NOTES ON BURKE, VOL. 2 OF F.P. LOCK'S BIOGRAPHY

The notes I posted from Vol. 1 are here.

Edmund Burke was unalterably opposed to increasing democracy in England and sounded a bit like Mark Levin does today when he mentioned his opponents:

Pitt's third defeat of the session was on parliamentary reform. His new scheme (his third and last), unveiled on 18 April 1785, was so cautious and moderate that his hopes, and those of his supporters, were high. Up to thirty-six 'rotten' or 'pocket' boroughs were to be disfranchised, and their representation transferred to the most populous of the counties. The process was to be voluntary: in effect, those borough proprietors who were willing to sell would be bought out. If any boroughs beyond the thirty-six chose to surrender their representation, their seats would be allocated to the largest unrepresented towns (such as Birmingham, Manchester, and Sheffield)." Parliamentary reform was a question that cut across the usual loyalties. Fox (converted to the cause in 178o) supported it, but many of those who normally followed Pitt were opposed. Burke had always reprobated parliamentary reform of any kind, even when token approval of a measure certain to be defeated would have safely purchased him a little cheap popularity." Regarding the composition of Parliament as answering every practical purpose, Burke always discountenanced any attempt to tinker or tamper with it. Here was an opportunity for a statesmanlike speech, rising above the petty animosities of the day. Burke failed to take it, instead delivering the weakest of his speeches on the topic. Beginning by ridiculing Dundas for his unprincipled conversion, since his junction with Pitt, to the cause of reform, Burke spent more time on personal attacks than on considerations of principle. Indeed, he used the occasion chiefly to strike at some of his most hated betes noires: Pitt himself; the proponents of more extensive reforms, such as Christopher Wyvill (i738-1822) and the Duke of Richmond (1735-18°6); and the borough-mongers ennobled by Pitt as a reward for their support at the last election. PAGE 21

On several occasions, Burke's speeches in Parliament were as bad as any rightwing radio rant:

He compared Pitt to a mountebank, climbing to power on a secret ladder, and his ministry to 'scraps stolen from a great merchant's warehouse, to furnish out a pedler's box'. One of these 'scraps', who had 'proved themselves to be slaves, by turning fugitives', though not named, was of course Eden. Finally, still obsessed by the events of 1783-4, Burke once more sought to defend the much-maligned Coalition. Such an irrelevant emotive outburst was an embarrassment to the cause it was meant to serve. Wilberforce lamented that `a Gentleman of such abilities' should descend to 'stupidity and abuse' from the 'wit and argument' of 'his better days'. Pitt was more brutal, claiming never to have heard a speech 'more replete with abuse, more personal, more gross, or more outrageous', even from Burke. Henry Addington (1757-1844), in a comment that anticipates many made at the time of the Regency Crisis, reported to his father that Burke was 'violent to madness'. PAGE 131

Just like most of rightwing talk radio, Burke often seemed out of touch with reality:

On India, Burke was increasingly losing touch with reality, and incapable of expressing himself except in the strident superlatives of self-righteous moral outrage. PAGE 49

While public attention was riveted on the Regency Crisis, few spared much thought for the trial of Warren Hastings. Burke, of course, was an exception, In a draft for a speech on the Regency, to emphasize the dangers of making the Crown in any degree elective, he imagined the nightmare of a Hastings like figure usurping the monarchy:

The great policy of the Law has ever been to keep elections out of it [the succession]. It would be its last its incurable corruption—an election to the Crown would be the worst—if we may think we are more virtuous than the Diet of Poland, but if it be venal twice an Age—why it should not be venal with us—if so a Nabob from India, one day the Object of your impeachment, may be the next an Object of succession to your Crown."

Such fantasies can only have fuelled suspicions that Burke had wholly lost touch with reality. PAGE 222

Burke thought so little of democracy that he would have been willing to abolish it entirely in England:

Government, Burke insisted, is not 'a problem of arithmetic', to be decided by numbers (R [76]). While acknowledging that government was instituted for the benefit of the governed, he had no faith in the wisdom of the many. He therefore distrusted electoral democracy as a mode of government, and had little faith in popular elections, even with an electorate as narrow as that of eighteenth-century Britain. Speaking against a plan to shorten the duration of parliaments, he argued that popular elections were a 'mighty Evil', only necessary because the alternative was worse (8 May 1780: WS iii). PAGE 322

Burke would also have agree with our modern day Dominionists:

Far from allowing a separation of Church and State, as implied by Fox's definition of 'persecution', Burke argues that 'in a Christian Commonwealth the Church and the State are one and the same thing'. Far from being indifferent to religion, a Christian magistrate 'has a right and a duty to watch over it with an unceasing vigilance; to protect, to promote, to forward it by every rational, just, and prudent means'. Again against Fox, Burke insists that the magistrate must also attend to opinions as well as to actions. PAGE 413