Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 017.djvu/10

ties have a direct interest in employ- ing every effort to destroy Burke s re- putation altogether. If he were a statesman and a patriot, Fox was a driveller and a demagogue if his principles were truth and wisdom, the Whigs are the most blind and dishonoured body of men that the world ever contained. The Bentham- ites have equal cause with the Whigs to detest him. Though his ashes slum- ber in the tomb, his voice is still heard to confound them his spirit still walks the earth to scatter their dog- mas and schemes to the winds, and to hold them up to the derision of man- kind.

Of course, a biographer, to do full justice to the fame of Burke, should be able to sketch, distinctly and vividly, the effects which his speeches and writings produced, both to his own country and to Europe he should be able to draw the line between the tri- umphs of his hero and those of Pitt he should be able to pourtray the mighty influence and prodigious er- rors, follies, and guilt, of Fox and the Whigs he should be able to paint the tremendous and appalling array of ene- mies, difficulties, and sorrows, which Burke had to encounter when he gained the most glorious of his victories, and which would have crushed and de- stroyed any spirit but his own and he should be able to cope with, not only the delusions, but the prejudices and the wickedness of parties. He should possess a mind equally daunt- less and impartial determined to be alike just and unsparing, and to deal as liberally in condemnation as pane- gyric aware that, as it had espoused the cause of one whom almost all con- spired to wrong, it could only do jus- tice to him by treating every enemy with due severity.

We wish, not more for the sake of Burke than for the sake of the coun- try, that his memory was held in due estimation. If a nation expect to pos- sess great men, it must consecrate their ashes and preserve from stain their glory if it expect to have wise rulers, it must teach its children to revere its departed sages. We think the writings of this great and wonderful man have lately lost no inconsiderable portion of their influence. Although they were so strkingly applicable to some of the leading topics of the last two sessions of Parliament, we could find

but few traces of them in the discus- sions. Amidst the gigantic events which concluded the war, and the sub- sequent revolutionary convulsions of Europe, the late Marquis of Lon- donderry we name it to his eternal honour seemed to take Burke for his guide, but with his death the influ- ence of Burke appeared to terminate. We regret this deeply. Setting aside other matters, we are convinced that Burke's theory for constructing and governing society for creating and preserving general liberty and happi- ness can never be shaken ; and there- fore we are convinced that every de- parture from it is a departure into error.

Allowing as liberally as we please for the infirmities of mankind, there is something in this not a little extra- ordinary. The compositions of Burke are inimitable in literary beauty, and this, if they had possessed no other recommendation, ought to have ob- tained for them constant perusal and powerful influence. But, in addition, they treat of the highest interests of individuals and nations ; they give the most profound and magnificent views of those things on which the tongue of the Englishman dwells for ever; the splendours of the diction only serve to pourtray the most astonishing tri- umphs of genius, knowledge, wisdom, and philosophy. Moreover, that por- tion of them which, when they were written, appeared to be but opinion and speculation, has been proved by time to have been sublime truth and unerring prophesy. Burke died the greatest of sages a man gifted with even superhuman wisdom and the grave has made him a wonderful pro- phet. One of the most striking pecu- liarities of his late works is they form a chain of predictions, respecting some of the most momentous, novel, and complicated of human events, which have been accomplished to the letter. Finally, the history of Europe for the last seven years has been of a descrip- tion to compel the nation to study the topics on which he wrote, and to drive it to the stores of instruction which he provided.

When those who boast so eternally of the increased knowledge and wis- dom of the world, shall explain to our satisfaction why the writings of Burke, which treat of the form and regula- tions of society, are not in every man's