EDMUND BURKE ON THE WEEK-END RECESS. [To Tan EDITOR OP
THE "SPEOFATOR."]
Sin,—The Spectator of February 22nd contains some judicious remarks on the opposition offered by Sir . H. Campbell- Bannerman and others to proposed arrangements to meet the desire for the week-end withdrawal from the strain and exhaustion of the House of Commons. Your readers, so largely composed of cultured people, will, I think, appreciate the opinion of Edmund Burke on this point. In his letter to a Member of the National Assembly (of France), 1791, Burke says by way of conclusion :— "In England we cannot work so hard as Frenchmen. Frequent
relaxation is necessary to us At present this your dis- position to labour is rather encreased than lessened. In your Assembly you do not allow yourselves a recess even on Sundays. We have two days of the week, besides the festivals, and besides five or six months of the summer and autumn. This continued unremitted effort of the members of your Assembly I take to be one of the causes of the mischief they have done. They who always labour can have no true judgment. You never give your- selves time to cool You can never survey from its proper point of sight the work you have finished before you decree its final execution. You can never plan the future by the past. You never go into the country soberly and dispassionately to observe
the effects of your measures on their objects. You cannot see with your own eyes the sufferings and afflictions you cause.
These are amongst the effects of unremitted labour, when men exhaust their attention, burn out their candles, and are left in the dark. Maio Ineorum stegligentiam, questa istoruns obscurant diligentiam."
It is pretty evident that Sir Henry and his Nationalist sup. porters have little appreciation of Burke's political views, and they cannot be expected to approve of his opinions on the week- end recess. In the following year he wrote his letter on the exclusion of Irish Roman Catholics from the exercise of the elective franchise. His views were those of a great and wise statesman as against a dominant caste in Ireland, but the same arguments under similar circumstances appear to many of Sir Henry's friends altogether nugatory in the case of a dominant caste in the Transvaal—I am, Sir, !cc., P.N. M.
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