minority. He withstood to the face the king
and the king's friends. He withstood to the face Charles Fox and the
Friends of the People. He may have been wrong in both, or in either,
but it is unreasonable to tell us that he turned back in his course;
that he was a revolutionist in 1770, and a reactionist in 1790; that
he was in his sane mind when he opposed the supremacy of the Court,
but that his reason was tottering when he opposed the supremacy of the
Faubourg Saint Antoine.

There is no part of Burke's career at which we may not find evidence
of his instinctive and undying repugnance to the critical or
revolutionary spirit and all its works. From the early days when he
had parodied Bolingbroke, down to the later time when he denounced
Condorcet as a fanatical atheist, with "every disposition to the
lowest as well as the highest and most determined villainies," he
invariably suspected or denounced everybody, virtuous or vicious,
high-minded or ignoble, who inquired with too keen a scrutiny into the
foundations of morals, of religion, of social order. To examine with a
curious or unfavourable eye the bases of established opinions, was to
show a leaning to anarchy, to atheism, or to unbridled libertinism.
Already we have seen how, three years after the publication of his
_Thoughts on the Present Discontents_, and seventeen years before the
composition of the _Reflections_, he denounced the philosophers with
a fervour and a vehemence which he never afterwards surpassed. When
a few of the clergy petitioned to be relieved from some of the
severities of subscription, he had resisted them on the bold ground
that the truth of a proposition deserves less attention than the
effect of adherence to it upon the established order of things. "I
will not enter into the question," he told the House of Commons, "how
much truth is preferable to peace. Perhaps truth may be far better.
But as we have scarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we
have in the other, I would, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold
fast to peace." In that intellectual restlessness, to which the world
is so deeply indebted, Burke could recognise but scanty merit. Himself
the most industrious and active-minded of men, he was ever sober in
cutting the channels of his activity, and he would have had others
equally moderate. Perceiving that plain and righteous conduct is the
end of life in this world, he prayed men not to be over-curious in
searching