274 THE PREMIER'S SECRETARY. seat in this House, it was my fortune, unknowing and unknown to the then ministry, by the intervention of a common friend,* to become connected with a very noble person, and at the head of the Treasury Department. It was indeed in a situation of little rank and no consequence, suitable to the mediocrity of my talents and pretensions. But a situation near enough to make me to see, as well as others, what was going on; and I did see in that noble person such sacred principles, such an enlargement of mind, such clear and sagacious sense, and such unshaken fortitude, as have bound me, as well as others much better than me, by an inviolable attachment to him from that time forward." When the appointment was made, the Duke of Newcastle, on hearing of it, hastened to Rockingham with a warning to be on his guard against the adventurer; declaring that he was a wild Irishman, a concealed Papist, a Jesuit, a Jacobite, and that his real name was O'Bourke. But a calumny so absurd was easily refuted. Burke was brought into Parliament as member for Wendover, in Buckinghamshire. The times were critical; for the American colonies, by a series of arbitrary and illjudged measures, had been brought to the brink of rebellion. It was in reference to American affairs that Burke first addressed that House, which he was afterwards so frequently to astonish and delight with the rich flow of his oratory. He spoke with a fire and freedom which attracted the attention and won the praise of the elder Pitt. "He had himself," he remarked, * Mr. Fitzherbert, a member of the Literary Club. BURKE IN PARLIAMENT. 275 "he had himself intended to enter at length into the details, but he had been anticipated with so much ingenuity and eloquence, that there was little left for him to say." He congratulated Burke on his success, and his friends on the value of the acquisition they had made. Encouraged by such an encomium from such a quarter, Burke spoke several times in the course of the session, and each time showed convincingly that the Whig party had gained in him a very valuable accession. Sir John Hawkins, author of a 'History of Music,' now almost forgotten, took occasion at the Club to express his surprise at Burke's growing reputation. "Sir," said Johnson, "there is no wonder at all. We, who know Mr. Burke, know that he will be one of the first men in the country." And writing to Langton (March 9, 1760), Johnson said, "We have the less of Burke's company since he has been engaged in public business, in which he has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his first appearance ever gained before. He made two speeches in the House for repealing the Stamp Act, which were publicly commended by Mr. Pitt, and have filled the town with wonder... Burke is a great man by nature, and is expected soon to attain civil greatness." Feebly supported by its friends, and incessantly assailed by a formidable Opposition, the Rockingham government fell; and in June, 1760, the King invited. Pitt to form an administration. The result we have described in a preceding page. Pitt executed his task; and, at the same time, lost much of his free popular influence, by removing to the House of Lords with 276 BURKE IN PARLIAMENT. the title of Earl of Chatham. Burke, on the dissolution of the Rockingham government, had retired to Ireland, and he did not return until the meeting of Parliament. Chatham then offered him a seat at the Board of Trade, but he appears to have felt himself bound to the ex-Premier, and refused the great Minister's offer. It must be admitted that office could not have improved his position in the House of Commons, where he had become the acknowledged leader of that section of the Opposition known as the Rockingham Whigs. As such, he participated keenly in their ungenerous resentment against Chatham, which had no better justification or authority than his waywardness of conduct induced by the irritation of disease. In May, 1768, a new Parliament met, and Burke again took his seat as member for Wendover. At the same time, for a sum of about £20,000,* he purchased an agreeable residence and small estate, called Gregories, near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire. Towards the close of the year Lord Chatham resigned, broken down in mind and body; and a coalition Cabinet was formed by the Duke of Grafton with the aid of the Bedford party. It was this coalition which plunged the House into a contest with the country on the question of the Middlesex election. Burke united with George Grenville in resisting the illegal and unconstitutional votes by which Wilkes was expelled, and the choice of the Middlesex electors overruled. But this did not prevent him from replying in a cogently-written pamphlet to * A portion of this amount was a loan from the Marquis of Rockingham. THE LETTERS OF JUNIUS. 277 Grenville's diatribe, 'On the Present State of the Nation.' Burke's answer was so forcible in reasoning and so eloquent in expression, that it led to his being regarded as the author of the celebrated "Letters of Junius," which had just begun to appear. For ourselves we do not see that either the style of 'Junius,' or the sentiments expressed, can be identified with the style and sentiments of Burke. We are sure he would not have condescended to such personalities; we know he would not have been guilty of such misrepresentations. Into the vexed question of the authorship of these Letters, it is not our province to enter; but it has sometimes occurred to us, that, in all probability, their writer may have been some less distinguished person than is commonly supposed. The evidence which connects them with Sir Philip Francis is by no means without a flaw. However this may be, we have always felt that their celebrity is out of proportion to their real merits; that they are conspicuously deficient in breadth of view, and that their political morality is contemptible; and that, if they had not appeared anonymously, very much less would have been said in their praise. It is the mystery that attracts us now; just as it was their virulence of invective that attracted our forefathers.* "Junius excelled in the least worthy part of political warfare. The subject of his satire is generally represented in his letters as the vilest of mankind; yet when the imputations are examined, they turn out for the most part, to be frivolous or absurd . . . When we find Junius treating public questions apart from personality, his views are narrow, and his expressions trite."-MASSEY, History of England,' i. 284. ... 278 DIVISIONS OF THE WHIG PARTY. Chatham, after a prolonged seclusion, returned to public life at the begining of 1770. He found the Duke of Grafton and the Bedfords in office, with Lord North Chancellor of the Exchequer. He found the country convulsed with the persecution of Wilkes, undertaken by the Court and the House of Commons. He found America in revolt against the measures of taxation proposed by the Government. He found the two sections of the Opposition, the Grenville and the Rockingham, at variance with one another; and Grenville writhing under the chastisement inflicted by Burke's eloquent pen. It became his object to reconcile the two sections, and unite them in an overwhelming attack upon the Administration. He declared that the new Ministry should be formed upon Whig principles; and that the Rockinghams and Cavendishes, with the old Whig families, should be its leading members. Such, too, were the sentiments of Earl Temple, who, in an interview with Burke, urged that the past should be forgotten. "We have done each other," he said, "a thousand acts of unkindness; let us make amends by a thousand acts of friendship." At first Rockingham and Burke did not very cordially respond to these overtures; but the course of events was rapidly drawing the disjecta membra of the great Whig party together, when the political world was convulsed by the death of Chatham. A new order of things dated from that event; and parties, to a certain extent, underwent a modification of their boundaries. In the session of 1770, Burke spoke frequently. On the 1st of May he introduced eight resolutions condemn |