admirable medicine against the French disease; I admire his eloquence, I approve his politics, I adore his chivalry, and I can almost forgive his reverence for church establishments." It cannot be denied that the horrors of the Revolution blinded him to the fearful oppressions that had roused the French people, and to the pure and elevated motives of many of the leading revolutionists — men of a widely different stamp from the effeminate emigrants, lay and ecclesiastic, that claimed so much of his pity. The Revolution had a powerful influence in warping his judgment of public events during the remainder of his life. The sincerity of his expressed opinions in regard to it, is shown by his maintaining them at the cost of all his political friendships–more especially those with Fox and with Sheridan. Fox had declared that "he considered the new constitution of France as the most stupendous and glorious edifice of liberty which had been erected on the foundation of human integrity in any time or country." On 6th May 1791, a formal renunciation of his friendship with Fox was made in the House of Commons. The scene is said to have been most distressing—Fox declaring, whilst the tears streamed down his cheeks, "that by being so cast off by one to whom he owed such obligations, he felt that a wound was inflicted for which a grateful heart had no balm." Burke expressed himself thus in his will, written a few years later: "If the intimacy which I have had with others has been broken off by political differences on great questions concerning the state of things existing and impending, I hope they will forgive whatever of general human infirmity, or of my own particular infirmity, has entered into that contention. I heartily entreat their forgiveness." Before his death he sought and brought about a reconciliation with Fox, and with other statesmen from whom politics had estranged him. In his own words: "I shall soon quit this stage, and want to die in peace with everybody." Fox was supported in his views regarding France by the Whig party. This elicited Burke's Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs. In 1792 his son went to Ireland as agent for the Catholics; and his own attention was specially turned to the question of Catholic disabilities—his opinions being laid before the public in letters addressed to his son and Sir H. Langrishe. In February 1793 war with France, so long predicted by him as inevitable, broke out, and in Parliament he strenuously opposed Mr. Fox's resolutions condemnatory of hostilities. In August of this year he formally seceded from the Whig party in consequence of its action regarding France. Mr. Buckle forcibly points out Burke's extravagance of language on this occasion, and concludes his observations upon his advocacy of war in these words: "In his calmer moments, no one would have more willingly recognized that the opinions prevalent in any country are the inevitable results of the circumstances in which that country had been placed. But now he sought to alter those opinions by force. From the beginning of the French Revolution, he insisted upon the right, and indeed upon the necessity, of compelling France to change her principles, and at a later period he blamed the allied sovereigns for not dictating to a great people the government they ought to adopt. Such was the havoc circumstances had made in his well ordered intellect, that to this one principle he sacrificed every consideration of justice, of mercy, and of expediency. As if war, even in its mildest form, was not sufficiently hateful, he sought to give to it that character of a crusade which increasing knowledge had long since banished; and loudly proclaiming that the contest was religious rather than temporal, he revived old prejudices in order to cause fresh crimes. He also declared that the war should be carried on for revenge as well as for defence, and that we must never lay down our arms until we had utterly destroyed the men by whom the Revolution was brought about; and as if these things were not enough, he insisted that this, the most awful of all wars, being begun, was not to be hurried over; although it was to be carried on for revenge as well as for religion, and these scourges of civilized men were to be quickened by the ferocious passions of crusaders, still it was not to be soon ended; it was to be durable; it must have a permanence; 'it must,' says Burke, in the spirit of a burning hatred, 'be protracted in a long war. I speak it emphatically, and with a desire that it should be marked, in a long war.' It was to be a war to force a great people to change their government. It was to be a war carried on for the purpose of punishment. It was also to be a religious war. Finally, it was to be a long war. Was there ever any other man who wished to afflict the human race with such extensive, searching, and protracted calamities? Such cruel, such reckless, and yet such deliberate opinions, if they issued from a sane mind, would immortalize even the most obscure statesman, because they would load his name with imperishable infamy. For where can we find, even among the most ignorant or most sanguinary politi-
