of matry of the members of the connection was by no means clear. Whig great men had retainers, as well as Court great men. Where evil of any great kind, and in a great degree, prevails, the remedy does not lie in any particular junto, but in the UNITED SENSE AND VIRTUE OF THE COMMUNITY.

Burke thought the Whig connection more powerful opposers of the court project, than the personal talents and popularity of individuals. His reasoning is directed to recommend the Rockingham party to have the management of affairs, rather than Lord Chatham. Although endued with talents that needed no patronage to render him great, Burke had been brought forward by the Whig interest; and endeavours to shew that the wisest policy was to entrust government to those with whom he himself was connected. He tries to conciliate the King to that party, by intimating, that by it the means of royal magnificence would be much more amply supplied than by the court junto. Suppose (he says) we were to ask, whether the King has been richer since the establishment of court favouritism, I believe it will be found, that the picture of royal indigence, which our Court has presented, has been truly humiliating. If the royal treasury had been exhausted by splendour and magnificence, his distress would have been accounted for, and in some measure justified.”

He contends less for change of measures than change of men. Indeed he proposes no material change of measures.

A much less degree of political knowledge and ability than he possessed would, if impartially exerted, have seen, that such a government as he proposes would be hereafter ineffectual, as it had hitherto been; but so ductile was the fancy, so ardent were the passions of Burke, that he often deviated from reason much farther than men of very inferior talents, with cooler imaginations and tempers. Whatever side he embraced, he embraced eagerly. When his affections were once engaged, whatever they stimulated he frequently conceived to be true and right. It is evidently not peculiar to Burke that his passions often warped his reason; but an attentive observer of his life must see that effect produced in him in so great a degree, as to form a peculiar characteristic of his mind, His genius is often employed in inventing arguments for propositions not true, or devising means for ends not salutary :-in counteracting wisdom.

In many of Burke's writings we meet rather with an abundance of important facts, profound observations, brilliant images, and able arguments, adding to the general amusement, pleasure, information, and instruction, than with a chain of proofs, tending to confirm a specific proposition. In this pamphlet, the evident ob.

ject is to evince the necessity of calling Lord Rockingham's party into power. Excellent as it is in many parts, it does not evince the necessity, nor even the expediency, of that change. Some of his premises tend to establish conclu sions contrary to those which he forms. While he has drawn a most glowing picture of the corruption of the House of Commons, he is inimical to parliamentary reform. If the House of Commons was so perverted from its original purpose, as to become a mere engine of the Court, a reform would not only be expedient but necessary. A mere dissolution of that parliament would not be sufficient, as the corrup tion did not arise from causes peculiar to that parliament. If secret influence existed, and existed with the alarming and destructive corrup tion of the House of Commons, which he states, a radical change was necessary. It must be ad.mitted by the friends of Burke, that though he declares himself an enemy to parliamentary reform, his statement of the corruption would, if true, be asstrongan argument in favour of reform as its supporters could adduce. Either the disease was not so virulent as he represented, or the remedy which he proposed was inadequate to the cure. Mere change of physicians could not expel dis. temper, without a change of either regimen or medicine. This treatise tends rather to recom. mend the members of his own college to em.

ployment than to restore the patient to health.

In perusing this, or any of the works of Burke, on the politics of the time, the astonishing abilities and knowledge employed lead a reader to regret that they were not directed either to more permanent objects, or to objects, to the attainment of which they might have been more effectual. Though in point of genius and learning even Johnson or Hume were not superior to Burke, the direction of both these men's powers to objects of more permament importance has. rendered their efforts of greater advantage to mankind than Burke's. The effect of exertions so directed as their's depended on their intrinsic ability and skill; the effect of Burke's, in a great degree, on extrinsic circumstances. He might reason, he might write, he might speak, but unless he coincided with the notions and views of government, his reasoning, literature, and oratory, could not effectuate his purposes. There was no subject of moral or political history, or science, of which he was not master. Had he devoted those powers and exertions to the illustration of the "noblest study of mankind,' of man, in his faculties, in his social and civil relations, which he applied to the propagation of party creeds, his utility to society must have been much greater. The accession of delight and instruction, from the labours of Burke, investigating and elucidating general truths, must

have been much more important than from his labours in supporting particular notions.

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"To party he gave what was meant for mankind." Two sets of writers attacked this pamphlet :the friends of the Court, who denied the existence of the secret cabinet ; and the republicans, who inveighed against its aristocratical tendency and opposition to reform. The celebrated Mrs. Macaulay answered this tract, and descanted with much speculative ingenuity on the just ends of Government," the Usurpations of Establishments,"" the Rights of Man," complete Reform in Parliament and Go. vernment," "Political Justice," and many other topics that have since been hackneyed in democratical writings, from the bold, energetic, acute, dangerous, sophistry of Paine, and the ingenious, but impracticable, theories of Godwin, to the ignorant declamation of Thel, wall. The aristocratic Burke of those days was assailed, by the republicans of that period, with as much violence as the aristocratic Burke of Jatter times by the republicans of this period. The author of a Biographical Preface to Burke's Posthumous Works asserts that the Thoughts on the Discontents mark the political tenets of Burke to have been congenial to those recently attacked by democratic writers. To me some of the opinions appear coincident, some opposite. That government ought to be in the hands of an aristocracy of rank and property is con