ccession of
Charles James Fox to the Whig party, which took place at this time, and was
so important an event in its history, was mainly due to the teaching and
influence of Burke. In the House of Commons his industry was almost
excessive. He was taxed with speaking too often, and with being too
forward. And he was mortified by a more serious charge than murmurs about
superfluity of zeal. Men said and said again that he was Junius. His very
proper unwillingness to stoop to deny an accusation, that would have been
so disgraceful if it had been true, made ill-natured and silly people the
more convinced that it was not wholly false. But whatever the London world
may have thought of him, Burke's energy and devotion of character impressed
the better minds in the country. In 1774 he received the great distinction
of being chosen as one of its representatives by Bristol, then the second
town in the kingdom.

In the events which ended in the emancipation of the American colonies from
the monarchy, Burke's political genius shone with an effulgence that was
worthy of the great affairs over which it shed so magnificent an
illumination. His speeches are almost the one monument of the struggle on
which a lover of English greatness can look back with pride and a sense of
worthiness, such as a churchman feels when he reads Bossuet, or an Anglican
when he turns over the pages of Taylor or of Hooker. Burke's attitude in
these high transactions is really more impressive than Chatham's, because
he was far less theatrical than Chatham; and while he was no less nobly
passionate for freedom and justice, in his passion was fused the most
strenuous political argumentation and sterling reason of state. On the
other hand he was wholly free from that quality which he ascribed to Lord
George Sackville, a man "apt to take a sort of undecided, equivocal, narrow
ground, that evades the substantial merits of the question, and puts the
whole upon some temporary, local, accidental or personal consideration." He
rose to the full height of that great argument. Burke here and everywhere
else displayed the rare art of filling his subject with generalities, and
yet never intruding commonplaces. No publicist who deals as largely in
general propositions has ever been as free from truisms; no one has ever
treated great themes with so much elevation, and yet been so wholly secured
against the pitfalls of emptiness and the vague. And it is instructive to
compare t