EDMUND EDMUND BURKE Edited with Notes and Introduction BY BLISS PERRY, on. degree, 189 6 1 prof, 1893-1900, Professor in Princeton University H NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY PREFACE. IT is difficult to gather into one small volume selections which shall adequately represent a writer so rich and various as Burke. I have tried to avoid anything like a book of "elegant extracts." Wherever it was possible, complete productions have been chosen, and when the limitations of space have not allowed this, only such passages have been presented as have a certain unity of their own, apart from the context. The selections are chronological in their order, and are designed to give the student as clear a conception as may be of Burke himself, from the beginning to the close of his career. The political philosophy, the wisdom and inspiration which three generations of readers have found in their Burke will, it is believed, impress those young students most deeply who have the most vivid sense of the personality of the great writer and orator, who feel that they are learning a man rather than a system. Oct. 8, 320- Unclaimed clepocit, From the literary and æsthetic speculations with which the young Burke busied himself for a time, I have chosen, by way of introduction to the man and his method, a section of The Sublime and Beautiful, entitled How Words Influence the Passions." The Defence of Party," with which he concludes the 66 pamphlet on The Present Discontents, shows Burke's well considered theory of party government at the beginning of his public life. Henceforward his powers were mainly directed upon three themes: the American war, the affairs of India, and the French Revolution. This volume contains five complete utterances of Burke at the time of the contest with America the two speeches made at Bristol when he was returned to Parliament from that city; the Letter to the Marquis of Rockingham, his party chief, at the darkest hour of the American cause, with the accompanying Address to the King; and the masterly Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol. These five productions, taken together, give a more varied and complete view of Burke's relation to the American question than can be found, it is thought, in any equal number of pages from his writings. It has been impossible to print here more than a few pages out of the two thousand that Burke devoted to India; but I have given the famous passage from The Nabob of Arcot's Debts, and the Charge and Peroration in the Hastings trial. The Reflections on the French Revolution is represented by seven passages, which were recognized at the first appearance of the book as containing its essential doctrines, and which, as time has elapsed and the democratic movement has spread more and more widely in society, have gained rather than lost in interest. The brilliant Letter to a Noble Lord, written in the last year but one of Burke's life, is an Apologia for his whole career, and furnishes a fitting close to these selections. A brief treatment of the main political events of Burke's day, so far as they touch upon his own activity, will be found in the notes. The Chronological Table will be of further assistance in the same direction. It is hoped that no student who may use this volume will be without Mr. John Morley's Burke, in the English Men of Letters series. Other books of reference are mentioned in the Bibliography. In preparing the notes I have been under great obligation to the editions of selections from Burke by Mr. E. J. Payne and Professor F. G. Selby. The text is that of the revised Bohn edition of 1893 (in six volumes, with two supplementary volumes devoted to the Hastings trial). A definitive annotated edition of Burke is much to be desired. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, October 1, 1896. B. P. |