
my actions are, just so many will be the charges
of my enemies. Did your lordship ever hear of
a man, acting in public, who was free from them ?
If I were, with all expressions of tenderness, friend-
ship, and compassion, to write down but one-half
of the language of their enemies, concerning any
given public persons whom you know and esteem,
I am very much afraid, if I sent it to you, your
lordship would think it little else than a libel ; if
I sent it to any of themselves, you would think it a
gross insult.
Suppose that one of the best friends they have,
were to make such a collection, for the instruction
and entertainment of Lord Chatham or Lord
Mansfield, the Duke of Grafton or of Lord
North. They are greater men than I ; they
have the advantage of their dignity. Worse things
have been said of them. Your lordship does not
think that the eminence of their station ought
to make the hearing of truth less necessary to
them, or make it less proper for them to hear it
with temper. In what light would you consider
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 305
such a communication to these persons : even
though it were made lest they should happen not
to be apprised of the tone of their enemies, or be
unacquainted with the language of an uniform
series of five years' daily newspapers ?
I know well enough what my enemies say : I
know too what my conscience answers to their
malice. My public conduct, co-extensive with
my largest relation, must be my glory or my shame.
Has your lordship found one single part of it to be
praiseworthy?
If I act in party, you more than insinuate that
the party runs the extreme line of wickedness ; if
I act alone, then I have some wickedness of
supererogation beyond that line ; some eccentric
crimes to answer for. In every altercation I am
the aggressor ; my debate is declamation ; my rail-
ing, the bear-garden ; in my motions, I show my-
self capable of things dangerous and desperate;
the daily conversations of my friends and relations,
are guilty of all the malignity of treason ; my
house, by the deductions of no exceptionable logic,
easily taken for an hole of adders.
My lord, all this and more, are your sentiments
of me, I trust expressed in anger, and in the ve-
hemence of a mistaken zeal ; from which no
talents, nor situation, will always exempt even
men of piety and virtue. If, indeed, you cen-
sure many material parts of my little public
VOL. i. x
306 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
system, I do not \vonder that you condemn tbe
whole.
My principles are all settled and arranged, and
indeed, at my time of life, and after so much
reading and reflection, I should be ashamed to be
caught at hesitation and doubt, when I ought to
be in the midst of action, not as I have seen
some to be, as Milton says, "unpractised, unpre-
pared, and still to seek." However, this necessary
use of the principles I have will not make me
shut my ears to others which, as yet, I have not,
only I wish to act upon some that are rational.
" I ill-treat the first men in the kingdom." If
you show me that in no case this may be my duty,
I will confess I am in the wrong. I am a respecter
of authority ; but, my lord, I execute my share of
an important magistracy ; and I conceive that it
may happen to be part of my office to accuse, and
even very ill-treat, the first men in the kingdom.
Would your lordship have me so treat clerks in
office, who transcribe letters, or sergeants of the
guard, who execute orders?
" I attacked Lord Harrington :" I did so ; and,
let me add, I attacked Lord Weymouth as much
as him ; and I attacked Lord Hillsborough l as
much as either, though on another ground. But
I did this in a regular, sober, constitutional man-
1 Ministers of the crown, in the administrations of the Duke
of Grafton and Lord North.
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURRE. 307
ner. However, I bear jour censure the better, as
I am absolutely satisfied that, to this minute, you
neither know a single ground on which I made
the attack, nor the temper with which I conducted
myself, in any of the proceedings upon which you
charge me. I never made more than two motions.
As to that on St. George's Fields, I did in effect
repeat it; and I never slept so happily as after
I had discharged myself of that accusation. I
now give over the pursuit, not as blameable, but
hopeless. It was, indeed, very nearly what your
lordship calls it, a proceeding " dangerous and
desperate ;" desperate as to hope of success,
dangerous, as it has been a means of forfeiting
your good opinion. To its object it proved very
innoxious; it has not diminished a shilling of Lord
Barrington's salary. But if it had succeeded, I
have no doubt that very salutary effects to the
public would have followed from it.
I acted to the best of my judgment. It would
be hard to find a bad motive for my conduct in
this particular. I am a man of none but civil
talents, such as they are ; and I can have no views
from a state of disorder and confusion ; no, not
more even than your lordship.
Your lordship tells me " it is not what preten-
sions I may have, but what the world will choose
to allow me." What pretensions, my lord, am
I making to any thing that the world has to allow
x 2
308 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
or to refuse? I make no pretensions, my lord,
but those which, with God's blessing, no power
can take from me ; those of doing my duty agree-
ably to my own ideas, within the laws of the land,
and the rules and orders of the body to which
I belong; and T will do that duty with such
vigour, or such remission, as I may think will best
answer the purpose of my trust. If by pretensions
you mean places, I solicit none, and I really think
I never shall ; though I would very gladly serve
the crown, and be of use to my own family, if
I could do it with honour.
Your lordship, whose mean opinion of me I
lament, but cannot avoid, formerly thought it (as
you now tell me) insanity in me to look to an
employment then vacant. This matter of mad
ambition give me leave to explain.
Lord Rockingham, as you observe, and as I
knew, was on the point of being turned out of
office. I had observed, what I might do without
great sagacity, that the having filled any consider-
able place, did raise the credit and authority of
men much higher than any other circumstance
whatever. Looking for what has happened, a
long minority, I thought the name of such an
employment might be of some use, for (as your
lordship may, if you please, guess) I never meant
to keep it. However mad this idea may have
been, it only floated on my mind. I talked to a
RIGHT HOX. EDMUND BURKE. 309
friend or two, and beat the thing backward and
forward in conversation. The ministry was changed
a very few days after. It was no formed project:
I never so much as spoke to Lord Rockingham
upon it ; this he knows, and there is the whole
of my madness.
Your lordship at that time, you say, advised
me to make "a seat at the board of trade my
object." I dare say you did, though I confess
I forget the conversation. It is undoubtedly a
very honourable employment, and much above my
deserts; if the parallel was only between that
office and those deserts. That place was, how-
ever, not my object ; among other reasons for one
that was very obvious, that there was then no
vacancy. The employment, to which I wished the
nomination, was open.
Your lordship thought, and still seems to think
me insane, in wishing that employment upon
another idea; because I had then only been
private secretary to a minister. This oblique in-
sinuation I might leave where I found it, if I did
not think that your lordship grounded your opinion
on very mistaken principles, whatever the merit of
the particular matter then in question might have
been. I must, therefore, beg leave again humbly
to express my sentiments, though they should
again be treated as the effect of phrensy.
I did not ground my pretensions on any sup-
310 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
posed rank of private secretary. This employment
I knew, as well as any body did, formed no preten-
sion ; because it was no known office, nor bears any
rank whatsoever in the state. But I conceived
then, and still do so, that the rule of preferment
in the offices of this kingdom, is not MERE official
gradation. The rank in office is to be rated by
the rank which men hold in parliament, and
by that only. This rank, though not exactly de-
finable, is very easily understood ; and the name
and thing have been much in the mouths of all
public men. If the rule of official rank were any
other, the consequence, according to my ideas,
would obviously tend to the utter relinquishment
of any but the most slavish and passive conduct,
in all those who ever look to the service of the
state. Indeed, it would be fatal to the state
itself.
On your lordship's standard I must have very
low hopes, or none at all. I have no more official
pretensions now than I had the first hour of my
election. I therefore, my lord, refuse to admit
your lordship's rule, and I am authorized not only
by reason but by practice. Many have made
their first step as high as that you allude to, and
much higher, and all from parliamentary, not
official ground. I do not name them, for fear of
your lordship's censure of arrogance in the com-
parison. But, my lord, other gentlemen held
BIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 3 J 1
actually that very office afterwards which I wished
for only in designation ; who, though I very highly
respect them, I will not believe stood higher on
parliamentary ground than I did.
I think, my lord, very poorly of Ned Burke or
his pretensions ; but, by the blessing of God, the
just claims of active members of parliament shall
never be lowered in the estimation of mankind
by my personal or official insignificance. The
dignity of the House shall not be sunk by my
coming into it. At the same time, my lord, I
shall keep free from presumption. If ever things
should stand in such a situation as to entitle me
to look to office, it is my friends who must dis-
cover the place I hold in parliament, I never shall
explain it. Rank is not my object for my own
sake, I assure you ; for if ever I were to ask for
employment, (as I shall not,) vanity would not be
my guide in my requests. Some service to my
own honest interests, and to those of others, would
be my rule. For I protest most solemnly that, in
my eye, situated as I am, and thinking as I do of
the intrinsic dignity of an active but independent
member of parliament, I should look upon the
highest office the subject could aspire to, as an
object rather of humiliation than of pride. It
would very much arrange me in point of con-
venience ; it would do nothing for me in point of
honour.
312 CORRESPONDENCE OF THE
To purge away all further symptoms of insanity,
in not admitting your lordship's rule of official
gradation, permit me to say, that even at the time
you allude to, I was not very young, but as much
a man as I am now, and as fit for any kind of
business. I was as little inclined to the course of
changing about with every wind, without regard
to men or things; and when you combine these
two circumstances, of time of life and some aim
at uniformity of conduct, the madness would be
in acting upon the ground taken from official
gradation, and not from parliamentary rank ; even
if such ground had been thought of in this coun-
try, or that rule had been laid down for any man
in it except myself. My friends know whether I
have harassed them with requests, or whether
my pretensions ever deranged their business, or
disturbed their quiet. Till they complain, every
one else, methinks, may well be silent.
I could say a great deal on the ground of men's
pretensions in this country, but there is more
than enough for both of us. Your lordship has
compelled me to speak more than I wish, upon
places and employments. It is a subject not
often in my thoughts, nor likely to be greatly my
concern, even though your lordship has removed
the terrors of the proscription which hung over
me, by securing me an asylum in my native
insignificance. This humble cottage, which is not
RIGHT HON. EDMUND BURKE. 313
to be shaken even pulsante Ccesarea manu, I take
refuge in most joyfully. Your lordship is so con-
descending, to offer to enter it along with me,
but I beg you to go no further than the door ; it