the age, and bestow an unostentatious charity, and maintain his
literary rank and social respectability.

I have sometimes wondered why Burke did not pursue this quiet and
beautiful life,--free from the turmoils of public contest, with leisure,
and friends, and Nature, and truth,--and prepare treatises which would
have been immortal, for he was equal to anything he attempted. But such
was not to be. He was needed in the House of Commons, then composed
chiefly of fox-hunting squires and younger sons of nobles (a body as
ignorant as it was aristocratic),--the representatives not of the people
but of the landed proprietors, intent on aggrandizing their families at
the expense of the nation,--and of fortunate merchants, manufacturers,
and capitalists, in love with monopolies. Such an assembly needed at
that day a schoolmaster, a teacher in the principles of political
economy and political wisdom; a leader in reforming disgraceful abuses;
a lecturer on public duties and public wrongs; a patriot who had other
views than spoils and place; a man who saw the right, and was determined
to uphold it whatever the number or power of his opponents. So Edmund
Burke was sent among them,--ambitious doubtless, stern, intellectually
proud, incorruptible, independent, not disdainful of honors and
influence, but eager to render public services.

It has been the great ambition of Englishmen since the Revolution to
enter Parliament, not merely for political influence, but also for
social position. Only rich men, or members of great families, have found
it easy to do so. To such men a pecuniary compensation is a small
affair. Hence, members of Parliament have willingly served without pay,
which custom has kept poor men of ability from aspiring to the position.
It was not easy, even for such a man as Burke, to gain admission into
this aristocratic assembly. He did not belong to a great family; he was
only a man of genius, learning, and character. The squirearchy of that
age cared no more for literary fame than the Roman aristocracy did for a
poet or an actor. So Burke, ambitious and able as he was, must bide
his time.

His first step in a political career was as private secretary to Gerard
Hamilton, who was famous for having made but one speech, and who was
chief secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, the Earl of Halifax.
Burke soon resigned his situation in disgust, since he was not willing
to be a mere political tool. But his singular