Edmund Burke
Two hundred years ago—and, so far as we can gather, on the twelfth of January—was born the greatest of our orators on paper. For Edmund Burke, with his awkward movements and harsh voice, was rarely effective in public speech. Even when he had moved his audience, as he moved all those who heard him speak at the trial of Hastings, he proceeded to dissipate the effect by keeping on too long by rising from height to height of denuncia- tion, by failing to observe that the sympathy of his hearers was already with him. Perhaps this last offence was the severest and most typical. For Burke had a vision of society, and he felt himself the only wise man in - Rngland.
( It was really true that his vision was his alone ; and, moreover, that it was a most necessary, indispensable and eternal vision. What he saw -was the age-old and living greatness of human associations. He saw how they grew, and built themselves a shape, and were instinct with wisdom. He saw that no theoretic construction could ever take the place of those organic adaptations. There was more than passion in his words when he, denounced the French Revolution. There was meaning and acute political insight in them. We can see it in his rejection of all " schemes upon paper," his admiration (worship, we might say) of " a living, active, effective constitution." And if he found allies in the wrong quarter, and was praised by all the reactionaries of Europe, it was not altogether his own fault. He could find no allies who saw his own truth in any quarter of the world ; unless the old literary pundit, Dr. Johnson, who never meddled in politics at all except to assert the virtues' of Toryism, could, be called an ally. Johnson was a Tory and Burke was a Whig ; but they understood each other with a great profundity, for they were both Conservatives. Moreover, they knew what their Conservatism meant.
Burke, then, with his feeling of solitude in the command of truth, could never master the elements of statecraft. He failed to learn the art of conciliation ; indeed, he never seriously tried to make his vision actual. Such an aim demands a lifetime, not of compromise, but of creating and using opportunities to achieve something, with the perpetual hope of achieving everything. Above all, it implies a gift for collaboration. Burke had a bad temper ; he was astonishing in conversation, but he was a monopo- lizing talker ; he was open to pin-pricks and made a fool of himself when he tried to rebut them. Fox, who had loved him sincerely and professed openly his enormona debt to him, called him none the less, " a most impracticable person, a most unmanageable colleague ; he would never support a measure, however convinced he might be in his heart of its utility, if it had been prepared by another."
It was no wonder, therefore, that he never held any important office ; or that people thought him " an ingenious madman." He seemed self-contradictory, but in all his apparent contradictions, he was consistent throughout. He was sincere in holding that popular discontent never springs from envy, but always from suffering. He was sincere when he affirmed that in any ease of political struggle we should presume that the oppressed party is in the right. He was sincere in his fight for Catholic emancipation, for the American Colonies, for economic reform, for the rights of the Indian natives. He was equally sincere in his opposition to increasing the franchise, in his support of aristocracy, in his consti- tutionalism, in his horror of dogmatic revolution. We should remember that, as well as being a Conservative, he was a reformer; and to him there was nothing irreconcil- able in the two. His Conservatism implied reform.
There was no one to share his vision, and he was hopelessly at a loss in trying to communicate it. In truth, he never quite found convincing and rational terms for it. He felt himself that, • in the cohesion of men in society, in political obedience, in the sanctity of contract, in forms of government, there is a " mystery " ; and he hated like poison those rationalists who tried to analyse the mystery away and make society an exercise in logic. But is it ever sufficient to support a social order by denying the right to examine the mystery behind it ? Burke's mind, perhaps, was too impetuous to allow him to point, again and again, in concrete details, to the principle of life in political institutions. He proved, by his per- sistence in asserting it, that his own conviction was deep and irrefragible ; but he held it as dogma, and he possessed neither the realistic power nor the elasticity of mind to procure its acceptance.
Two things will help to explain his intransigeance and his awkwardness. He was the man whom Samuel Johnson reverenced most among his contemporaries. " No person of sense ever met him under a gateway to avoid a shower," he said, " who did not go away con- vinced that he was the first man in England." But he said another, and a more revealing thing : " He never made a good joke in his life." To this we can join the remark of the man who gave him his first secretarial employment, " Single-Speech " Hamilton : " Burke understands everything but gaming and music." There was a lifelong tenseness in his character which prevented him from taking himself lightly.
This is not to say that Burke was a failure ; for there is no one way of measuring success. His works are still regarded as great ; great as literature, great as political theory, and great for their practical wisdom. He has been an inspiration to a score of statesmen, and he will always be a renovating influence both to Liberals and to Conservative reformers. The centre of his doctrine The liberty I mean is social freedom "—will remain the illumination of all policy that is not purely anarchistic ; and his vision of an organic society must, sooner or later, be made conscious and actual in human institutions.
A. P.
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