f the most disastrous war that our country has
ever carried on. It is especially interesting as an illustration of
its author's political capacity. At a moment when committees and
petitions and great county meetings showed how thoroughly the national
anger was roused against the existing system, Burke came to the front
of affairs with a scheme, of which the most striking characteristic
proved to be that it was profoundly temperate. Bent on the extirpation
of the system, he had no ill-will towards the men who had happened
to flourish in it. "I never will suffer," he said, "any man or
description of men to suffer from errors that naturally have grown
out of the abusive constitution of those offices which I propose to
regulate. If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all."
Exasperated as he was by the fruitlessness of his opposition to a
policy which he detested from the bottom of his soul, it would have
been little wonderful if he had resorted to every weapon of his
unrivalled rhetorical armoury, in order to discredit and overthrow the
whole scheme of government. Yet nothing could have been further from
his mind than any violent or extreme idea of this sort. Many years
afterwards, he took credit to himself less for what he did on this
occasion than for what he prevented from being done. People were ready
for a new modelling of the two Houses of Parliament, as well as for
grave modifications of the Prerogative. Burke resisted this temper
unflinchingly. "I had," he says, "a state to preserve, as well as a
state to reform. I had a people to gratify, but not to inflame or to
mislead." He then recounts without exaggeration the pains and caution
with which he sought reform, while steering clear of innovation. He
heaved the lead every inch of way he made. It is grievous to think
that a man who could assume such an attitude at such a time, who could
give this kind of proof of his skill in the great, the difficult art
of governing, only held a fifth-rate office for some time less than a
twelvemonth.

The year of the project of Economic Reform (1780) is usually taken as
the date when Burke's influence and repute were at their height. He
had not been tried in the fire of official responsibility, and his
impetuosity was still under a degree of control which not long
afterwards was fatally weakened by an over-mastering irritability of
constitution. High as his character was now in the ascendant, it was
in the same year t