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II. Party and the Double Cabinet: Two Facets of Burke's Thoughts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

John Brewer
John Brewer
Affiliation:
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
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Extract

The historical circumstances which surround the publication of Burke's third and to that date most important pamphlet, the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, are familiar to every historian of George III's reign. The first decade of the young King's reign was marked (or marred) by a progressive growth in political instability. Despite the advantages enjoyed by George at his accession—the military success of his Government, the political unity of the nation, the absence of a Prince of Wales and the insignificance of the Pretender as a source of opposition—the early promise of the reign, so often commented upon by contemporaries, was not fulfilled. By 1770, and for reasons which have been a great occasion of dispute, an apparendy stable political order had collapsed. After the disintegration of the war coalition, the King was unable to form a stable administration from the fragmentary groups that remained: by the end of the decade five new ministries had tottered to a rapid and precipitate downfall. Nor did die situation out-of-doors appear any more healthy than in Parliament. The organs of dissent—pamphlets, newspapers and prints—had grown in number and scurrility to a level not sustained since the opposition to Walpole, while the presence of deeper fissures could be seen in the eighty-four riots that occurred in England and America during the years 1765–70.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , September 1971 , pp. 479 - 501
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 The pamphlet was published on 23 April 1770 (Todd, W. B., A Bibliography of Edmund Burke (London, 1964), p. 73).Google Scholar

2 See amongst others Walpole, Horace, Memoirs of the Reign of King George the Third, ed. SirMarchant, Denis Le (4 vols., London, 1845), I, 4,Google Scholar confirmed by Walpole to George Montagu, 22 Jan. 1761, The Letters of Horace Walpole, ed. Toynbee, Paget (16 vols., Oxford, 1903–1925), V, 18.Google ScholarBurke produced his own ironic version of the advantages enjoyed by George at the beginning of the reign in the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (London, 1770), pp. 18–19;Google ScholarThe Works of Edmund Burke (8 vols., Bohn's British Classics, London, 1854–1889), I, 317. (All references to the Thoughts are made to the second edition of 1770, and the Bohn edition of the Works.)Google Scholar

3 Cf. Address to the People of England (London, 1765), p. 5:Google Scholar ‘When any bustle or commotion prevails among the patriots and politicians of this happy country, the press is vastly prolific, especially in the pamphlet way.’ For the press of this period, see Rea, R. R., The English Press in Politics, 1760–1774 (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1963)Google Scholar and George, Dorothy, English Political Caricature: A Study of Opinion and Propaganda (2 vols., Oxford, 1959), I, passim.Google Scholar There is, of course, no necessary connexion between political and social conflict and the proliferation of prints and caricatures. See Coupe, W. A., ‘Observations on a Theory of Political Caricature’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, II, I (1959), 80.Google Scholar

4 Smith, William Anderson, Anglo-Colonial Society and the Mob, 1740–1775 (Claremont Graduate School and University Center, unpub. Ph.D., 1965), pp. 30–1.Google Scholar

5 The importance and different uses in political argument of the notion of constitutional balance have been noted by many historians and especially Pocock, John in ‘Machiavelli, Harrington and English Political Ideologies in the Eighteenth Century’, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, XXII, 4 (10 1965), 568–71,Google Scholar and ‘Civic Humanism and its Role in Anglo-American thought’, Il Pensiero Politico, I, 2 (1968), 177–8.Google Scholar See also Kramnick, Isaac, Bolingbroke and his Circle, the Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of Walpole (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), pp. 137–40, 143;Google ScholarWeston, C. C., English Constitutional Theory and the House of Lords (London, 1965), pp. 10–11,Google Scholar and in another context Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), pp. 70–3.Google Scholar There appears to be a certain amount of confusion in Harvey Mansfield's discussion of the elements of the Constitution when he brackets ‘monarchy’, ‘aristocracy’ and ‘tyranny’ in his Statesmanship and Party Government, A Study of Burke and Bolingbroke (Chicago, 1965), p. 161.Google Scholar

6 Mansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, pp. 154–5.Google Scholar

7 Bryant, Donald, ‘Burke's Present Discontents: the Rhetorical Genesis of a Party Testament’, Quarterly journal of Speech, XLII, 2 (1956), 117;Google ScholarCone, Carl B., Burke and the Nature of Politics. The Age of the American Revolution (University of Kentucky, 1957), p. 195;Google Scholarcf. Winstanley, D. A., Lord Chatham and the Whig Opposition (Cambridge, 1912), p. 361.Google Scholar

8 Namier, Lewis, ‘Monarchy and the Party System’, in Personalities and Powers (London, 1955), pp. 20–1.Google Scholar Namier assumes that Burke adopts the same attitude to party in the Thoughts as in his earlier Observations on a late State of the Nation.

9 Mansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, p. 4.Google Scholar

10 This is one of the main contentions of Mansfield's book, Statesmanship and Party Government, esp. pp. 3–5, 17–19, 183, 196, 239.Google Scholar

11 Cone, , Burke and the Nature of Politics, pp. 193, 203;Google ScholarNamier, , loc. cit. p. 21.Google Scholar This, of course, was a commonplace in the nineteenth century. See, inter alia, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, XXX (03 1832), 427;Google ScholarEdinburgh Review, XX (11 1812), 343;Google Scholar xxx (June 1818), 190; Quarterly Review, XLIX (04 1833), 273;Google Scholar CXLV (Apr. 1878), 288; Morley, John, Burke (Men of Letters, London, 1879). p. 53.Google Scholar

12 Mansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, p. 196: ‘It was Burke's intention … in the “Thoughts”, to make party an establishment in society.’Google Scholar

13 Cone, , Burke and the Nature of Politics, p. 208.Google Scholar

14 See notes 8 and 11 above, and SirNamier, Lewis and Brooke, John, The History of Parliament, the House of Commons, 1754–1790 (3 vols., H.M.S.O., 1964), I, 190;Google ScholarPares, Richard, King George III and the Politicians (Oxford, 1953), p. 84.Google Scholar

15 Namier, , ‘The Character of Burke’, Spectator, 19 Dec. 1958, p. 896.Google Scholar

18 Namier, and Brooke, , History of Parliament, II, 148;Google ScholarSedgwick, Romney, Letters of George III to Bute, 1756–1766 (London, 1939), p. xviii.Google Scholar

17 Namier, , ‘Monarchy and the Party System’, p. 21.Google Scholar I do not wish to imply that the two interpretations discussed above are the only interpretations of the Thoughts. Pole, J. R., for example, has argued that the Thoughts contained the first justification of interest representation in England: Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (London, 1966), p. 443. But I would maintain that these two interpretations dominate the historiography, and it is with these that I am primarily concerned.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Rockingham to Burke, 29 June 1769, Copeland, T. W. (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke (8 vols, to date, Chicago, 1959-), II (ed. Sutherland, Lucy, 1960), 39–40.Google Scholar

19 Burke showed the first draft to Rockingham when he visited him in Yorkshire in September 1769, and sent a second (still incomplete) draft to him after 6 November. This presumably was the draft that Dowdeswell, Savile and Portland read, and was probably the same as that acknowledged by O'Hara on 30 November. (Burke, , Correspondence, II, 92, 108;Google Scholar Sheffield City Library, Wentworth- Fitzwilliam MSS, Burke 1, 146b.) I am indebted to the Earl Fitzwilliam, Earl Fitzwilliam's Wentworth Estates Company and the Sheffield City Librarian for their permission to quote from these documents, hereafter cited as Sheffield MSS.

20 Jerom Dring to Rockingham, 10 Dec. 1769, Sheffield MSS R(ockingham), 1–1252.

21 Dowdeswell to Burke, 4 Jan. 1767 (misdated 1766); Dowdeswell to Rockingham, 10 Jan. 1767; Dowdeswell to Rockingham, 5 Sept. 1769, where he says, ‘I should wish Wedderburn to see it [Dowdeswell's pamphlet], and any confidential Friends, & wish they would put down in writing their remarks with reference to the pages they apply to, so that when I come to Wentworth I may avail myself of those remarks, and give this thing some more correction’; Dowdeswell to Rockingham, 20 Sept. 1769, Dowdeswell MSS (unfoliated), William Clements Library, Ann Arbor; Burke, , Correspondence, II, 25, 50, 70, 80.Google Scholar

22 The assertion was written over a letter from Dr Leland to Burke, in which the former remarked that ‘the phraseology [of the Thoughts] was not as elegant as usual’ and ascribed this ‘to the very extensive communication of the work, and the author's admitting some insertions from other hands’. (Dr Leland to Burke, 11 June 1770, Sheffield MSS, Burke 1–160, printed without Burke's comments in Burke, , Works and Correspondence, Rivington, (ed.) (8 vols., London, 1852), I, 112–13.)Google Scholar Mansfield has argued on the basis of this evidence that the Thoughts ‘was not an ordinary party document’, and that Burke ‘was using the Rockingham party for a statesman's purpose more than he was being used by them for a party purpose’. (Statesmanship and Party Government, p. 40.)Google Scholar The argument is not convincing.

23 Burke to Richard Shackleton, 6 May 1770, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 136.Google Scholar

24 This is made clear in the discussions among the Rockingham party leaders. Burke, , Correspondence, II, 79, 88, 91–4, 100–1, 105.Google Scholar

25 Burke to Rockingham, 9 July 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 43.Google Scholar

26 Burke, , Correspondence, II, 72–3, 79, 85, 100–1.Google Scholar

27 Burke to Rockingham, 6 Nov. 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, p. 105.Google Scholar It is interesting to note that Burke and Temple disagreed over the Court system in this conversation: ‘We talked of the Court System and their Scheme of having dependent administrations. I spoke of this as the reigning Evil; and particularly mentioned the favourite Idea of the Kings making a separate party for himself. He said this latter did not seem so bad a thing, if Lord Bute had not spoiled it. I said I thought that it was mischievous whether Lord Bute had a hand in it or not, and equally so.’

28 Burke to Charles O'Hara, 27 Sept. 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 85.Google Scholar

29 Burke to Rockingham, 29 Oct. 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 101.Google Scholar

30 Rockingham to Burke, 15 Oct. 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 92.Google Scholar

31 Burke to Rockingham [post 6 Nov. 1769], Burke, , Correspondence, II, 108–9.Google Scholar

32 Sir George Savile to Rockingham [ante 18 Dec. 1769], Burke, , Correspondence, II, 119.Google Scholar Savile, however, seems to have been far from confident of his capacity to assess the importance of the Thoughts. Writing to Rockingham in December à propos Burke's pamphlet he said, ‘I don't pretend to understand these matters a bit. Some think Pamphlets do every thing I perhaps do not allow them weight enough, & I therefore desire that what I have said about the publishing or not publishing may be understood only as it was meant … a declaration in time that I do not see enough of any good effect to make me venture to pledge my self for it's defence & I leave the rest to better judges. If they are but moderate ones they are better than I’ (Sheffield MSS, R.1–1249).

33 Burke to Rockingham [post 6 Nov. 1769], Burke, , Correspondence, II, 109. Though the pub- lished text did not contain a direct attack on Chatham it did of course attack the notion of ‘measures not men’ which was usually (though not always) associated with him.Google Scholar

34 Pordand to Rockingham, 3 Dec. 1769, Sheffield MSS, R.1–1250, which is partly printed in Albemarle, , Memoirs of the Marquess of Rockingham and his friends (2 vols., London, 1852), II, 145–7. The complete letter also discusses Dowdeswell's pamphlet on the Middlesex election.Google Scholar

35 Lucy Sutherland in her edition of Burke, , Correspondence, II, 118.Google Scholar

36 See note 34 above. The emphasis is added.

37 [Charles Wolfran] Cornwall to Rockingham, 5 Apr. [1770], Sheffield MSS, R.1–1291. The letter is endorsed in what appears to be Lady Rockingham's hand ‘Mr Cornwall-supposed lo allude to Mr. Burkes Pamphlet’.

38 Chatham to Rockingham, 15 Nov. 1770, Sheffield MSS, R.1–1327, printed in Albemarle, , Memoirs of Rockingham, II, 193–5.Google Scholar

39 [Rockingham] to [Chatham], no date (draft copy), Sheffield MSS, R.1–1328. Although Burke went through Lord Rockingham's papers, and indeed annotated Chatham's letter to Rockingham (R.1–1327), he did not feel it necessary to alter Rockingham's assessment of the Thoughts.

40 It might be argued that Burke's and Rockingham's critique of the Government's policy of divide and rule was a defence of parties, but if this was the case then the whole opposition– Chatham, Grenvilles, Wilkites and all–favoured party. (Walpole, , Memoirs of George III, III, 92;Google Scholar

‘A Letter to Lord Bute relative to the late changes in A—n’, in Hervey MSS (West Suffolk R.O.) 50/5/328, part printed in Gentleman's Magazine (1765), pp. 305–8; Bedford to Rockingham, 16 July 1767, Sheffield MSS R.1–823; Diary, Grenville, Grenville, , Correspondence, IV, 239;Google ScholarPolitical Register, II (1768), p. 264.)Google Scholar

41 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 107;Google ScholarWorks, I, 373–4.Google Scholar

42 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 104;Google ScholarWorks, I, 372.Google Scholar

43 Burke, , Thoughts, pp. 115–16;Google ScholarWorks, I, 379.Google Scholar

44 Burke, , Thoughts, pp. 105–6;Google ScholarWorks, I, 372.Google Scholar

45 Burke, , Thoughts, pp. 116–17;Google ScholarWorks, I, 379–80.Google Scholar

46 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 117;Google ScholarWorks, I, 380.Google Scholar Otherwise as Burke indicated it must necessarily follow from the existence of an unbalanced Constitution that men ‘will be cast, at length, into that miserable alternative between slavery and confusion’ (Burke, , Thoughts, p. 116;Google ScholarWorks, I, 379).Google Scholar

47 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 107;Google ScholarWorks, I, 374.Google Scholar

48 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 109;Google ScholarWorks, I, 375.Google Scholar

49 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 115;Google ScholarWorks, I, 378–9.Google Scholar

50 Burke, , Thoughts, pp. 111–12;Google ScholarWorks, I, 376–7.Google Scholar Burke had already attacked the notion of ‘not men but measures’ and expounded his own views on political connexion in a clash with Conway in the House of Commons on 28 February 1769. Interestingly enough he forced Conway into the admission that ‘I have termed a party, faction; improperly I suppose. He [Burke] has talked of measures only, not men’ (Wright, J. (ed.), Sir Henry Cavendish's Debates of the House of Commons, during the thirteenth Parliament of Great Britain, commonly called the Unreported Parliament (2 vols., London, 1841), I, 276–8.Google Scholar

51 Foord, Archibald S., His Majesty's Opposition, 1714–1830 (Oxford, 1964), p. 318.Google Scholar

52 It is at this point that I disagree with F. O'Gorman in his otherwise illuminating account of the Thoughts in ‘Party and Burke: the Rockingham Whigs’, Government and Opposition, III, I (1968), 92–110.Google Scholar

53 Burke, , Thoughts, p. III;Google ScholarWorks, I, 376.Google Scholar

54 Burke to Charles O'Hara, 27 Sept. 1769, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 86. And see notes 29 and 34 above.Google Scholar

55 Burke, , Thoughts, pp. 106–7;Google ScholarWorks, I, 373.Google Scholar

56 Burke, , Thoughts, p. 110;Google ScholarWorks, I, 375. Emphasis added.Google Scholar

57 Cobbett, William (ed.), Parliamentary History of England from the Norman Conquest to the year 1803 (36 vols., London, 1806–1820), XVI, col. 920.Google Scholar

58 Burke, , Works, I, 185.Google Scholar As James Burgh put it in a somewhat uncomplimentary way, ‘It is an old and vulgar error, That opposition and party are necessary in a free state’ (Burgh, James, Political Disquisitions (3 vols., London, 1774), III, 331).Google Scholar For earlier examples of this ‘error’ see inter alia, The Remembrancer II, 19 12 1747;Google ScholarThe Loyal or Revolutional Tory … By a FRIEND to the Church and Constitution (London, 1733), p. 2;Google Scholar [Egmont], Faction Detected by the Evidence of the Facts (3rd ed., London, 1743), p. 6;Google Scholar 1742 (London, 1743), pp. 43–4; Ministerial Patriotism Detected (London, 1763), p. 5;Google ScholarConsiderations on the Times (London, 1769), p. 31.Google Scholar

59 Especially those who had defended opposition immediately after 1742. For this development see Thomson, David, The Conception of Political Party in England, in the period 1740 to 1783 (Cambridge University, unpub. Ph.D., 1938), pp. 188–96.Google Scholar Thus the author of The Detector Detected; or, the Danger to which our Constitution now lies exposed, Set in a True and manifest Light (London, 1743), p. 58,Google Scholar argued ‘A Party is, when a great Number of Men join together in Professing a Principle, or Set of Principles, which they take to be for the Publick Good, and therefore endeavour to have them established and universally professed among their own Countrymen. Faction again is, when a Number of Men unite for their own private Advantage, in order to force themselves into Power, or to continue themselves in Power after they have once got it’, and thus, as the author shrewdly adds ‘one may see, that a Set of Ministers, or a Prime Minister and his Tools, may be a Faction’. Compare 1742, p. 43; A Short Dissertation upon Oligarchy (London, 1748), p. 5.Google Scholar

60 See pp. 496–7 below.

61 Walpole, , Memoirs of George III, IV, 131;Google ScholarCritical Review, XI (04 1770), 303–10;Google ScholarIndependent Chronicle, I, 4, 16 May 1770;Google ScholarLondon Magazine, XXXIX (05 1770), 259–61;Google ScholarTown and Country Magazine, I (05 1770), 268;Google Scholar ‘Old Slyboots’ was published in the London Chronicle, 28 Apr.; Public Advertiser, 30 Apr.; General Evening Post, 28 Apr.; The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 1 May 1770. The two replies of ‘The Constitutionalist’ appeared in the Gazetteer, 12 and 21 May and the General Evening Post for 8 and 19 May. (Where newspapers are dated over a three-day period the first date is given.)

62 Critical Review, XI, 303;Google ScholarLondon Magazine, XXXIX, 259.Google Scholar

63 Monthly Review, XLII, i (05 1770), 389;Google ScholarThe Gentleman's Magazine, XL (05 1770), 223;Google ScholarUniversal Magazine, XLVI (05 1770), 232;Google Scholar ‘Reason for Alarm’ in the London Chronicle, 1 May 1770; The Political Register, VI (05 1770), 361.Google Scholar Mrs Macaulay confined herself to the comment that the Thoughts ‘endeavour to mislead the people on the subject of the more complicated and specious, though no less dangerous manoeuvres of Aristocratic faction and party, founded on and supported by the corrupt principle of self-interest’: Macaulay, Catharine, Observations on a pamphlet, entitled, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (4th ed., corrected, London, 1770), p. 7.Google Scholar

64 It is, of course, always possible that Burke's contemporaries manifested a total lack of intellectual penetration, and failed to understand his true purpose. Not unnaturally it is difficult to weigh the intellectual competence of a single (highly talented) man against the cerebral capacity of the political nation. For a similar approach to the one used here in which the reactions of contemporaries have been used to substantiate an interpretation of an individual's thought—in this case Hobbes—see Skinner, Quentin, ‘The Ideological Context of Hobbes's political thought’, The Historical Journal, IX (1966), 286–317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 The importance of an appeal to the independents is brought out by Willis, Richard E., ‘Some Further Reflections on Burke's Discontents’, Studies in Burke and his Time, XI, 2 (1970), 1419.Google Scholar

66 Political Register, VI, 345.Google Scholar

67 Todd, , A Bibliography of Burke, pp. 73–5, 69, 70–1, 145.Google ScholarThe British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books, vol. XXX, col. 179 accepts the Political Register's view and lists four separate editions for 1770.Google Scholar

68 Burke to Charles O'Hara, 21 May 1770, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 139;Google Scholar O'Hara to Burke, 10 May [1770], Sheffield MSS, Burke 1–156a. Burke, of course, was much more despondent about the Thoughts when its real impact was known. Burke to Rockingham, 29 Dec. 1770, Burke, , Correspondence, II, 175;Google ScholarChristie, Ian, Wildes, Wyvill and Reform (London, 1962), p. 44.Google Scholar

69 The two pamphlet replies were Catharine Macaulay's Observations which went through four editions and the anonymous An Analysis of the Thoughts on the Cause of the present Discontents, and of the Observations on the same (London, 1770),Google Scholar which was reviewed in the Monthly Review, XLIII (08 1770), pp. 161–2.Google Scholar For the newspaper and periodical coverage of the Thoughts see notes 56–8, 66–9. To my knowledge no provincial paper reviewed the Thoughts though the Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, 19 May 1770, and the Norwich Mercury, 12 May 1770, printed large extracts from the pamphlet.

70 Parliamentary History, XVI, cols. 973–4;Google Scholar,Fitzmaurice, Lord, Life of William Earl of Shelburne, afterwards First Marquess of Lansdowne, with extracts from his papers and correspondence (2 vols., London, 1912), I, 410–11;Google Scholar Richmond to Rockingham, 12 Feb. 1771, printed in Olson, Alison G., The Radical Duke (Oxford, 1961), pp. 141–2.Google Scholar

71 Walpole, , Memoirs of George III, IV, 132, 135.Google Scholar

72 Political Register, VI, 358; cf. ‘Reason for Alarm’ in London Chronicle, 1 May 1770.Google Scholar

73 Critical Review, XI, 303;Google Scholar cf. Monthly Review, XLII, 391;Google ScholarThe Gentleman's Magazine, XL, 222–3.Google Scholar

74 ‘Veteranus of Kent’ in the Gazetteer, 31 May 1770, The General Evening Post, 29 May 1770 and the Royal Magazine (May 1770), pp. 226–7;Google Scholar ‘Creonides’ in the Public Advertiser, 15 May 1770. Cf. Macaulay, , Observations, p. 19, where she describes Burke as ‘a man who we may justly esteem the mouth of faction’.Google Scholar

75 ‘A.B., ’ in the Independent Chronicle, 16 May 1770;Google Scholar ‘Philanax’ in the Public Advertiser, 14 June 1770.Google Scholar

76 For the newspapers that published ‘Old Slyboots’ see note 61 above.

77 Burke to Shackleton [ante 15 Aug. 1770], Burke, , Correspondence, II, 150.Google Scholar

78 Chatham to Rockingham, 15 Nov. 1770, Sheffield MSS R.1–1327; Richmond to Rockingham, 12 Feb. 1771, Olson, , Radical Duke, p. 142.Google Scholar

79 The True State of the Question (London, 1784), p. 13Google Scholar note. It is interesting to notice that the Thoughts was reprinted in 1784. (Todd, , Burke Bibliography, p. 75.)Google Scholar

80 For examples of this type of literature see amongst others, Political Disquisitions proper for public Consideration, in the present State of Affairs, In a Letter to a Noble Duke (London, 1763);Google ScholarAlmon, John, A History of the late Minority (London, 1765);Google ScholarThe Secret Springs of the late Changes in the Ministry Fairly Explained … In Answer to the Abuse and Misrepresentations of a Pretended Son of Candor (London, 1766),Google Scholar which, although pro-Government rehearses the main opposition views; The Political Conduct of the Earl of Chatham (London, 1769);Google Scholar[Lee, Arthur], The Political Detection; or, the Treachery and Tyranny of Administration, Both at Home and Abroad (London, 1770);Google Scholar[Bollan, William], The Free Britons Supplemental Memorial to the Electors of the Members of the British Parliament (London, 1770);Google ScholarA Letter to the Earl of Bute (London, 1771).Google Scholar

81 The Gazetteer, 15 May 1770.Google Scholar

82 [Rockingham] to [Chatham], draft [Nov. ? 1770], Sheffield MSS, R.1–1328.

83 For which see Skinner, Quentin, ‘The Limits of Historical Explanation’, Philosophy, XLI (1966), pp. 199–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

84 But see Pocock, J. G. A., ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution–A Problem in the History of Ideas’, H.J., III, 2 (1960), 125–43;Google ScholarLucas, Paul, ‘On Edmund Burke's Doctrine of Prescription; or, an Appeal from the New to the Old Lawyers’, H.J., IX, 1 (1968), 35–63;Google ScholarWhite, Ian, ‘The Problem of Burke's Political Philosophy’, H.J., IX, 3 (1968), 555–65. It will be apparent that I concur with several of White's criticisms of the authors under consideration.Google Scholar

83 Parkin, Charles, The Moral Basis of Burke's Thought (Cambridge, 1956), p. 2;Google Scholar Russell Kirk in the introduction to Stanlis, Peter J., Edmund Burfe and the Natural Law (Arbor, Ann ed., 1965), p. VII.Google Scholar These comments may be compared with those of Canavan, Francis P., The Political Reason of Edmund Burke (Durham, North Carolina, 1960), pp. 140, 189;Google ScholarGraubard, Stephen R., Burke, Disraeli and Churchill, The Politics of Perseverance (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), p. 86,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Mansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, p. 242, who sees the unity of Burke as self-evident: ‘ The reader, or the good critic, who makes the proper allowance, appreciates the consistency of Burke's life, which needs no such allowance, but only the understanding that produces it. As Churchill said, any man can sense Burke's consistency.’Google Scholar

86 Stanlis, , Burke and the Natural Law, p. 246.Google Scholar Elsewhere Stanlis reconciles the arguments of the Thoughts and the Reflections (pp. 216–18).Google Scholar See also Hoffman, Ross J. S. andLevack, Paul, Burke's Politics. Select writings and speeches of Edmund Burke on Reform, Revolution and War (New York, 1949), p. xiii, ‘His last years were not a paradox but a climax; he did not change his political philosophy but developed, deepened, and found new applications for it’.Google Scholar

87 Stanlis, , Burke and the Natural Law, pp. vi, 123.Google Scholar See also pp. ix, 71, 88, 202; Hoffman, and Levack, , Burke's Politics, p. ix;Google ScholarMansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, pp. 212, 235–8Google Scholar seems to see Burke's view of the natural law as ‘modern’ though stemming from a classical tradition. The dangers of accommodating a number of disparate thinkers to the uniform level of abstraction implied by an historical tradition have been discussed by John Pocock, ‘The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Inquiry’, in Laslett, and Runciman, (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, Second Series (Oxford, 1962), pp. 183–202.Google Scholar

88 Thus Stanlis, Burke and the Natural Law, pp. ix-x,Google Scholar argues that because ‘Burke was in the great classical tradition’ ‘it was for precisely this reason that he was opposed to the eighteenth- century revolutionary “rights of man” which derived from Hobbes, Locke, and the scientific rationalism of the seventeenth century’. Cobban and Einaudi argue in much the same vein: Cobban, A., Edmund Burke and the Revolt against the Eighteenth Century (2nd ed., London, 1962), passim;Google ScholarEinaudi, , ‘The British Background to Burke's Political Philosophy’, Political Science Quarterly, XLIX (1934), 576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar But, as Pocock has pointed out, ‘ Burke's thought can … be set in opposition to any rationalist system of politics … Such systems, of course, abounded in the eigh- teenth century, and Burke opposed these where he met with them. But this does not of itself justify us in supposing that the historical origins of Burke's thought are necessarily to be found in reaction against political rationalism, as if the latter had conditioned all political thinking before his time and some special explanation need to be found of his breaking with it.’ Pocock, , ‘Burke and the Ancient Constitution’, H.J., III (1960), 125–6.Google Scholar For the contention that Burke wrote the Thoughts ‘to oppose the menace of Bolingbroke's idea of a Patriot King by the new remedy, that of party government’, see Mansfield, , Statesmanship and Party Government, p. 41, 66, 80, 86;Google ScholarEinaudi, , loc. cit. p. 595.Google Scholar

89 For a critique of the ‘myth of coherence’ see Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas’, History and Theory, VII, 1 (1969), 16–22.Google Scholar

90 Leslie Stephen summarizes the position which has been perennially held by Burke scholars: ‘Burke's superiority is marked in this; that he is primarily a philosopher, and therefore instinctively sees the illustration of a general law in every particular fact… it would, indeed, be a narrow mind which could not now perceive that Burke, as a philosophic writer upon politics, towers like a giant amidst pigmies above the highest of his contemporaries; and that the value of his principles is scarcely affected by the particular application.’ Stephen, Leslie, Hours in a Library (3 vols., London, 1892), II, 360; III, 273.Google Scholar

91 For the significance of understanding an author's intention in writing a text in order to understand its meaning, see the argument of Skinner in ‘Meaning and Understanding’, History and Theory, VIII (1969), 44–9.Google Scholar

92 In the nineteenth century Burke's works were the political vade mecum of the parliamentary classes. Read by Gladstone and Dizzy, eulogized by Whig and Tory alike, the universal praise accorded to Burke was coloured by a century-long battle between the parties to claim him as their ideological precursor. See Morley, John, The Life of William Ewart Gladstone (3 vols., London, 1903), I, 203;Google ScholarDisraeli, Benjamin, Sybil, or the Two Nations (London, 1895), pp. 17–18;Google Scholar Acton MSS, Cambridge University Library, Add.MSS 4965, fo. 45. There are innumerable articles about or with reference to Burke in the Edinburgh Review, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, the Quarterly Review and the Fortnightly Review, some of which are cited in note 11 above.

93 I wish to express my thanks to Professor Plumb, my research supervisor, Mr Quentin Skinner and Dr Derek Beales for reading earlier drafts of this paper and providing some most helpful criticism and guidance.