and expressions in favor of liberty
and his votes on those questions. But there is a time for all things.

Against the opinion of many friends, even against the solicitation of
some of them, he opposed those of the Church clergy who had petitioned
the House of Commons to be discharged from the subscription. Although he
supported the Dissenters in their petition for the indulgence which he
had refused to the clergy of the Established Church, in this, as he was
not guilty of it, so he was not reproached with inconsistency. At the
same time he promoted, and against the wish of several, the clause that
gave the Dissenting teachers another subscription in the place of that
which was then taken away. Neither at that time was the reproach of
inconsistency brought against him. People could then distinguish between
a difference in conduct under a variation of circumstances and an
inconsistency in principle. It was not then thought necessary to be
freed of him as of an incumbrance.

These instances, a few among many, are produced as an answer to the
insinuation of his having pursued high popular courses which in his late
book he has abandoned. Perhaps in his whole life he has never omitted a
fair occasion, with whatever risk to him of obloquy as an individual,
with whatever detriment to his interest as a member of opposition, to
assert the very same doctrines which appear in that book. He told the
House, upon an important occasion, and pretty early in his service,
that, "being warned by the ill effect of a contrary procedure in great
examples, he had taken his ideas of liberty very low in order that they
should stick to him and that he might stick to them to the end of his
life."

At popular elections the most rigorous casuists will remit a little of
their severity. They will allow to a candidate some unqualified
effusions in favor of freedom, without binding him to adhere to them in
their utmost extent. But Mr. Burke put a more strict rule upon himself
than most moralists would put upon others. At his first offering himself
to Bristol, where he was almost sure he should not obtain, on that or
any occasion, a single Tory vote, (in fact, he did obtain but one,) and
rested wholly on the Whig interest, he thought himself bound to tell to
the electors, both before and after his election, exactly what a
representative they had to expect in him.

"The _distinguishing_ part of our Constitution," he said, "is its
liberty. To preserve