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of these had advised him to be king in reality as well as in As the age of Nero was past and that of Wilhelm II not yet arrived, it did not appear advisable to his majesty to attempt to attain this end by decapitating his own subjects or shooting the children and wives of his neighbors. He therefore chose the more humane and effective method of bribery and actually succeeded during a period of rather more than twenty years in so corrupting the House of Commons that English liberty was little more than a hollow show. Historically the most famous of his attempts to carry out his purpose is found in those attacks he made on American liberty which culminated in the American Revolution. Burke soon perceived, and perhaps was the first Englishman to do so, the tyrannical purpose of the king, and he clearly set this forth in a pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on the Present Discontents," published in 1770.

When this pamphlet appeared Burke had already sat five years in Parliament as Member from Wendover. His election had occurred just a few weeks after George Grenville, who was then Prime Minister, at the behest of his royal master, had caused Parliament to pass an act requiring that all marriage licenses, all deeds of property, all bonds, and all bills of sale issued in America must be written on stamped government paper costing from one cent to fifty dollars in order to be legal. This act, known as the Stamp Act, was in effect a violation of the fundamental principle of the British constitution. It was a violation of the principle that there must be no taxation without representation.

In America it aroused intense indignation. Stamps were burned, flags hung at half mast, newspapers issued with a death's head where a stamp should have been, and a boycott started against goods manufactured in England. Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses said: “ Cæsar had 0. his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III may 10 profit by their example." A congress in which nine colonies were represented met at New York and adopted resolutions

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declaring that the colonists were entitled to all the rights of Englishmen; that, like other Englishmen, they should be taxed only by their own representatives; and that, as those representatives could not sit in Parliament, it was unconstitutional for the colonists to have their money given to the king by any but their own legislatures.

These declarations probably made no great impression on anybody in England except Edmund Burke, who was not an Englishman, but the refusal of the colonists to buy English goods was easily understood even by George III's hired Parliament, and they accordingly made haste to repeal the Stamp Act, to the great satisfaction of everybody in America. Two years later, however, Charles Townshend spoiled all this good feeling by putting through Parliament a measure which placed duties on tea, paints, paper, glass, and lead imported into America, and provided that governors and judges in America should be paid from the revenue thus collected, the purpose being to free them from the control of their constituents.

Instantly the colonies were again in turmoil. Led by Samuel Adams, of Boston, the colonists agreed to eat nothing, drink nothing, wear nothing coming from England until the duties were removed. The king threatened in retaliation to abrogate the right of trial by jury by removing to England for trial persons accused of treason. He sent soldiers to Boston. The citizens insulted them by calling them lobsters. In return the redcoats fired into a mob, killing five and wounding six. Throughout the colonies Committees of Correspondence were organized for the purpose of defying the tyranny of the king. The effect on British trade was so serious that in 1770 all of the Townshend duties were removed except that on tea.

The tea tax was small, but the principle involved was great. To test the sincerity of the Americans, it was arranged that the East India Company should ship tea to the colonists at a price so low that, even with the duty added, it should

be cheaper than ever before. The experiment failed. At Charlestown and Philadelphia shiploads of tea were seized or sent back to England. In Boston, peaceful means having failed, a band of men disguised as Indians threw overboard $90,000 worth of tea. In retaliation Parliament passed five acts. One remodeled the charter of Massachusetts. Another closed the port of Boston. A third provided for the trial in England of British soldiers who committed crimes in America. A fourth compelled the colonists to lodge and feed the soldiers sent to punish them. A fifth gave to Quebec certain western lands belonging to Virginia, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. To enforce these acts the king sent General Gage to Boston, where he speedily found himself in a state of siege. Massachusetts carpenters would not work for him, he could buy nothing from Massachusetts farmers, and all of his supplies had to be brought from England.

These measures united America. In Virginia, Patrick Henry said: "We must fight." George Washington offered to equip a thousand men at his own expense. In September, 1774, the first Continental Congress met at Philadelphia, and drew up a Declaration asserting the right of Americans to life, liberty, property, representation on taxing bodies, and the privilege of petitioning for a redress of grievances. Of this body William Pitt said: "For solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the General Congress at Philadelphia."

Burke had entered the fight on behalf of America with a speech against the Stamp Act which he delivered in the House of Commons January 14, 1766. So powerful was this effort that Mr. Pitt told the House that Mr. Burke had left nothing for him to say. Doctor Johnson wrote to Bennet Langton that probably no man had ever gained such a reputation by his first appearance, and General Lee told the Prince of Poland: "An Irishman, Mr. Burke, is sprung up in the

House of Commons who has astonished everybody with the power of his eloquence and his comprehensive knowledge of all our exterior and internal politics and commercial interests. He wants nothing but that sort of dignity annexed to rank and property in England to make him the most considerable man in the Lower House."

During the nine years which followed Burke tried in various ways to overcome this handicap. He bought a country estate. He ran in debt. He raised carrots. It was all in vain. He won a great and lasting reputation, it is true, but he could not break into the charmed circle of the British aristocracy. As he himself said: "I was not swaddled, rocked, and dandled into a legislator. Nitor in adversum (I struggle against opposition) is the motto for a man like me." Through it all, however, he kept his honor unsullied, and he never wavered in his fight against the king for the principles of British and hence American freedom.

In 1771 he received as a reward the position of colony agent for New York at 700 pounds a year. In 1774, on a motion of Mr. Rose Fuller to repeal the tea duty, he made a speech which drew from Lord John Townshend the exclamation: Good God! What a man this is! How could he acquire such transcendent powers?" Then, on March 22, 1775, he delivered what is probably the greatest speech ever made in the English language in structure, in eloquence, in imaginative power, in its masterly analysis of the American character, and in the consummate statesmanship of its fundamental theme. The Constitution is the foundation of our laws; Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America is the foundation, in a way, of all the free constitutions in the world. Of it Charles James Fox said twenty years later: "Let gentlemen read this speech by day and meditate on it by night; let them peruse it again and again, study it, imprint it on their minds, impress it upon their hearts-they would there learn that representation was the sovereign remedy for every evil.”

Upon the thick skulls of George III's hired Parliament, however, Burke's eloquence was wasted. His propositions were rejected by a great majority. Within a month the battles of Lexington and Concord had been fought. As the struggle progressed Burke was the prey of mingled emotions. He did not wish America to win, for in American success he saw the ruin of the British empire; he did not wish George III to win, for in a victory for the king he saw the ruin of British liberty. In 1777 he elucidated his views on the war in one of his best pamphlets, a Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, of which he was at that time the representative. Doctor Robertson, the Scotch historian, sent him a present of his History of America, in return for which Burke gave him a copy of this letter, apologizing because he could offer only an ephemeral leaflet in return for an immortal work. As usually happens when a Scotchman makes a trade with an Irishman, Burke, says Augustine Birrell, on this occasion, gave more than he got. He spoke so eloquently against the employment of Indians by the British in the war that, according to one observer, Lord North would have been torn to pieces by the mob had the mob heard Burke's speech. In 1780 he lost his seat for Bristol because he advocated free trade between England and Ireland. Cornwallis surrendered October 17, 1781; on November 27, Burke made a famous speech on the principles of Lord North. Among other things he said: "Mr. Speaker, are we yet to be told of the rights for which we went to war? Oh, excellent rights! Oh, valuable rights! that have cost Great Britain thirteen provinces, four islands, a hundred thousand men, and more than seventy millions of money! Oh, says a silly

man, full of his prerogative of dominion over a few beasts of the field, there is excellent wool on the back of a wolf and therefore he must be sheared. What! shear a wolf? Yes. But will he comply? Have you considered the trouble? How will you get this wool? Oh, I have considered nothing, and I will consider nothing but my right; a wolf is an animal