them. Had the grant been made once for all with manly generosity, some
painful chapters of Irish history might have been omitted from this
volume--some moments, let us hope, of honest shame might have been
spared to those true-hearted Englishmen who deplore the fatuity and the
folly of their countrymen. In 1782 the Irish Volunteers obtained from
the fears of England what had been vainly asked from her justice.
Burke's one idea of good government may be summed up in the words, "Be
just, and fear not." In his famous _Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe_,
written in 1792, upon the question of admitting the Catholics to the
elective franchise, he asks: "Is your government likely to be more
secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to two-thirds of its
subjects? Will the constitution be made more solid by depriving this
large part of the people of all concern or share in the representation?"

His Indian policy was equally just. "Our dealings with India," says an
English writer, "originally and until Burke's time, so far from being
marked with virtue and wisdom, were stained with every vice which can
lower and deprave human character. How long will it take only to
extirpate these traditions from the recollections of the natives? The
more effectually their understandings are awakened by English efforts,
the more vividly will they recognize, and the more bitterly resent, the
iniquities of our first connexion with them." The Indian policy of
England and her Irish policy might be written with advantage in parallel
columns. It would, at least, have the advantage of showing Irishmen that
they had been by no means worse governed than other dependencies of that
professedly law and justice loving nation.

I have treated, briefly indeed, and by no means as I should wish, of two
of the questions of the day, and of Burke's policy thereon; of the third
question a few words only can be said. Burke's idea of Reform consisted
in amending the administration of the constitution, rather than in
amending the constitution itself. Unquestionably a bad constitution well
administered, may be incomparably more beneficial to the subject than a
good constitution administered corruptly. Burke's great leading
principle was: Be just--and can a man have a nobler end? To suppress an
insurrection cruelly, to tax a people unjustly, or to extort money from
a nation on false pretences, was to him deeply abhorrent. His first
object was to secure the inco