he ministerial
arrangement. Something in the official line may possibly be thought
fit for my measure." Burke knew that his position in the country
entitled him to something above the official line. In a later year,
when he felt himself called upon to defend his pension, he described
what his position was in the momentous crisis from 1780 to 1782, and
Burke's habitual veraciousness forbids us to treat the description as
in any way exaggerated. "By what accident it matters not," he says,
"nor upon what desert, but just then, and in the midst of that hunt of
obloquy which has ever pursued me with a full cry through life, I
had obtained a very full degree of public confidence.... Nothing to
prevent disorder was omitted; when it appeared, nothing to subdue it
was left uncounselled nor unexecuted, as far as I could prevail. At
the time I speak of, and having a momentary lead, so aided and so
encouraged, and as a feeble instrument in a mighty hand--I do not say
I saved my country--I am sure I did my country important service.
There were few indeed that did not at that time acknowledge it--and
that time was thirteen years ago. It was but one view, that no man in
the kingdom better deserved an honourable provision should be made for
him."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Letter to a Noble Lord._]

We have seen that Burke had fixed the paymaster's salary at four
thousand pounds, and had destroyed the extravagant perquisites. The
other economical reforms which were actually effected fell short by
a long way of those which Burke had so industriously devised and so
forcibly recommended. In 1782, while Burke declined to spare his own
office, the chief of the cabinet conferred upon Barre a pension of
over three thousand a year; above ten times the amount, as has been
said, which, in Lord Rockingham's own judgment, as expressed in the
new Bill, ought henceforth to be granted to any one person whatever.
This shortcoming, however, does not detract from Burke's merit. He was
not responsible for it. The eloquence, ingenuity, diligence, above
all, the sagacity and the justice of this great effort of 1780, are
none the less worthy of our admiration and regard because, in 1782,
his chiefs, partly perhaps out of a new-born deference for the
feelings of their royal master, showed that the possession of office
had sensibly cooled the ardent aspirations proper to Opposition.

The events of the twenty months between the resignation of Lord North
(1782) and