rruptibility of ministers and of members of
parliament. When the post of royal scullion could be confided to a
member of parliament, and a favourable vote secured by appointing a
representative of the people to the lucrative post of turnspit in the
king's kitchen, administration was hopelessly corrupt. There were
useless treasurers for useless offices. Burke gave the example of what
he taught; and having fixed the Paymaster's salary at four thousand
pounds a year, was himself the first person to accept the diminished
income.

He has been accused of forsaking his liberal principles in his latter
days, simply and solely from his denunciations of the terrible excesses
of the French Revolution. Such reprobation was rather a proof that he
understood the difference between liberty and licentiousness, and that
his accusers had neither the intellect nor the true nobility to
discriminate between the frantic deeds of men, whose bad passions, long
indulged, had led them on to commit the crimes of demons, and those
noble but long-suffering patriots, who endured until endurance became a
fault, and only resisted for the benefit of mankind as well as for their
own.

So much space has been given to Burke, that it only remains to add a few
brief words of the other brilliant stars, who fled across the Channel in
the vain pursuit of English patronage--in the vain hope of finding in a
free country the liberty to ascend higher than the rulers of that free
country permitted in their own.

Moore was born in the year 1780, in the city of Dublin. His father was
in trade, a fact which he had the manliness to acknowledge whenever such
acknowledgment was necessary. He was educated for the bar, which was
just then opened for the first time to the majority of the nation, so
long governed, or misgoverned, by laws which they were neither permitted
to make or to administer. His poetical talents were early manifested,
and his first attempts were in the service of those who are termed
patriots or rebels, as the speaker's opinion varies. That he loved
liberty and admired liberators can scarcely be doubted, since even later
in life he used to boast of his introduction to Thomas Jefferson, while
in America, exclaiming: "I had the honour of shaking hands with the man
who drew up the Declaration of American Independence." His countryman,
Sheridan introduced him to the Prince of Wales. His Royal Highness
inquired courteously if he was the son of a certain b