ible. He followed no
such course. His pleading turns constantly to arguments from feeling;
but it is always to feeling on one side, and to a sensibility that is
only alive to the consecrated force of historic associations. How much
pure and uncontrolled emotion had to do with what ought to have
been the reasoned judgments of his understanding we know on his own
evidence. He had sent the proof-sheets of a part of his book to Sir
Philip Francis. They contained the famous passage describing the
French queen as he had seen her seventeen years before at Versailles.
Francis bluntly wrote to him that, in his opinion, all Burke's
eloquence about Marie Antoinette was no better than pure foppery, and
he referred to the queen herself as no better than Messalina. Burke
was so excited by this that his son, in a rather officious letter,
begged Francis not to repeat such stimulating remonstrance. What is
interesting in the incident is Burke's own reply. He knew nothing,
he said, of the story of Messalina, and declined the obligation of
proving judicially the virtues of all those whom he saw suffering
wrong and contumely, before he endeavoured to interest others in their
sufferings, and before endeavouring to kindle horror against midnight
assassins at backstairs and their more wicked abettors in pulpits. And
then he went on, "I tell you again that the recollection of the manner
in which I saw the Queen of France in the year 1774 [1773], and the
contrast between that brilliancy, splendour, and beauty, with the
prostrate homage of a nation to her, and the abominable scene of 1789
which I was describing, _did_ draw tears from me and wetted my paper.
These tears came again into my eyes almost as often as I looked at the
description--they may again."

The answer was obvious. It was well to pity the unmerited agonies of
Marie Antoinette, though as yet, we must remember, she had suffered
nothing beyond the indignities of the days of October at Versailles.
But did not the protracted agonies of a nation deserve the tribute of
a tear? As Paine asked, were men to weep over the plumage, and forget
the dying bird? The bulk of the people must labour, Burke told them,
"to obtain what by labour can be obtained; and when they find, as they
commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavour, they must
be taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal
justice." When we learn that a Lyons silk weaver, working as hard as
he could for