BOOKS

The Character of Burke

By L. B.

NAMIER

ftURKE'S writings, admired beyond measure and most copiously quoted for nearly 200 years, stand as a magnificent facade between the man and his readers. Since emotions as a rule governed his thinking, his personality has to be Probed in its depths to get to the root of his doctrines and ideas. His argument and narrative, cap:ivating by their surface clarity and imagina- tive wealth, by their wide and bold generalisations and the power and drive of his thought, too readily induce conviction while the underlying Passion and obsessions stay concealed. When Capable of taking a detached view, Burke was shrewd and practical in appraising situations; but on the whole he signally lacked detachment. When the trend of his perceptions is examined, he is frequently found to be a poor observer, only in distant touch with reality, and apt to Substitute for it figments of his own imagination; Which grow and harden and finish by dominat- ing both him and widening rings of men whom he influenced. To understand Burke it is neces- sary to pass from his works, with their polished surface, to his letters reflecting changing moods, Contradictory feelings, anxiety and 'aggressive- ness, and blatant egocentricity.

A four-volunle Correspondence of Edmund Burke, comprising just over 300 letters and based almost solely on the Fitzwilliam colleation (but not including all its Burke letters) was published in 1844. Even then much other Burke corre- spondence had already appeared in single items or groups, and the process of piecemeal, dispersed Publication has continued, sometimes in odd Places and connections (Burke's very important correspondence with Richard Champion appeared in a book on Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol). For the new edition,* which will include all Burke's letters (about 1,700), and letters to him where necessary to the understanding of his own, the printed letters had to be collected from 'nearly 200 sources in books, magazines and newspapers.'

The next task was elucidation. For this, access to t le Rockingham papers in the two Fitzwilliam coll:ctions was essential : their opening in 1948 by the owners has made possible this long overdue Publication. The present volume, the first of eight, has been edited by Professor Copeland, assisted by Mr. John prooke, 'without whom,' he says, 'the volume could not have been completed at all. . . . Mr. Brooke himself wrote many of the Political notes in this volume, and gave its editor (not a professional historian) invaluable counsel.' The annotation is full aid accurate, yet relevant and brief. Of 197 letters in this volume, only tvve ray-seven appeared in the 1844 edition; but Only twenty-four are published for the first time. The 'first sixty letters, written by Burke aged fifteen to nineteen at Trinity College, Dublin (April, 1744—January, 1748), had to be included, though few readers will manage to wade through them. As the editor remarks, Burke 'very often sat down to write when he had very little to say,' * Tim CORRF:SPONDI-N( 11 )1 NI) BURK I'. \ 01. I.

April, 1744—June, 1768., Edited by Thomas W. Copeland. (C.U.P., 60s.)

and even the style is surprisingly poor. Occa- sional hints in these letters confirm information from other sources about Burke's unhappy re- lations with his father—he was liable to bring upon himself 'disgrace' and 'anger' over most trivial matters. Dependence during his, young years on a whimsical and oppressive father left its imprint on his character and mind; and the Irish family background accounts for a great deal in his later life.

Undoubtedly the Irishman in him predisposed Burke in favour of American resistance to British dominion. On December 31, 1765, when the Repeal of • the Stamp Act was under considera- tion, he wrote to his friend Charles O'Hara, a

member of the Irish' Parliament : . . the liberties. (or what shadows of liberty. there are) of Ireland have been' saved in America'; and he added with unabashed egotism : do not know how 1 come to concern myself about Ireland, where sure, I have been latterly treated in a most unhandsome manner.' And again, when in March, 1766, a revision of American and West Indian commercial regulations came before Parliament, 'Could not Ireland be sOrnehow hooked into this system?' He fought a strenubus and lonely battle over the Irish Soap Bill, and attended the Irish Corn Bill 'with assiduity and warmth'; but on 'the grand constitutional Bills,' of value only to the ruling Protestant minority, his feelings were divided. 'I am sure the people ought to eat whether they have Septennial Parliaments or not,' he wrote to O'Hara on May 24, 1766.

Burke's father had conformed to the Estab- lished Church, but his mother and most of her family, to whom he 'was devoted, were Roman Catholics; so was his father-in-law, and- possibly also his wife. His sympathies in Ireland were with the Roman Catholics, a conservative com- munity rebellious under oppression. .When on November 25, 1767, Conway declared that 'the gentlemen of Ireland' favoured an increase of its army, 'because the country was, in a great degree R. Catholick, and therefore a rotten part of the British Dominions,' Burke replied that if it was rotten, he attributed it `to the ill policy of Govern- ment towards the body of the subjects there. That it would well become them, to lo* into•the state of that Kingdom.' He had in mind recent execu- tions for alleged treason and rebellion, which he considered a miscarriage of justice. .Exasper- ated by them he had written to O'Hara on April 8, 1766: 'I find you go' on in Ireland plotting; alarming; informing; .seizing; and imprisoning as usual: -what surprises me is to find . . . that you are a little giving way to the ingenious bon ton of our country.' He concluded : 'Why had I a connection of feeling or even of knowledge with such a country!' And on June 9, 1768: 'My sollicitude for Ireland is growing rather • less anxiouS than it was. I endeavour to remove it from my mind as much as I can.'

The only time Burke was directly concerned with the government of Ireland was when W. G. Hamilton, for whom he was working,: beCarne Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant (1761-64), While the s'tory of the break between them, early in

1765, has long been known, very little informa- tion is available for the period of their collabora- tion, nor has Hamilton's case against Burke ever been properly stated : rough notes of his on Burke's conduct, now first printed, contain some interesting hints which cannot, however; be inter- preted with any degree of certainty. Still, there is enough in Burke's own statements to caution the reader against too ready acceptance. On July 3, 1761, after two years with Hamilton, Burke wrote about him :

. . . every thing is with him . . . manly and honeSt; he is one of the few men of business, whose honour, I am satisfied is entirely to be relied on, and can neither deceive nor betray. . . .

But after the break, in the summer of 1765:

1 never can . . . submit to any sort of compromise on my character; and I shall never therefore look upon those, who after hearing the whole story, do not think me perfectly in the right, and do not consider Hamilton as an infamous scoundrel, to be in the smallest degree my friends, or even to be persons for whom 1 am hound to have the slightest esteem, as fait or just estimators of the characters and conduct of men. Situated as I am and feeng as I do, 1 should be just as well pleased that they totally condemned MC, as that they should say that there were faults on both sides, or that it was a disputable case, as I hear is . . . the affected language of some persons.

A man so self-righteous and in such overbearing ftiry is hardly a reliable witness; and when his one controllable assertion, which concerns his pension, is examined—'he [Hamilton] has also taken to himself the very little one [fortune], which / had made, 'the whole ended by his possessing himself of that small reward for my services'—it is found to be a distortion for which blinding rage is the kindest explanation.

On July 4, 1765, when about to become secre- tary to Rockingham and watching him as he formed his government, Burke wrote with rather more sense than his future chief was to show : It is certain, that if they act wisely, they cannot fail to make up a lasting administration. I call taking in Lord Bute, or at least not quarrell:ng with him, and enlarging their bottom by taking in the Tories, and all the men of business of the house of commons not listed against them, acting wisely.

By the time when the Chatham administration was formed in the summer of 1766, Bute had lost all influence with the King- and had corn- Pletely faded out from politics. Yet Burke wrote on March 7, 1767: 'His [Chatham's] plan is dic- tated solely by the miserable situation of his private affairs,' which makes employment neces- sary to him. He took it at first, subservient to my Lord Bute as to [the choice of] persons. . . And next : 'Lord Bute seems serious at last in supporting him; but is at a loss for means.' A week later : 'Ld 'Bute is steady to him; their connection is more declared than ever.' Arrant nonsense written with much self-assurance—and both con- tinued to grow. Baseless allegations against George III soon appear. On May 5: the King merely wants to keep up the Chatham 'shew of an administration' till the end of the session. 'and then to attempt another Administration (for its year) on the old Bute basis.' On August I. to

Rockingham : 'His M. never was in better spirits; he has got a ministry weak and dependent; and

what is better •willing to continue so.' And report- ing a talk with Conway :' 'I said a great deal . . . of the power and dispositions of the Bute party; . . .• the formidable encrease and full establish- ment of that power. . . . This discourse had no • sort of effect. The Bute influence had lost all its terrours.' Burke must have believed his own stuff to retail it to one at the very centre of government;

and was puzzled by the way it was taken. By October 27, 1767, he was talking about 'the osten- sible ministers.' The legend of the 'double Cabinet,' which had a baleful effect on British politics at the time, and on Whig historians for the next 150 years, was in the making.

Burke was a solitary, rootless man who preached

1 party; and a party politician with such a minority mind that (however much he denied it) he relished being in opposition. Boswell reports him saying at the Literary Club in 1778: 'I believe in any body of men in England I should have been in the Minority; I have always been in the Minority.' He had to fight : his nature and cir- cumstances forced him to it—he was one of 'those, whose ambition, or necessities oblige them to live in the storm.' At first he was anxious on the Rockinghams losing office. He wrote on July 29, 1766: 'I consider myself as rather ill with Pitt's whole party. The situation and conduct of my own friends is most unfavourable to me'; and he had received practically `no civility from any of the new people.' A return of his own party to office he saw, if at all (he wrote on December 23, 1766), 'at the end of a very long visto.'

The view is dim and remote; and we do nothing in the world to bring it nearer, or to make it more certain. Thls disposition, which is becoming the principle of our party, I confess, from constitution and opinion, I like: not that I am enamoured of adversity, or that I love opposition. On the contrary it would be con- venient enough to get into office; and opposition never was to me a desirable thing; because l like to see some effect of what I am doing, and this method however pleasant is barren and un- productive, and at best, but preventive of mis- chief; but then the walk is certain; there are no contradictions to reconcile; no cross points of honour or interest to adjust; all is clear and open; and the wear and tear of mind, which is saved by keeping aloof from crooked politicks, is a consideration absolutely inestimable. Meantime, William Burke's reckless speculations in East India stock, mainly financed by Lord Verney and benefiting also Edmund, were bringing them affluence. On August 24, 1767, Burke wrote to a friend about the political situation :

. . . we remain as we are; but with all the content, which consciences at rest, and circum- stances in no distress, can give us.

And on December 11: As to our Corps, which are the en fans perdus of politicks; we stay just where we were; keep- ing a distance from all others, shunning, and

shunned by them. . . . For myself I really have no hopes. Every body congratulated me on coming into the House of Commons, as being in the certain road of a great and speedy fortune; and when I began to be heard with some little attention, every one of my friends was sanguine. But in truth I never was so myself. I came into Parliament not at all as a place of preferment, but of refuge; I was pushed into it; and I must have been a Member, and that too with some eclat, or be a little worse than nothing; such were the attempts, made to ruin me when I first began to meddle in business.

There was a streak of persecution mania in Burke which heightened his aggressiveness and drove him into action.