he foundation of all his pleas for the colonists with that on
which they erected their own theoretic declaration of independence. The
American leaders were impregnated with the metaphysical ideas of rights
which had come to them from the rising revolutionary school in France.
Burke no more adopted the doctrines of Jefferson in 1776 than he adopted
the doctrines of Robespierre in 1793. He says nothing about men being born
free and equal, and on the other hand he never denies the position of the
court and the country at large, that the home legislature, being sovereign,
had the right to tax the colonies. What he does say is that the exercise of
such a right was not practicable; that if it were practicable, it was
inexpedient; and that, even if this had not been inexpedient, yet, after
the colonies had taken to arms, to crush their resistance by military force
would not be more disastrous to them than it would be unfortunate for the
ancient liberties of Great Britain. Into abstract discussion he would not
enter. "Show the thing you contend for to be reason; show it to be common
sense; show it to be the means of attaining some useful end." "The question
with me is not whether you have a right to render your people miserable,
but whether it is not your interest to make them happy." There is no
difference in social spirit and doctrine between his protests against the
maxims of the English common people as to the colonists, and his protests
against the maxims of the French common people as to the court and the
nobles; and it is impossible to find a single principle either asserted or
implied in the speeches on the American revolution which was afterwards
repudiated in the writings on the revolution in France.

It is one of the signs of Burke's singular and varied eminence that hardly
any two people agree precisely which of his works to mark as the
masterpiece. Every speech or tract that he composed on a great subject
becomes, as we read it, the rival of every other. But the _Speech on
Conciliation_ (1775) has, perhaps, been more universally admired than any
of his other productions, partly because its maxims are of a simpler and
less disputable kind than those which adorn the pieces on France, and
partly because it is most strongly characterized by that deep ethical
quality which is the prime secret of Burke's great style and literary
mastery. In this speech, moreover, and in the only less powerful one of the
preceding year upon