sinking fund; and, in addition to others of less moment, on the Irish commercial propositions.

On the latter question, though siding chiefly with Opposition, he did not take so active a part as was expected, a feeling of delicacy preventing him, as he said in reply to an allusion from Mr. Pitt, as to his being an Irishman, from balancing minutely and invidiously, conflicting claims between the country of his nativity, and that of his adoption, when the latter had raised him from nothing, to stations of high public trust and honour, with the power to legislate, not for any one class of persons, or for any one spot, however dear that spot might be to him, but for the general interests of the kingdom at large.

Mr. Pitt's motion for reform in the representation drew from Mr. Burke some pointed animadversions, demanding how he, of all men, could assume that the people were not sufficiently represented in that House, when he was daily in the habit of boasting that his own place and preponderance there, were solely owing to the voice of the people? On the bill of the Minister for regulating the public offices, which Mr. Sheridan termed a mere rat-catching measure, he was equally severe, and continuing the allusion, ludicrously quoted

"Mice and rats, and such small deer,

Had been Tom's food for seven long year."

Contrasting its biting and impracticable economy with the profusion countenanced in India, which would ultimately fall on the shoulders of England, he used the following extraordinary series of figures; new and forcible indeed, and conveying a striking impression

to the mind, but objectionable from their number, and from following each other in such quick sucċession; passages of this kind, however, are rare in his works:

"He (Mr. Pitt) was desirous to draw a resource out of the crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury. He was rasping from the marrowless bones of skeleton establishments an empirical alimentary powder to diet into a similitude of health the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. But while Parliament looked with anxiety at his desperate and laborious trifling, while they were apprehensive that he would break his back with stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound; and with a broadcast swing of his arm, he squandered over his Indian field a sum far greater than the amount of all these establishments added together."

This Indian field now chiefly occupied Mr. Burke's thoughts, as he himself expressed it, "at all hours and seasons, in the retirements of summer, in the avocations of the winter, and even amid the snows (alluding to the ill-reception he had experienced the preceding session) that had lately been showering on his head." Besides the amendment to the Address, already noticed, he subsequently supported motions by other members on the same fruitful subject of India.

But his great effort, February 28th, was on the debts of the Nabob of Arcot, one of those remarkable outpourings of a most fertile and vigorous intellect, which on an unpromising theme, and under the disadvantage of rising last in the debate, seemed to combine all that could instruct, dazzle, and even

overpower the hearer. It has been said to be in some parts florid. But in energy, in rhetorical address, in a minute knowledge of India and especially the intricacies of the question itself, in the boldness of his attacks upon those of the Company's servants who were considered by their intrigues to have laid the foundation of these debts, in the clearness of his narrative and detail, it was rated equal to any thing ever delivered in Parliament. The oppressions exercised upon the neighbouring state of Tanjore, by the Nabob and his agents, had already produced much animadversion, and Mr. Burke being well informed of the circumstances from private information, as well as public documents, characterized the chief agent and counsellor of his Highness on these occasions, Mr. Paul Bd, as "the old betrayer, insulter, oppressor, and scourge, of a country which has for years been an object of an unremitted, but unhappily an unequal struggle, between the bounties of Providence to renovate and the wickedness of mankind to destroy."-Some of the spirit of the speech is said to have evaporated in the printed report.

Shortly after this period he suffered great agony of mind for some time, in consequence of a newspaper account of the loss, in a violent storm off the coast of Holland, of a Harwich packet, in which his son had embarked for the Continent. Fortunately the report proved untrue; he arrived in safety, and after visiting Holland, Flanders, and some of the adjoining states, was received with some distinction in the Court and capital of France. During his

father's tenure of power, he had been appointed Joint-receiver with Dr. King of the revenues of the Crown Lands, held for life; and after the death of the Marquis of Rockingham, Earl Fitzwilliam had made him auditor of his accounts.

Some lines were addressed to him on occasion of the above afflicting rumour, by an old friend in Ireland, beginning

"On a Report of Edmund Burke's Death, and of his
Son having been lost at Sea.

"Safely secluded in the silent shade,

Far from the clamour and the toils of state,

No foreign cares our calm repose invade,
One link alone connects us with the great.

"For Burke we love, and with affection dear
Our watchful eyes pursue his track of light;
And, when he mov'd in pow'r's resplendent sphere,
We bless'd the sphere where blaz'd an orb so bright.

"But when, with virtuous scorn and just disdain,
From these polluted scenes he nobly turn'd;
Left to corruption and her venal train,

We not for him but for our country mourn'd.

"To him each dear domestic joy belongs,
Joys more congenial to his gen'rous heart
Than guilty wealth, amass'd by cruel wrongs,
Than all that pow'r and splendour can impart.

"Oh, tell it not :-recal the tidings sore,

Which damp our fainting hearts with chilling breath, Rude as the blast which ravag'd Belgia's shore,

Where the loud tempest rous'd the seeds of death.

What costly sacrifice dost thou require, font
Insatiate ocean? madly dost thou rave :-

Must such a son-the son of such a sire

Must Burke's sole offspring glut thy greedy wave?

"If o'er his head thy murd'rous surge be roll'd,

While youth resists, and virtue pleads in vain,y, if 9H Restore that treasure-though the corse be cold

The mounting spirit thou could'st not detain.", inda

It was at the opening of the next session, January 24th, 1786, that Mr. Burke entered on one of the most tempestuous scenes of his life-nearly the whole of which was a political storm-in the prosecution of Mr. Hastings, late Governor General of India, who had recently arrived in England. }) <27

Much consideration is necessary adequately to appreciate the degree of moral courage requisite for this undertaking, nothing so arduous or laborious having ever fallen to the lot of a member of the English legislature; for though the work was in. some measure divided, much the greater part unavoidably fell to his share. It demanded not only uncommon capacity of mind, but the most effective, and popular, and Parlimentary working talents; an utter disregard of difficulty; a vast fund of local. knowledge; a perseverance in mental and bodily labour not to be conquered; a contempt for obloquy and reproach of every kind, such as few men had fortitude enough to encounter; an acquaintance with the powers, interests, habits, actual condition, intrigues, and even villanies of nearly all India, such as no man, and scarcely any body of men out of the country, could be expected to possess.