enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.

159. From the 'IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.'

My lords, you have now heard the principles on which Mr. Hastings governs the part of Asia subjected to the British empire. You have heard his opinion of the mean and depraved state of those who are subject to it. You have heard his lecture upon arbitrary power, which he states to be the constitution of Asia. You hear the application he makes of it; and you hear the practices which he employs to justify it, and who the persons were on whose authority he relies, and whose example he professes to follow. In the first place, your lordships will be astonished at the audacity with which he speaks of his own administration, as if he was reading a speculative lecture on the evils attendant upon some vicious system of foreign government, in which he had no sort of concern whatsoever. And then, when in this speculative way he has established, or thinks he has, the vices of the government, he conceives he has found a sufficient apology for his own crimes. And if he violates the most solemn engagements, if he oppresses, extorts, and robs, if he imprisons, confiscates, banishes, at his sole will and pleasure, when we accuse him for his ill-treatment of the people committed to him as a sacred trust, his defence is," to be robbed, violated, oppressed, is their privilege- let the constitution of their country answer for it. I did not make it for them. Slaves? I found them, and as slaves I have treated them. I was a despotic prince, despotic governments are jealous, and the subjects prone to rebellion. This very proneness of the subject to shake off his allegiance exposes him to continual danger from his sovereign's jealousy, and this is

1. Governs: if this word be pushed back to its original source, it will be found to signify to handle the rudder, to steer, Fr. gouverner, Lat. gubernare, Gk. Kußeрvav. Mr. Max Müller thinks it could only have arisen in a seafaring SPECS. ENG. LIT.

community.

2. Slaves: slave was once a gentile name, and acquired its modern signification from the great numbers of the Slavonic race that were made prisoners in battle during the Middle Ages.

Q

consequent on the political state of Hindostanic governments." He lays it down as a rule, that despotism is the genuine constitution of India; that a disposition to rebellion in the subject, or dependent prince, is the necessary effect of this despotism, and that jealousy 3 and its consequences naturally arise on the part of the sovereign; that the government is everything, and the subject nothing; that the great landed men are in a mean and depraved state, and subject to many evils.

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He have arbitrary power! My lords, the East Indian Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the king has no arbitrary power to give him; your lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give; because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will, much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, pre-existent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.

3. Jealousy: the Gk. Aos supplied the Italian with zeloso, geloso, which in French takes the form jaloux, and in English jealous. Thus jealous and zealous are the same word.

4. Paramount: a feudal term, signifying supreme; the lord paramount was

the sovereign lord, just as the tenant paravail was the lowest in the grade of landholders. Both words in all likelihood had an adverbial signification originally, and were formed by prefixing par to amont, up (ad montem), and aval, down (ad vallem) respectively.

160. From A LETTER TO A NOBLE LORD' (Duke of Bedford).

Burke's only son, Mr. Richard Burke, died a few years before his father, who never fully recovered from the blow. It is this circumstance that gives its theme and tone to the following passage:

Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of a founder of a family; I should have left a son, who, in all the points in which personal merit can be

viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal sentiment, and every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those to 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 repurchased1 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 hath 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 recognise the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate men. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself, and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my

1. Repurchasel: purchase was used some time ago, as indeed in legal language it still is, without any necessary intimation of a money equivalent being given in return for the thing acquired. Its strict sense is to become the owner of any thing in any other way than by inheritance. Bacon, in his Life of Henry

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VII.,' represents Charles VIII. of France as eager to "repurchase and re-annex Brittany. It comes from Fr. pourchasser, It. procacciare, to hunt after a thing; which have the same root as E. chase; Lat. captus supplying, according to Diez, captiare, cacciare.

lord, I greatly deceive myself, if, in this hard season, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury; it is a privilege; it is an indulgence for those who are at their ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and, under the direction of reason, instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me are gone before me. They who should have been to me as posterity are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent.

161. The Letters of Junius. 1769-1772. (History, p. 196.)

From THE LETTER TO HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF BEDFORD. The eminence of your station gave you a commanding prospect of your duty. The road1 which led to honour was open to your view. You could not lose it by mistake, and you had no temptation to depart from it by design. Compare the natural dignity and importance of the richest peer2 of England; the noble independence, which he might have maintained in parliament, and the real interest and respect, which he might have acquired, not only in parliament, but through the whole kingdom; compare these glorious distinctions with the ambition of holding a share in government, the emoluments of a place, the sale of a borough, or the purchase of a corporation; and though you may not regret the virtues which create respect, you may see, with anguish, how much real importance and authority you have lost. Consider the character of an independent,

1. Road: a road is that which is ridden upon; an inroad is a riding into an enemy's country (compare chivachie, p. 17); a roadstead is a place (O. E. stede, as in instead, steady, stedfast, bedstead) where ships ride at anchor. Indeed raid is but another form of road,

and was so spelt three centuries ago.

2. Peer: peers are pares, men who are equal in rank. The word had a general application once, as it still has in such a phrase as "every Englishman has the right of being tried by his peers." Compare the oμoto of the Spartan constitution.

virtuous Duke of Bedford; imagine what he might be in this country, then reflect one moment upon what you are. If it be possible for me to withdraw my attention from the fact, I will tell you in theory what such a man might be.

Conscious of his own weight and importance, his conduct in parliament would be directed by nothing but the constitutional duty of a peer. He would consider himself as a guardian of the laws. Willing to support the just measures of government, but determined to observe the conduct of the minister with suspicion, he would oppose the violence of faction with as much firmness as the encroachments 3 of prerogative. He would be as little capable of bargaining with the minister for places for himself, or his dependants, as of descending to mix himself in the intrigues of opposition. Whenever an important question called for his opinion in parliament, he would be heard, by the most profligate minister, with deference and respect. His authority would either sanctify or disgrace the measures of government. The people would look up to him as to their protector; and a virtuous prince would have one honest man in his dominions in whose integrity and judgment he might safely confide. If it should be the will of Providence to afflict him with a domestic misfortune, he would submit to the stroke with feeling, but not without dignity. He would consider the people as his children, and receive a generous, heartfelt consolation in the sympathizing tears and blessings of his country.

3. Encroachments: encroach is almost the same word as the older accroach"to accroach the King's sovereignty "— which,coming from Fr.accrocher, literally

means to hook on, from Fr. croc, E. crook (whence crotchet, crutch), a hook. Encroach, however, comes from L. L. incrocare, through Fr. encrouer (Diez).

162. Adam Smith. 1723-1790. (History, p. 197.)

From the 'WEALTH OF NATIONS.'

ON THE DIVISION OF LABOUR.

It is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the division of labour, which occasions in a well-governed society that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people. Every workman has a great