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

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СКАЧАТЬ In particular, Burke was at pains to contrast the Rockinghamites’ uprightness with the forces ranged against them: ‘With the Earl of Bute they had no personal connection … They neither courted nor persecuted him. They practised no corruption … They sold no offices. They obtained no reversions or pensions … for themselves, their families, or their dependents [sic]. In the prosecution of their measures, they were traversed by an opposition of a new and singular character; an opposition of placemen and pensioners.’ These were not purely personal remarks; they gave a glimpse of a new conception of the very idea of a political party.

      Burke had hopes of being given a position within the new administration, but these were ended by Chatham himself. The experience strengthened his conviction that his future belonged with Rockingham, whether in opposition or in government. Chatham was visibly ageing; it could surely only be a matter of time before Burke and his patron were back in office. But while his personal influence had grown with Rockingham, a huge social gulf still separated the two men. Rockingham was one of the very wealthiest men in England. Rich in his own right, he had married an heiress and inherited Wentworth House, now Wentworth Woodhouse, a home of such stateliness that it has 365 rooms (more or less; no one has ever succeeded in counting them definitively) and, at 606 feet, an east front with the longest façade of any house in Europe. He had large properties in Northamptonshire and County Wicklow, as well as vast family estates in Yorkshire. Burke, by contrast, was struggling to maintain a modest household in London.

      At first glance, it is easy to see Rockingham himself just as a dilettante given over to racing and gambling, the twin passions of the day, and he was often so described. But in fact he was rather more than this. A retiring man, he was no public speaker and was plagued by illness, including a debilitating venereal disease picked up on a visit to Italy, which may have rendered him sterile; there was no third Marquis. But he had great personal charm, a certain personal nobility – to be seen in his portrait, after Reynolds (see following page/s) – and a remarkable capacity to inspire loyalty in his followers, who included great Whig aristocrats such as the Dukes of Richmond and of Portland in the Lords, and fifty or so MPs in the Commons. He began to set a pattern among his political set, combining moral principle with a consistent adherence to a set of core policies, and political patronage and financial support. Burke was a mere salaried secretary. But over time he assumed a crucial role within the Rockingham Whigs, moving them away from factional politics and shaping them organizationally and intellectually into the prototype of the modern political party.

      In the meantime, Burke continued to yearn for financial security and social status. He had always been close to Will Burke, regarding him as a member of his household. These ties had been deepened still further by Will’s magnanimity in securing Edmund a seat in Parliament from his friend Lord Verney. Now they extended into financial speculation. Will had started to invest ‘on margin’, using money borrowed from Verney, in shares in the East India Company. Immense sums were involved – as much as £49,000 at one point. There is no evidence that Edmund was aware of the details of Will’s scheme, or had any direct involvement. But they and his brother Richard had long had a ‘common purse’, whereby they shared mutually in each other’s gains and losses. So Edmund was seriously exposed to Will’s financial dealings.

5. Portrait of Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham

      For a while, all went well. In May 1767, the East India Company raised its dividend, for the second time in eight months, to the giddy heights of 12.5 per cent. In the previous year Will had estimated his own gains at more than £12,000. So Edmund may have felt few qualms in purchasing Gregories, a handsome Palladian country house with an estate of some 600 acres of mixed land near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire. Its cost was £20,000, almost entirely funded by loans and mortgages, including a loan of £6,000 from the ever-willing Lord Verney, again arranged by Will.

      Given Burke’s background and evidently slender means, the purchase was a source of wonderment to his friends, and of gossip and slander to his enemies. But he loved the countryside, and now set himself to become a successful farmer on scientific principles. The house also brought with it a magnificent collection of paintings and sculpture. Boswell noted seven landscapes by Poussin on a visit, and a sale catalogue of the estate in 1812 included sixty-four paintings – including four by Titian, five by Reynolds and one by Leonardo da Vinci – fifty marbles and twelve drawings. Some of these works were added by Burke, including most likely the Reynoldses and a large Poussin sent by his protégé James Barry from Rome.

      The new property was close to London, a crucial merit for the working politician of the day. But best of all it would give him the respect then accorded to men of property. As one admirer remarked, ‘An Irishman, one Mr Burke, is sprung up in the House of Commons, who has astonished every body with the power of his eloquence, his comprehensive knowledge in all our exterior and internal politics and commercial interests. He wants nothing but that sort of dignity annexed to rank, and property in England, to make him the most considerable man in the Lower House.’ That was precisely the point. Gregories would make Burke a gentleman.

      But his new status came at a high cost. Mortgages at that time could be called in at six months’ notice, the estate was far from paying its own way, and the Burkes did not live frugally. Moreover, through the common purse, they were acutely exposed to changes in the value of East India Company shares. Nemesis inevitably followed. There had been stock market tremors, notably in 1766 when Chatham announced a parliamentary inquiry which was seen as a transparent attempt by government to annex a portion of the company’s profits. But three years later events in India caused a sudden panic, and the price of East India Company shares fell 13 per cent. The effect on the over-extended Will Burke was catastrophic: from being handsomely ahead, he and Verney now faced a joint debt of £47,000, and were themselves the hapless creditors of other East India speculators whose holdings had crashed. Richard faced similar ruin. Despite – sometimes because of – numerous other money-making schemes over the years, the two adventurers would die in debt. For his part, Edmund Burke would spend the rest of his life with money troubles. Members of Parliament could not be arrested for failure to pay their debts; but failure to get re-elected carried with it the imminent possibility of debtors’ prison.

      The Chatham administration started badly and ended worse, having dragged on despite parliamentary defeat and the chronic illness of its principal; its parting gesture was to pass the Townshend duties on American imports of items such as paint, paper and tea, which only stoked the fires of rebellion among the colonists still further. The government was taken over by the Duke of Grafton, only to be reconstructed yet again under pressure from the Rockinghamites … in collaboration with none other than Chatham himself. With these endless changes, the country seemed close to being ungovernable, all the more so as a tide of radical petitions flooded in complaining bitterly of parliamentary corruption, incompetence and the growing subordination of ministers to the King.

      Burke was indefatigable throughout. In addition to his secretarial duties, he was writing, canvassing for petitions and speaking in Parliament wherever possible. It has been estimated that over the period 1768–74 he was the third most active speaker in the House, rising more than 400 times on a wide range of topics, especially on trade policy and his growing concern at the abuse of the King’s prerogative powers. Around him, the Rockinghamites and their leader were reluctantly having to acknowledge, and even embrace, the fact that theirs might be a protracted parliamentary exile.

      Radicalism was in the air. But in the 1760s it also had a specific cause célèbre: the case of John Wilkes. In giving him a vicious squint and a prognathous jaw, nature had not been kind to Wilkes (see following page/s). But he had overcome these impediments to procure himself a notorious reputation as a hell-raiser and philanderer; he boasted that it ‘took him only half an hour to talk away his face’ with a woman. He also had a positive genius for constitutionally valuable mischief-making, a vaulting ambition frustrated by СКАЧАТЬ