In the beginning of July, he began his attack on Mr. Hastings by proposing a string of resolutions, as a foundation for an inquiry into the conduct of that gentleman. Mr. Pitt opposed the resolutions, because there were not proofs of the facts which Burke had stated. Mr. Burke, however, persevering in a declamatory re-assertion of his charges, was at length overpowered by a loud and continual clamour. During the remainder of the session, he made no considerable exertion.

Dr. Johnson being now near his end, Burke frequently visited him. One day he went in company with Mr. Windham and several other gentlemen; and Burke expressing his fear lest so much company should be oppressive to the invalid; "No, Sir, (said Johnson,) it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state indeed when your company would not delight me." He continued in a tremulous voice, "My dear sir, you have always been too good to me!" This was the last meeting of the two friends.

In this year (1784) Mr. Burke was chosen Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow.-Jan. 25, 1785, parliament met, and Burke exerted himself in a speech on the payment of the Nabob of Arcot's debts, which the Board of Controul had directed to be charged on the Carnatic revenues. On April 18, Mr. Pitt made a motion for a parliamentary reform. He was supported by Mr. Fox: but Mr. Burke declared himself inimical to any change in the representation, and strongly reprobated the dissemination of doctrines which tended to persuade the people that the inequality of franchises was a grievance. The bill was lost by a large majority. -The commercial propositions for an adjustment of trade with Ireland, the object of which was to allow the mutual importation of the manufactures of each country into the other on equal terms, were in this session discussed and supported by Mr. Burke. They passed the British parliament, but were not accepted by the parliament of Ireland.

Previously to the session which began Jan. 1786, Mr. Hastings had returned to Europe; and on the 17th of February Mr. Burke again called the attention of the House to that gentleman's conduct in India, and his labours on that subject terminated in the parliamentary impeachment of Mr. Hastings. His motives in the commencement and prosecution of that measure have not escaped censure; - by some he is charged with malice,-by others with the hope of gain. Dr. Bisset vindicates him from entertaining any dishonourable view in that business, and shews that the prosecution of Mr. Hastings became necessary from what was disclosed before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, to whom was referred the consideration of certain petitions on the usurpation of the judicial power in India, Whether

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Whether Mr. Hastings were guilty or innocent of the charges brought against him, there certainly appears to be no good ground for imputing malice or avarice to Mr. Burke in regard to his share of the prosecution. - During the succeeding session, parliament was occupied by the French treaty. Dr. Bisset gives a warm panegyric of its merits: but he tells us that Burke as well as Mr. Fox, in the true spirit of party-men, opposed it. On Mr. Pitt's measure of consolidating the customs, Mr. Burke bestowed high praise. On the 28th of March 1787, a motion was made for repealing the test-act; and though Mr. Burke had formerly given a warm support to this measure, he now opposed it. Dr. Bisset tells us that Burke is charged with inconsistency for thus opposing the same measure which he had before supported: but, says the Doctor, nothing could be more consistent;-for the Dissenters in 1787 were not the same as they had been in 1772. In the year 1772, he says, there were among the Dissenters no known principles inimical to our establishment. In 1787, principles unfavourable to the constitution of our state had been published by their leading men, and had been reprobated by Mr. Burke. - Thus it appears that, if any man of note in a dissenting body shall presume to utter any political opinion not quadrating exactly with those of such men as Mr. Burke, these latter may be justified in holding their fellow-subjects in a state of 'relaxed slavery;' a kind of • liberty unfit for the meridian of England!'

The attention of the public was diverted from the impeachment, to the contest excited by the question of Regency. On its being ascertained that a temporary incapacity existed for exercising the functions of government, Mr. Fox's idea was that, during the incapacity, there was a temporary demise of the crown; and that, therefore, the next heir should assume for the time the powers of government. Mr. Pitt's opinion was, that in such a case it rested with parliament to supply the deficiency. Burke supported the opinion of Mr. Fox, in language the most intemperate and by conduct the most violent. So intemperate indeed and so violent was he, that even his associates and coadjutors expressed their disapprobation. drew up the questions addressed to Mr. Gill, the Lord Mayor, which contained very bitter invectives against administration; he also wrote an answer to Mr. Pitt's Letter to the Prince; and in both of these compositions he seems to be in possession of his former powers.

He

During this period, appeared Simkin's "Letters to his brother Simon in Wales," a severe poetical attack on Burke; on which Dr. Bisset takes occasion to pay his hero the ambiguous compliment (borrowed from Sir John Falstaffe) that he was not only

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the wittyest of men himself, but was also the occasion of wit in others.' During this summer, Mr. Burke visited Ireland. Some years before, he had made a tour with his friend Mr. Windham to Scotland; of which the only memorable circumstance related is, that the two gentlemen were highly pleased with two pretty girls at a country inn, and to whom they sent, from the next town, a copy of Cecilia!

It appears that, whether in or out of office, Mr. Burke had a strong propensity to provide for his friends and connections. Dr. Bisset quarrels with another Biographer of Mr. Burke for saying that he made a job of Mr. Hastings's impeachment: but he admits the facts from which that inference is drawn. He allows also that Mr. B. obtained for his brother Richard three several appointments, - besides introducing him as Counsel in the impeachment. Of his private affairs, we are told, he was not careful. Although free from the extravagance of profligacy, he was habitually liable to the waste of inattention; and, consequently, he was generally embarrassed. Several reports of unjustifiable means used by him to recruit his finances had been circulated by his enemies, but of such assertions, says Dr. Bisset, there is no evidence. -Burke, he tells us, had a beneficent mind. In a desire to be extensively useful, he studied physic: but, in a mistake of practice, he was near poisoning his wife. Mrs. Burke being ill, her husband undertook to make up a draught which had been ordered for her: but unfortunately mistaking one phial for another, he gave her Jaudanum. The immediate application of antidotes saved her life, Mr. Burke now lost his last surviving friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds: among whose papers was found a cancelled bond from Burke for 2000l.; and Sir Joshua bequeathed to him 2000l. more. Concerning Sir Joshua's elegant discourses to the Royal Academy, the public have been divided, respecting the identity of the author, Mr. M'Cormick asserts that they were the composition of Burke, and the authority which he adduces is the amanuensis by whom they were copied. Dr. Bisset denies that Mr. Burke was the author: but, allowing the argument drawn from the internal evidence of the composition themselves to be in favor of Mr. M'Cormick, he adduces on the other side only the authority of Mr. Malone; who, he says, as the Knight's constant friend, had the best means of knowing the truth. His being the friend of Sir Joshua certainly does not make him the best authority, on a question in which the literary fame of that artist is con cerned.

Burke wrote a character of Reynolds, which deserves praise for its composition, and bespeaks the warmth of the writer's friendship.

A short

A short time before the demise of Sir Joshua, another of Burke's early friends, Mr. Gerrard Hamilton, departed this life. He was a man to whom Mr. Burke owed much: from whom he early separated; and with whom he afterward refused to be intimate. Mr. Hamilton is with good reason thought to be the author of at least one of the letters of Junius, from the circumstance of being acquainted with its contents before it appeared in public. -The judgment which he very early passed on Burke deserves to be known, because it continued to be just when applied to him at the latest time of life." Whatever opinion," said Mr. Hamilton, "Burke, from any motive, supports, so ductile is his imagination that he soon conceives it to be right."

We now come to the last and most important epoch in the life of Mr. Burke, - The French Revolution: -that point whence, if he did not really turn back in the orbit in which he had hitherto shone so brightly as the able advocate of popular right and liberty, he certainly appeared, at least to common eyes, to become retrograde. To prepare the reader for the line of conduct which Mr. B. adopted with respect to that great event, Dr. Bisset enters into a very long disquisition on the old government of France, the progress of metaphysical learning, which led to the subversion of that government, the process of the revolution, the violence and injustice with which it was accompanied, and the extravagant notions of liberty entertained by some who approved it: but, more especially, he dwells on the effects which it produced on the mind of Mr. Burke; who, • from principle and habit, guided by experience in his judgments and conduct, considered liberty as a matter of moral enjoyment, and not of metaphysical disquisition; and who, like Livy, did not think a horde of barbarians equally fitted for the contests of freedom as men in a more advanced state of knowlege and civilization.' Under the old govnerment of France, the Doctor acknowleges, 'the suggestion of a priest or a prostitute would desolate a province, and drive from the country its most industrious inhabitants; the peasant was, like the ox, the mere property of his superior, and the tyranny of the lord was only suspended and checked by the tyranny of the officers of government, who dragged him from his starving family to work.in some corvée of public concern, or of absurd magnificence; or to sell him salt, respecting which he was neither permitted to choose the time at which he would purchase, nor the quantity he would take.' The revolution, which delivered twenty-four millions of people from this kind of established government, excited in the cautious mind of Mr. Burke only the reflexions that, bad as arbitrary power was, unwise efforts to shake it off might produce still greater evils; that the notions

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of liberty which prevailed in France were speculative and visionary; that the impetuous character of the French required much closer restraints than that of many other states; and that the composition of the National Assembly, the degradation of the nobility, the abolition of orders, and the confiscation of the property of the church, all tended to prove that a compound of anarchy and wickedness would be substituted for the old arbitrary government. Mr. Burke's cautious opinions, however, on this subject, were not those of Englishmen in general. ''The love of liberty, a sentiment in itself so noble and so congenial to their feelings, was so powerful as to conquer every other sentiment, and inspire admiration of the exertions which overthrew despotism.' Even a ' statesman of high rank, and the highest talents, venerating liberty in general, presuming French liberty would render its votaries happy, imputing the aggressions of France on this country and others to the corrupt ambition of the old court, and anticipating tranquillity from her renovated state, rejoiced at a change that foreboded peace to Britain and to Europe.' In this class was Mr. Fox; who, in his speech on the army estimates, in 1790, adverting to the revolution of France, said that he considered that event as a reason for rendering a smaller military establishment advisable on our part. "The new form," he said, "that the government of France was likely to assume, would, he was persuaded, make her a better neighbour and less propense to hostility, than when she was subject to the cabal and intrigues of ambitious and interested statesmen." Burke, who had been waiting for an opportunity of declaring his disapprobation of the principles and the proceedings of the French Revolutionists, delivered his sentiments on this occasion. In the course of his speech, after having dissented from Mr. Fox, he expressed his fear of this country " being led, through an admiration of successful fraud and violence, to imitate the excess of an irra tional, unprincipled, proscribing, confiscating, plundering, ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy." Without inquiring whether this sentiment of Mr. Burke may or may not be reconciled by metaphysical ingenuity with some latent principle extracted from the great mass of his former writings and speeches, it is easy to conceive that the application of the words " ferocious, bloody, and tyrannical democracy," to men who had overthrown the French despotism, by a man who during a long life had been the most bold and zealous member of a popular party, and who had justified and praised America for venturing on all the horrors of a revolution, rather than submit to the imposition of a trivial impost, must have been heard by his old friends with astonishment. Mr. Fox, in his reply, having expressed in very high