CHAPTER IX. LETTER OF MR. BURKE-MEETING OF PARLIAMENT DECLARATIONS OF LORD CHATHAM AND MR. FOX ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA. 1777-1778. THE state of the Whig Opposition at this period will be best understood by the perusal of the following letter from Mr. Burke to Mr. Fox. It should be borne in mind that Mr. Fox was not yet accounted a regular member of the Rockingham party, and that his ardent nature bore very ill the cautious and hesitating policy of the elder and more timid Whigs. In the summer of 1777 Mr. Fox made a journey to Ireland, in company with Mr. (afterwards Lord) John Townshend. It was a mere party of pleasure, settled between them when riding out at Chatsworth. They took their horses over, and accompanied Mr. and Lady Louisa Conolly on an excursion to the Lakes of Killarney. Mr. Fox on this occasion contracted a sincere friendship for Mr. Grattan, whom he met at Lord Charlemont's. Irish local politics were little discussed, and had not at that time much attraction. While at Dublin the two strangers were much caressed, and were constantly invited to dinners, where there was usually much lively conversation, and a prodigious quantity of wine. A wild and hazardous freak of the two friends made a great noise, and, what seems strange, raised their reputations in Ireland, where every thing that is rash is considered as a proof of spirit. They bathed in the Devil's Punch Bowl, near Killarney, and fortunately escaped the consequences to be apprehended from its extreme coldness. It was during this journey that the letter now inserted was written. MR. BURKE TO MR. FOX. 'Beaconsfield, Oct. 8th, 1777. "MY DEAR CHARLES,-I am, on many accounts, exceeding pleased with your journey to Ireland; I do not think it was possible to dispose better of the interval between this and the meeting of Parliament; I told you as much, in the same general terms, by the post. My opinion of the infidelity of that conveyance hindered me from being particular. I now sit down with malice prepense to kill you with a very long letter, and must take my chance for some safe method of conveying the dose. Before I say anything to you of the place you are in, or the business of it, on which, by the way, a great deal might be said, I will turn myself to the concluding part of your letter from Chatsworth. You are sensible that I do not differ from you in many things, and most certainly I do not dissent from the main of your doctrine concerning the heresy of depending upon contingencies. You must recollect how uniform my sentiments have been on that subject. I have ever wished a settled plan of our own, founded in the very essence of the American business, wholly unconnected with the events of the war, and framed in such a manner as to keep up our credit and to maintain our system at home, in spite of anything which may happen abroad. I am now convinced, by a long and somewhat vexatious experience, that such a plan is absolutely impracticable. I think with you, that some faults in the constitution of those whom we most love and trust are among the causes of this impracticability: they are faults, too, that one can hardly wish them perfectly cured of, as I am afraid they are intimately connected with honest disinterested intentions, plentiful fortunes, assured rank, and quiet homes. A great deal of activity and enterprise can scarcely ever be expected from such men, unless some horrible calamity is just over their heads, or unless they suffer some gross personal insults from power, the resentment of which may be as unquiet and stimulating a principle in their minds as ambition is in those of a different complexion. To say the truth, I cannot greatly blame them; we live at a time when men are not repaid in fame for what they sacrifice in interest or repose. "On the whole, when I consider of what discordant, and particularly of what fleeting, materials the Opposition has been all along composed, and at the same time review what Lord Rockingham has done, with that and with his own shattered constitution, for these last twelve years, I confess I am rather surprised that he has done so much, and perse vered so long, than that he has felt now and then seme cold fits, and that he grows somewhat languid and desponding at last. I know that he and those who are much prevalent with him, though they are not thought so much devoted to popularity as others, do very much look to the people, and more than I think is wise in them, who do se little to guide and direct the public opinion. Without this they act, indeed, but they act as it were from compulsion, and because it is impossible, in their situation, to avoid taking some part. All this it is impossible to change, and to no purpose to complain of. As to that popular humour, which is the medium we float in, if I can discern anything at all of its present state, it is far worse than I have ever known or could ever imagine it. The faults of the people are not popular vices, at least they are not such as grow out of what we used to take to be the English temper and character. The greatest number have a sort of a heavy, lumpish acquiescence in Government, without much respect or esteem for those that compose it. I really cannot avoid making some very unpleasant prognostics from this disposition of the people. I think many of the symptoms must have struck you; I will mention one or two that are to me very remarkable. You must know that at Bristol we grow, as an election interest, and even as a party interest, rather stronger than we were when I was chosen. We have just now a majority in the corporation. In this state of matters, what, think you, have they done? They have voted their freedom to Lord Sandwich and Lord Suffolk; and the first at the very moment when the American privateers were domineering in the Irish Sea, and taking the Bristol traders in the Bristol Channel; to the latter, when his remonstrances on the subject of captures were the jest of Paris and of Europe. This fine step was taken, it seems, in honour of the zeal of these two profound statesmen in the prosecution of John the Painter, so totally negligent are they of everything essential, and so long and so deeply affected with trash the most low and contemptible; just as if they thought the merit of Sir John Fielding was the most shining point in the character of great ministers, in the most critical of all times, and, of all others, the most deeply interesting to the commercial world. My best friends in the corporation had no other doubts on the occasion, than whether it did not belong to me, by right of my representative capacity, to be the bearer of this aus picious compliment. In addition to this, if it could receive any addition, they now employ me to solicit, as a favour of no small magnitude, that, after the example of Newcastle, they may be suffered to arm vessels for their own defence in the Channel. Their memorial, under the seal of Merchants' Hall, is now lying on the table before me. "Not a soul has the least sensibility on finding themselves, now for the first time, obliged to act as if the community was dissolved, and, after enormous payments towards the common protection, each part was to defend itself, as if it were a separate state. I don't mention Bristol as if that were the part furthest gone in this mortification. Far from it; I know that there is rather a little more life in us than in any other place. In Liverpool they are literally almost ruined by this American War; but they love it as they suffer from it. In short, from whatever I see, and from whatever quarter I hear, I am convinced that everything that is not absolute stagnation is evidently a party spirit, very adverse to our politics, and to the principles from whence they arise. There are manifest marks of the resurrection of the Tory party. They no longer criticise, as all disengaged people in the world always will, on the acts of Government; but they are silent under every evil, and hide and cover up every ministerial blunder and misfortune, with the officious zeal of men who think they have a party of their own to support in power. The Tories do universally think their power and consequence involved in the success of this American business. The clergy are astonishingly warm in it, and what the Tories are when embodied and united with their natural head the Crown, and animated by their clergy, no man knows better than yourself. As to the Whigs, I think them far from |