at we know of Burke--and it
is possible to know them almost as well as if they were the figures of
contemporary history--would seem to deny the possibility of their
condescending to any act of conscious baseness. Stained and sullied as
the youth of Fox had been with some of the more flagrant vices of a
flagrantly vicious society, his record as gambler, as spendthrift, and as
libertine seems relatively clean in comparison with this strange act of
public treason to the chosen beliefs of his manhood, of public apostasy
from those high and generous principles by whose strenuous advocacy he
had redeemed his wasted youth. Fiery as Burke's temper had often proved
itself to be, fantastic and grotesque as his obstinacy had often showed
itself in {228} clinging defiantly to some crotchet or whimsey, that
seemed to the spectator unworthy the adhesion of his great intellect, his
most eccentric action, his most erratic impulse, appeared sweetly
reasonable and serenely lucid when contrasted with the conduct that
allowed him to guide or be guided by Fox in a course that proved as
foolish as it looked disgraceful, to lead or to follow Fox into packing
cards with their arch-enemy of the American war.

On the face of it there is nothing that seems not merely to justify, but
even to palliate, the conduct of Fox and Burke. Ugly as the deed seemed
to the men of their day, to the men who believed in them, trusted them,
loved them, it seems no less ugly to those who at the distance of a
century revere their memories and cherish their teachings. One thing may
be, must be, assumed by those before whom the lives of Fox and Burke lie
bare--that men so animated by high principles, so illuminated by high
ideals, cannot deliberately, of set purpose, have sinned against the
light. They must have felt, and strongly felt, their justification for
entering on a course which was destined to prove so disastrous. Their
justification probably was the conviction, nursed if not expressed, that
to statesmen whose hands were so full of blessings, to statesmen whose
hearts were so big with splendid enterprises, a trivial show of
concession, a little paltering with the punctilio of honor, a little
eating of brave words, and a little swallowing of principle, was a small
price to pay and a price well worth paying for the immeasurable good that
England was to gather from their supremacy.

Whatever may have been the motives which induced Fox and Burke to ally
t