Chapter VI: Part 6

We were very apprehensive upon Mr. Burke's coming into administration, that this circumstance might have proved a bar to any further additions to the valuable collection of his speeches already in the hands of the public. If we imagined that our verdict could make any addition to the very great and deserved reputation in which they are held, we should not scruple to say that were Cicero our contemporary, and Mr. Burke the ancient, we are persuaded that there would not be a second opinion upon the comparative merits of their orations. In the same degree as the principles of the latter are unquestionably more unsullied, and his spirit more independent; do we esteem him to excel in originality of genius, and sublimity of conception.

We will give two extracts; one animadverting upon the preliminaries of peace concluded by the earl of Shelburne; the other a character of David Hartley, Esq.

"I know that it has been given out, that by the ability and
industry of their predecessors we found peace and order
established to our hands; and that the present ministers had
nothing to inherit, but emolument and indolence, _otium cum
dignitate._ Sir, I will inform you what kind of peace and
leisure the late ministers had provided. They were indeed
assiduous in their devotion; they erected a temple to the
goddess of peace. But it was so hasty and incorrect a structure,
the foundation was so imperfect, the materials so gross and
unwrought, and the parts so disjointed, that it would have been
much easier to have raised an entire edifice from the ground,
than to have reduced the injudicious sketch that was made to any
regularity of form. Where you looked for a shrine, you found
only a vestibule; instead of the chapel of the goddess, there
was a wide and dreary lobby; and neither altar nor treasury were
to be found. There was neither greatness of design, nor accuracy
of finishing. The walls were full of gaps and flaws, the winds
whistled through the spacious halls, and the whole building
tottered over our heads.

Mr. Hartley, sir, is a character, that must do honour to his
country and to human nature. With a strong and independent
judgment, with a capacious and unbounded benevolence, he devoted
himself from earliest youth for his brethren and fellow
creatures. He has united a character highly simple and
inartificial, with the wisdom of a true politician. Not by the
mean subterfuges of a professed negociator; not by the dark,
fathomless cunning of a mere statesman; but by an extensive
knowledge of the interest and character of nations; by an
undisguised constancy in what is fit and reasonable; by a clear
and vigorous spirit that disdains imposition. He has met the
accommodating ingenuity of France; he has met the haughty
inflexibility of Spain upon their own ground, and has completely
routed them. He loosened them from all their holdings and
reserves; he left them not a hole, nor a corner to shelter
themselves. He has taught the world a lesson we had long wanted,
that simple and unaided virtue is more than a match for the
unbending armour of pride, and the exhaustless evolutions of
political artifice."

FINIS.