'Suppose, Mr. Speaker, that to Wharton, or to Marlborough, or to any of the eminent whigs of the last age, the devil[1] had, not with any great impropriety, consented to appear; he would perhaps in somewhat like these words have commenced the conversation:
'You seem, my Lord, to be concerned at the judicious apprehension, that while you are sapping the foundations of royalty at home, and propagating here the dangerous doctrine of resistance; the distance of America may secure its inhabitants from your arts, though active: but I will unfold to you the gay prospects of futurity. This people, now so innocent and harmless, shall draw the sword against their mother country, and bathe its point in the blood of their benefactors; this people, now contented with a little, shall then refuse to spare what they themselves confess they could not miss[2]; and these men, now so honest and so grateful, shall, in return for peace and for protection, see[3] their vile agents in the house of parliament, there to sow the seeds of sedition, and propagate confusion, perplexity, and pain. Be not dispirited then at the contemplation of their present happy state: I promise you that anarchy, poverty, and death shall, by my care, be carried even
- ↑ 'I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.' Life, iii. 326.
- ↑ What they refused to spare was a contribution towards the expenses of the last French war.
- ↑ See I have little doubt is a misprint for fee.
For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. ... Suppose, Sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth ... If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little speck scarcely visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him – "Young man, there is America – which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world,"' &c. Payne's Burke, i. 172.
W. W. Pepys wrote to Hannah More: – 'I once heard a man say of Burke, while he was pouring forth torrents of eloquence in the House of Commons, "How closely that fellow reasons in metaphor!"' More's Memoirs, iii. 377.
