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Home Domestic Affairs, 1760-1815 1760-1815; Part 6 |
1760-1815; Part 6Of Edmund Burke it has been said that, "Bacon alone excepted, he was the greatest political thinker that has ever devoted himself to the practice of English politics". An Irishman by birth, and educated at Dublin University, he became, when thirty-six years of age, secretary to Lord Rockingham, and a Whig member of Parliament (1765). He was a keen Whig and a great writer and talker. His speeches had enormous influence; for all politicians read them, though members of Parliament did not always listen to them, as they were long and awkwardly delivered (Burke spoke with a strong Irish accent, his gestures were clumsy, and his delivery was described as execrable. Yet of one of his speeches in the Warren Hastings impeachment a contemporary wrote, " Burke did not, I believe, leave a dry eye in the whole assembly"). Possessed of wonderful knowledge, he formed opinions which posterity has agreed were generally right. Thus he was in favour of a policy of conciliation with the American colonies; he supported the claims of the Roman Catholics for emancipation, and of the Dissenters for complete toleration; he wished to reform the penal code arid the debtors laws; and he attacked the slave trade. But though he wished to diminish the corruption of Parliament, he was a great admirer of the British constitution as it then existed, and he was opposed to any extension of the franchise or redistribution of the constituencies. Moreover, he had a great horror of any violent reforms, and hence became an impassioned opponent of the French Revolution, as was shown in his "Reflections" upon it.Samuel Johnson once said that Burke and Chatham were the only two men he knew who had risen considerably above the common standard, and it is an extraordinary thing that Burke should never have had a seat in any cabinet. He did not, however, belong to one of the governing families, and his Irish extraction made Englishmen inclined to distrust him. Moreover, his judgment was occasionally warped to such an extent by his imagination, as in the charges which he brought against Warren Hastings, that it became entirely unreliable. But of his writings one of the greatest English historians has said, "The time may come when they may no longer be read; the time will never come in which men will not grow the wiser by reading them". On the resignation of Lord North in 1782 the Whigs returned to power for a time, but their ministries were shortlived, and prime ministers followed one another in quick succession during the next two years. The first prime minister was Lord Rockingham. His ministry was able to accomplish two things before its leader died. It granted to Ireland an independent Parliament. It also passed, through the influence of Burke, a bill to diminish political corruption and the influence of the Crown, by reducing the number of office-holders and the amount of pensions, and by excluding from the franchise revenue officers, who had hitherto formed one-sixth of the electorate and had voted as the Crown wished. Lord Shelburne was the next prime minister. He made the treaty which ended the American War. His fall was brought about by a coalition between Fox, the Whig, and Lord North, the Tory, who both disliked Shelburne. The king was obliged to submit to a new Government in which Fox and North, under the nominal leadership of a "dull dumb duke" (the phrase is Lord Rose-bery's), in the person of Portland,, had the chief influence. That coalition was a discreditable affair. Fox had attacked Lord North when in office with a virulence which should have made any combination between the two impossible. And the only defence which can be made is that Lord North was placable and easygoing, and that Fox was - Fox (There is a story that, during the American War, after Fox had denounced a member of Lord North's ministry in most scathing terms, Lord North came up to Fox and said laughingly, " I am glad you did not fall on me, Charles, for you were in high feather to-day"). |
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