party of Newcastle and of Rockingham, of Portland and of Burke, threw in their lot with the Tory power which they had allowed to grow up and overshadow the land, while themselves engaged in quarrelling with the more liberal members of their own connection, because the latter had shewn that they believed Whig principles to consist, not in a blind adoration of the actual results of the Revolution of 1688, but in comprehending that those results were capable of development in accordance with the ever-changing circumstances of the time. The old Whigs forgot that the aristocracy of the Revolution had only been able to surmount the difficulty of their own want of numbers, and the hostility of large and influential interests, because they were the most enlightened, the most liberal, and the most educated class in the country, yet they imagined that they could still continue to hold all the offices and exercise all the patronage of the State when Newcastle and Rockingham and Portland had replaced Somers and Cowper and Godolphin. Over the declining days of their party a lustre was indeed shed by the splendid talents and eloquence of Burke; but it was the glow of autumn, not the brightness of spring heralding a new summer, and if Burke was their most brilliant advocate he was also their worst adviser. More especially was it so on this occasion. As Burke claimed the glory, so must he, the ablest of the old Whigs, bear the responsibility of the Declaratory Act. "Parliament," it has been said in his defence, "was in the opinion of the most judicious and temperate statesmen of the time, legally competent to tax America, as it was legally competent to commit any other act of folly or wickedness, to confiscate the property of all the merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint any man in the kingdom of high treason without examining witnesses against him or hearing in his own defence."[1] The argument is correct; but what would have been thought if Parliament, after an unsuccessful attempt at committing one of these acts of folly or wickedness, had met, and in the face of the whole world and at
- ↑ Macaulay, Essay on Earl of Chatham.
