PREFACE In this edition, the aim of the editor has been to direct the pupil to the logical structure as well as to the literary and rhetorical qualities of the Speech on Conciliation. The logical structure, each pupil may discover for himself, by making a brief of the speech as he reads the groups of paragraphs which mark the successive steps in the argument. (See page 132.) The literary and rhetorical qualities are sought through the medium of suggestive questions and topics for individual study. (See page 127.) The Introduction, therefore, does not discuss Burke's style. In The books to which the editor is chiefly indebted are mentioned on page 21, and in the notes. the preparation of the notes, the editor also acknowledges indebtedness to the long line of editors who have preceded him. It is no exaggeration to say that they [the Speech on American Taxation, the Speech on Conciliation, and the Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol] compose the most perfect manual in our literature, or in any literature, for one who approaches the study of public affairs, whether for knowledge or for practice. They are an example without fault of all the qualities which the critic, whether a theorist or an actor, of great political situations should strive by night and by day to possess. If the subject with which they deal were less near than it is to our interests and affections as free citizens, these three performances would still abound in the lessons of an incomparable political method. If their subject were as remote as the quarrel between Corinthians and Corcyra, or the war between Rome and the Allies, instead of a conflict to which the world owes the oppor tunity of the most important of political experiments, we should still have everything to learn from the author's treatment; the vigorous grasp of masses of compressed detail, the wide illumination from great principles of human experience, the strong and masculine feeling for the two great political ends of Justice and Freedom, the large and generous interpretation of expediency, the morality, the vision, the noble temper. -Morley. |