Edmund Burke: The Visionary Who Invented Modern Politics. Jesse Norman

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СКАЧАТЬ stage. His famous, and utterly characteristic, remark to the Duke of Devonshire dates from this time: ‘My Lord, I am sure that I can save this country, and that no-one else can.’ Astonishingly, Pitt made good this claim. He took personal control of the war, targeting overseas trade, and French trade in particular, across four theatres: the West Indies, North America, Africa and India. Each saw vigorous action. An alliance with Prussia on the European mainland freed up British troops to support the navy in Pitt’s ‘blue water’ strategy. French plans to invade Britain were cut off by a blockade of their fleets in Brest and Toulon.

      The year 1759 proved to be one colossal triumph after another, for Britain and for the Great Commoner, as Pitt was now known. Guadeloupe was captured, and Dakar. French Canada fell to General James Wolfe after a brilliant night attack on Quebec. Sweetest of all, the French navy was at last forced to put to sea. The Toulon fleet was destroyed by Admiral Boscawen, that of Brest by Admiral Hawke off Quiberon. The country rejoiced. ‘Our bells are quite worn threadbare from ringing for victories,’ wrote Horace Walpole, son of Sir Robert and man of letters, late in the year. Pitt, it seemed, could do no wrong.

      But military triumph was succeeded by political instability. In 1760 King George II died, and – his son Frederick having died unexpectedly in 1751 – his grandson ascended the throne as George III. The new King was young, restless, highly judgemental and widely suspected of being under the malign influence of the Earl of Bute. He shared with Pitt a desire to govern without the need for party or faction. But the two men had fallen out some time earlier, and it was only a matter of time before Pitt departed, as he did in 1761. Nine further years of political turmoil and turnover in government were to follow.

      Among the King’s early changes, Lord Halifax was moved from the Board of Trade and sent to Dublin as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. William Hamilton accompanied him, now promoted to Chief Secretary; and with him went Burke, leaving the family to follow later. It was Burke’s first trip home since leaving Ireland in 1750, and he cannot have relished seeing his father again. To soften the blow, he sent him a copy of the Enquiry via an intermediary, and received back a message of thanks and forgiveness, and even a remittance. But the wound was never to heal fully, for Richard Burke died before seeing his son again. It was a sad ending to their relationship, but perhaps a relief as well.

      Burke’s stay in Dublin was unremarkable, except for an outbreak of rural terrorism by a group known as the Whiteboys, after their white smocks. These protests arose from poverty and protest at high rents and arbitrary evictions. Initially non-violent, Whiteboy tactics were hardened by the scale and savagery of the response by Protestant landlords and the Dublin authorities, which sent in a force of militiamen. This killed some protesters and captured others. It was followed by what was widely seen as the judicial murder of the main suspects by hanging. This was Burke’s first exposure to organized protest and its violent suppression, and his sympathies were heavily on the side of the Catholic underclass. All the more so since the victims included Father Nicholas Sheehy, an opponent of the penal laws and relative of Burke’s by marriage, who was tried three times in relation to the Whiteboys and finally hanged, drawn and quartered in 1766.

      In 1763 Hamilton was promoted again, this time to the valuable sinecure of Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland. For his part Burke accepted a grant, or ‘pension’, of £300. His feelings were equivocal, however, combining gratitude to Hamilton with a chafing desire to maintain a degree of independence. Pensions were common, but almost always regarded as the result of political corruption and patronage, still more so since the jobbery of Walpole (one of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary definitions of a pensioner is ‘a slave of state hired by a stipend to obey his master’). What made things worse was that Burke’s pension was on the Irish Exchequer, not the English, at a time when such pensions were a particular focus of grievance among Irish politicians, including some of his own friends. Burke knew well how little his countrymen could afford him; and claims of undue Irish influence, indeed of popery and Jesuitry, were to dog him later in public life.

      In retrospect, it was inevitable that Burke and Hamilton would split. Their personalities were quite different: Burke passionate, committed and warm, Hamilton cool, indolent and sarcastic. Burke was blossoming, Hamilton controlling. Matters were not helped when Hamilton fell out with his new Lord Lieutenant, the Earl of Northumberland, and was dismissed in May 1764. On returning to Ireland he appears to have sought to retain Burke under an exclusive lifetime contract of service. Burke, who had greatly disapproved of Hamilton’s conduct in Ireland, rejected the offer as ‘a sort of domestic situation’ and resigned his pension. Nothing could be more rebarbative than such a role to his free-ranging mind, need for self-expression and nascent political ambitions. By February 1765, amid some rancour, they had parted.

      Always prickly about his personal integrity, after the breach with Hamilton Burke felt it necessary to circulate a note among his friends clearing himself of any fault, but setting terms for them as well: ‘I never can … submit to any sort of compromise on my Character; and I shall never therefore look upon those, who after hearing the whole story, do not think me perfectly in the right, and do not consider Hamilton as an infamous scoundrel, to be in the smallest degree my friends.’ At a time when personal reputation counted for much, laying out the facts may have seemed only prudent. It had a theoretical basis too, in Burke’s developing view that party and political leadership were properly anchored in good character. But it was also unfair to Hamilton, neurotic and alienating. As he grew older, Burke’s own essential goodness would shine through on many occasions. But under pressure of events his belief in it would harden into unconquerable self-righteousness, and occasionally self-deception. He gained devotees, but lost many would-be friends and political allies as a result.

      All this was in the future, however. For the most part, Burke’s friendships at this time were flourishing. Ability and luck had brought him to the very heart of one of the greatest gatherings of talent ever witnessed. This included the Scottish philosopher, historian and notorious infidel David Hume, who on a visit to London gave Burke a copy of the Theory of Moral Sentiments by his friend Adam Smith. Burke responded with a letter of thanks to Smith and published a very favourable review in the Annual Register, leading to an acquaintance. Then there was the painter Joshua Reynolds, later to found the Royal Academy, who was an intimate of Burke’s for more than three decades. He in turn presented Burke with a portrait of their close mutual friend, the actor David Garrick, then leading a revolution to replace bombast and declamation in the theatre with more realistic styles of acting.

      But the centre of literary debate would in time become Dr Johnson’s Club, or simply ‘the Club’. In general, it has been well said that the eighteenth century was the age of the club. There were clubs to meet almost every conceivable social need, personal interest or human contingency. If Joseph Addison is to be believed, they included clubs for the surly, the ugly and the flatulent; and even a Lunatick Club set up by a group of Essex farmers, which met at the full moon. And there was a roster of clubs catering to aristocratic debauch. One such was the infamous Hellfire Club, another ‘the Most Ancient and Most Puissant Order of the Beggar’s Benison and Merryland, Anstruther’, an all-male sex club much patronized by the lawyers, businessmen and clergy of Fife, and in particular by the Earls of Kellie. The clue is in the title, ‘Merryland’ being a popular codeword for the female body.

      Despite its perennial association with Dr Johnson, the Club seems in fact to have been the inspiration of Reynolds. Founded in early 1764, it was devoted to conversation, and met originally every two weeks at the Turk’s Head tavern in Soho, in the centre of London. Its nine founding members spanned the arts and included, as well as Burke and Reynolds (known as ‘Romulus’, after the founder of Rome), Burke’s congenial father-in-law Dr Nugent, the Irish playwright and fellow Trinity alumnus Oliver Goldsmith, the music critic Charles Burney, the classical scholar Bennet Langton and of course Samuel Johnson himself. A print by George Thompson (after James William Edmund Doyle; see following page/s) of a literary party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house in 1781 doubtless conveys something of the atmosphere: Johnson is holding forth to Burke, watched by Reynolds and Garrick. Burney and the Corsican patriot Pasquale СКАЧАТЬ