BOOKS Burke on the Irish question
CHARLES STUART
The eighth volume of The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (cup, 160s), bringing the collection up to April 1796 within fifteen months of his death, takes us in sight of the completion of this great monument of scholarship which has been building since 1958. As Burke had retired from politics before the volume opens in September 1794, it would be reasonable to expect a falling off of interest, especially as the death of his son in the previous month had crushed his future hopes and his happiness in them. But this is not the case. On the great issues of his life—on Ireland, on India and on the French Revolution—he continued to ex- press himself with force and conviction. Ireland occupied him most in these months, so it is fitting that the editing of this volume should have fallen to an Irishman and a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Pro- fessor R. B. McDowell, who has completed his task with deep and self-effacing learning and with a sympathy and fairness that brings out Burke's greatness without con- cealing his occasional follies.
To professional historians the interest of these letters will probably lie in the detail they supply on the background to Fitz- william's brief period in Ireland as Lord Lieutenant, a topic which Professor McDowell illuminates in his introduction. But, as always with Burke, his observations have a general application, a penitrastion and a wisdom which are independent of the particular details he is discussing. So this volume has lessons for all who are *cr- ested in politics. Burke believed above all in their practical nature: 'My notions' he wrote in March 1795, 'are not founded upon chimerical abstractions upon the rights of States and governments to regulate Education etc. etc. with all that silly prattle of Metaphysical Politicks, which a Parrot could go thro' as well as they who use it ... No .. . I have endeavoured to build on the knowledge of men as they are.'
He trusted to working institutions and established ways. He favoured 'the old Course, because it is the old Course and because it has been the successful Course.' But he was not hidebound; and he did not favour established ways from cowardice. He despised caution derived from fear and 'servile patience under oppression.' I am apprehensive' he wrote to Windham on one occasion 'that resort will be had to those trivial maxims of an improvident timidity which some call prudence.' On another occasion, when discussing military com- mands, he spoke out for youth against ex- perience: 'the world has been undone by looking to experience in a case to which no experience applies. We want energy; we want enterprise much more than we want experience.'
Nor was he afflicted by any violent class hatred at home (he did not have the ad- vantage of recent publications on the alleged 'Terror' in England). His use of the phrase 'swinish multitude' in his Reflections on the French Revolution was often thrown in his teeth, but as he explained to John Gifford, 'I never dreamt of our poor little English piggen riggen, who go about squealing and grunting quite innocently—my thoughts
were on the Wild Boar of the Gallick For- est.' His wisdom and moderation in respect of the nature of politics also extended to the use of political power. 'I am satisfied' he once warned Windham, 'that where the most real and solid power exists, there it is most necessary, every now and then, to yield.' In the same spirit he instructed Mrs John Crewe: 'I have seen many political struggles and have had my share in some of them; and I never knew a complete victory obtained in which they who came off conquerers had not reason to be sorry for the decisive ad- vantage they had got. I believe compromises are the very condition of our existence.'
But even in his retirement Burke found it difficult to live up to the high standard of his own wisdom. Within a month of his lecture to Mrs Crewe he was telling Wind- ham, 'there is no compromise with Jacob- inism'; here, however, he could well defend himself against the charge of inconsistency because he had always argued that the struggle with Jacobinism must rise above all else. As he wrote at this time, 'my whole politicks at present center in one point .. . that is what will most promote or depress the cause of Jacobinism?' Less defensible was his fanatical pursuit of Warren Hastings and his refusal to acknowledge any element of patriotic service in that great man. There was no compromise for him here. When, after Hastings's acquittal, the Government allowed the East India Company to pay him a pension and to help him with the ruinous costs of his defence, Burke was outraged. 'Am I to be the Pimp of Indian peculation and oppression?' he stormed. Money granted to Hastings, he said, was 'a Bounty on rebellion', taken from 'the vital substance of the unhappy natives' of India.
In the same way, while he could point clearly to the folly of ascribing political differences to corrupt motives, he could not resist stigmatising the 'innumerable cor- ruptions and frauds' designed to give 'security to their own Jobbish power' of the members of the Irish administration he hated. In so doing he forgot his own warn- ing that: 'when there is anything in the
Edmund Burke, studio of Reynolds, NPG
Conduct of other men which we do not instantly comprehend it may perhaps re- quire some extent of mind to account for it. To attribute it to corruption is a short mode and requires no exertion whatsoever of Ability.' Professor McDowell shows a more truly Burkeian largeness of mind when he says of the leading members of the Irish government at this time that their attitude, 'though neither generous nor far-sighted, is understandable.'
Yet Burke is great enough to rise above his inconsistencies. 'If', as Sir Keith Feil- ing has written, 'he was often feverish or misled, the needle of his mind pointed always to the same truths.' He believed in the moral purpose of government, in 'the power of being just and of protecting the people from the tumults of the multitude and the insolence of the Rich and power- ful.' He wanted the Irish Roman Catholics to be freed of their civil disabilities not merely to save them from being driven in- to Jacobinism, 'the Grand and dreadful Evil of our time,' but also because he con- sidered it wrong that they should be 'no better than half citizens.' He protested at the 'malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency,' but he warned the Catholics against 'mischievous presumption'. In short, he sought to prevent what Fitzwilliam called 'this war of religion between the lower orders' which is with us still.
Nor was it on political matters only that he pointed to wise paths. He admired scholarship and praised Edmund Malone for reviving 'that sort of Criticism by which false pretence and imposture are detected.' He placed more emphasis on the quality of 'leaching in an institution of learning than on the grandeur of its buildings. 'I had a thousand times rather,' he wrote of the prospective students of Maynooth, 'they were in the most miserable range of thatched Cottages and well taught than that a palace should be built in which after all .few might reside and those few be utterly miserable.' And he spoke warmly to keep the provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, free of the infection of political jobbery. `This office' he told Portland `ought not to be considered as a thing in the mass of promiscuous patronage which may as well be given to one man as another .. . [it] is fittest to be exercised by one who is prac- tised in its particular corporate duties.' Here are three pieces of advice equally pertinent for present day scholars, educationalists and ministers as they were for their original re- cipients. Nor did the civil service escape his far-seeing glance; 'in all transactions with the Treasury,' he told Walter King 'I am apt to suspect something of a Trick.'
James Mackintosh remarked, after stay- ing with Burke at Christmas 1796, that Gibbon might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind without anyone noticing the excision. This forgivable exaggeration emphasises Burke's leading characteristic— his largeness of mind. He had, says Sir Keith Feiling, 'the largest mind ever given to politics in these islands.' Nevertheless he is not nowadays greatly regarded in politico-academic circles. Whereas Pitt once observed that Burke's writings contained much to admire and nothing to agree with. the present fashion is rather to disagree without admiring. Yet we have suffered enough of late from the 'silly prattle of metaphysical politics' and possibly our governors may soon be ready to consider Burke once again to the benefit of all When, two years ago, Professor Esmond Wright won the Pollok by-election and
struck the first blow against the 'chimer- ical abstractions' of the present government he was reported to have quoted Burke regu- larly in his campaign speeches. Perhaps this was a portent.
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