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ment, would not have shewn himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me. He would soon have supplied every deficiency, and symmetrized every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient, living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived he would have repurchased the bounty of the crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received He was made a public creature; and had no enjoyment whatever, but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment, the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.

"But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it."

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In the letter to the Duke of Bedford he alludes to the efforts of that nobleman, and other illustrious characters, to stir up an opposition to the treason and seditious-meeting bills. These bills he thought highly expedient, and the last absolutely necessary. Seditious meetings, he had been long aware, had become very prevalent, especially those for the purpose of hearing demagogues abuse the constitution, in what they called lectures. Weak and ignorant as these lecturers were, he does not, therefore, think them harmless, and recommends to Government effectually to shut up such schools of rebellion and Jacobinism. Wisdom neglects no agent of mischief, however personally contemptible. Edmund Burke advises Ministry to guard against the machinations of John Thelwall.

Burke now spent his time almost entirely in the country. In his literary studies, in the soothing company of his wife and friends, in the pleasing prospect of being able to satisfy every just demand, and to leave a competent provision for the faithful and affectionate partner of his cares, in the exercise of active benevolence, and in the consciousness of having done his duty, he received all the consolation, for the irreparable loss he had sustained, of which he was susceptible. While he had employed every effort which a philanthropic heart

could prompt, and the wisest head could direct, for stimulating civilized governments to com. bat irreligion, impiety, immorality, inhumanity, cruelty, and anarchy, he in a narrower sphere relieved, to the utmost of his power, those who had suffered exile and proscription from the direful system. His heart, his house, his purse, were open to the distressed emigrants. Through his beneficent contribution and influence, a school was instituted in his neighbour. hood, for the education of those whose parents, from adherence to principle, were unable to afford to their children useful tuition. This school still continues to flourish, and by the judicious choice of teachers, to answer the wise and humane purposes of the institution.

While thus promoting the advantage of foreign sufferers, he did not relax in his attention to the humble and industrious of his own countrymen. He continued to encourage and superintend benefit clubs among the labourers and mechanics of Beaconsfield, and was himself a subscriber for their advantage. The object was to encourage industry, to cherish affection, to establish a fund of provision for the sick and aged, which should not be merely elemosinary, where frugality and activity should be the means, in some degree, of independence, and to cheer parents with the prospect of having their children instructed in religion, virtue, and the knowledge useful for their stations. The in

stitution flourished under the auspices of its founder. I conversed, at Beaconsfield, with several of its members, soon after the author was no more, and from their plain unlettered sense received the strongest conviction of the goodness of the plan and the wisdom of the regulations; and in the emotion of their hearts, the expression of their countenance, the flow. ing of their tears, saw much more than I could have perceived from words,-their adoring gratitude and admiration.

These exercises of private beneficence did not withdraw his mind from the consideration of the public interest. When the appearance of melioration in the principles and government of France induced our Sovereign, desirous if possible to restore to his people the blessings of peace, to make overtures for conciliation with the French Directory, Burke resumed his pen. Having found that all his predictions from the principles and first phenomena of the French system had been verified, and been in detail even worse than he had forboded,--that they disavowed every religious and moral obligation which regulates the conduct of men,-he totally disapproved of agreements with them, their probable adherence to which would pre. suppose that they admitted the same rules of morality as other men. His opinion he supported in his "Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace." Never had the force of his

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wonderful genius more completely manifested itself than in this work, which he wrote under the idea that it was not long to precede his death. Of its general excellence we cannot have an abler description than in the introduction to the review of it by the "British Critic."*

"Accustomed as we are, in common with most other reading men of this country, to contemplate with admiration the powers and resources of Mr. Burke's extraordinary mind, we have found ourselves more impressed than usual with the letters now before us; more than by any publication which has come from his pen since the celebrated book of 1790, on the French revolution. We have seen even more regular and finished excellence in this than in that composition. The splendors of that tract were sudden and astonishing; they flashed like lightning upon the reader, and left him afterwards, for a time, in a state of comparative darkness; but here all is luminous, and the fire of the irradiating mind shines steadily from the beginning to the end. The energy and beauty of the language, the force and liveliness of the images, the clearness and propriety of the historical allusions and illustrations, all combine to give an effect to these letters, not easily rivalled by the pen of any other writer. Age

* For December 1795, page 661.

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