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

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СКАЧАТЬ Burke’s argument was highly ingenious. It allowed him to retell recent political history as an unconstitutional attempt by George III to escape the constraints imposed by the Glorious Revolution in 1688–9 and accepted by monarchs thereafter. It offered a delicious hint of foreign intrigue, reminiscent of the influence of Louis XIV over Charles II and James II. And its analysis had a plausible and deeply satisfying twist in the tail. Far from being unwelcome to the King’s friends, Burke argues, the advent of Wilkes offered them an extraordinary opportunity, for it actively assisted their project of undermining Parliament, and securing more power for themselves in the ensuing crackdown.

      The Thoughts thus contained an elaborate conspiracy theory. One might think this a thin rationale for political immortality, especially since the theory of the Double Cabinet has since been largely exploded by historical research. How, then, has it achieved its status as a classic of political thought?

      As in the Observations, the reason lies in the final third of the book. Formally, Burke dismisses radical solutions like shorter parliaments and a ‘place bill’, which would remedy excesses of patronage by excluding holders of lucrative offices or pensions from the Commons. He also disavows specific remedies of his own. In fact, however, he has nothing less than a complete re-engineering of party politics in mind. He insists that power can never be properly exercised by an individual, however distinguished, for any great length of time. Practically, then, the only solution is a principled assertion of the power of the House of Commons, through political parties: ‘Government may in a great measure be restored, if any considerable body of men have honesty and resolution enough never to accept Administration, unless this garrison of King’s men, which is stationed, as in a citadel, to control and enslave it, be entirely broken and disbanded, and every work they have thrown up be levelled with the ground.’ In other words, parliamentarians should band together on principle to destroy what Burke insisted was the King’s network of patronage.

      If that fails, then the only backstop can be at the ballot box:

      I see no other way for the preservation of a decent attention to public interest in the Representatives, but [by] the interposition of the body of the people itself, whenever it shall appear, by some flagrant and notorious act, by some capital innovation, that these Representatives are going to over-leap the fences of the law, and to introduce an arbitrary power … nothing else can hold the constitution to its true principles.

      In a mixed constitution, then, all sources of power are constrained: MPs hold the government to account, but they must themselves be held accountable by the people if the constitution is to work its magic.

      But, Burke argues in a brilliant move, this balance in turn rests on a crucial distinction. For faction is not party. Factions are groupings of the moment, which exist to take power and to exercise it. Those forming Burke’s ‘considerable body of men’ are not a faction. No, they are a political party; that is, they are ‘united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some political principle in which they are all agreed’. The test comes when such a group is evicted from office. Founded on self-interest, factions will tend to disperse. Parties, however, will sustain themselves and their membership – on principle and shared values, on mutual commitments and on personal loyalties and friendship – until the opportunity to exercise power returns.

      There is a risk of circularity here: to the conspiracy theorist, lack of success can itself be a form of self-justification, and an excuse for inertia. Nevertheless, it was a matter of deep political principle that the Rockinghamites should be able to sustain themselves as a party in opposition, and they had learned how to do this, with some difficulty, since 1766. So it was not surprising that they saw themselves as almost the sole repository of political virtue, and came to refer to the Thoughts as ‘our political creed’.

      The Thoughts was a significant succès d’estime. It quickly ran through four editions, and made Burke, now forty years of age, into a national figure. More than 3,000 copies were printed, and it was widely debated in the press. As a political call to action it was a failure: too intricate and theoretical to be really effective, it was neutered when publication coincided with a rare lull in Wilkes-related scandal. As a basic credo for the Rockingham Whigs, it was a vital statement of shared belief. As political analysis, it remains of enduring importance today.

      But by mid-1770 Burke’s own mind was elsewhere. Jane had fallen ill and was confined to her bed for two months, perhaps as a result of a miscarriage. Worse, just as the Thoughts was published there had also appeared a detailed, accurate and highly personal article about him in the London Evening Post. In general Burke accepted public scrutiny; he could do no less. But this was different: ‘Hitherto, much as I have been abused, my table and my bed were left sacred, but since it has so unfortunately happened, that my wife, a quiet woman, confined to her family cares and affections, has been dragged into a newspaper, I own I feel a little hurt.’ What made it worse was that the original source was a well-meaning account by his oldest friend, Richard Shackleton, which had fallen into the wrong hands. In it Shackleton had claimed that Burke was ‘made easy by patronage’, unintentionally inflicting a wound; and what was worse, he had revealed that both Burke’s mother and wife were Roman Catholics. Coming at a time when Irish grievances were rapidly on the rise, this could only excite and succour Burke’s political opponents.

      In other ways, this period was more hopeful. In December 1770 Burke was chosen by the Assembly of the colony of New York to act as their agent in London, a role which paid well – £500 a year, or roughly that of a middle-ranking official – and kept him closely in touch with colonial affairs and issues relating to trade with America. He expanded the farm at Gregories, and invested money he did not have in new techniques and experiments under the influence of the agriculturalist Arthur Young. He also made a very happy visit to France in 1773, travelling to Auxerre with his son Richard, then fifteen, placing the boy with a local family named Parisot in order to teach him some French, and also establishing a lasting link which would feed Burke much useful information in due course about the first years of the revolution. Returning via Paris, Burke visited Versailles, where he saw the young Dauphine, Marie Antoinette, an experience which would later be immortalized in his Reflections on the Revolution in France.

      However, it was with revolution in America that the government, and Burke, were to be increasingly concerned. The Rockinghamites had learned to survive in opposition during the Chatham and Grafton ministries. But their morale was sustained by the regular change in administration, and by hopes of a return. In January 1770, however, George III had after ten years at last discovered in the Tory Lord North a Prime Minister in whom he could repose his trust. It was a fateful choice.

      North was likeable, flexible, deferential, a patriot and a moralist in his private life, all high recommendations to the King. What he was not was a great leader. In 1773 Parliament passed the Tea Act, which allowed the East India Company, which had built up a vast surplus of tea in Britain, to export tea to America for the first time. At North’s insistence this tea bore a symbolic tax of three pence per pound, a last remnant of the highly unpopular and now discarded Townshend duties, left in part specifically to remind the American colonies of Britain’s right to tax them. Even including this tax, however, East India Company tea was cheaper than other imported tea, and cheaper than smuggled Dutch tea. The effect of the new Act, then, was immediate and comprehensive: at a single stroke it united all sections of American opinion, nationalist and loyalist, commercial and illicit, against the new imports. On 16 December, after a lengthy stand-off in Boston harbour with the colonial authorities, and a raucous meeting of some 7,000 local citizens, rebels disguised as Mohawk Indians boarded three ships at night – all of which were American, not owned by the East India Company – and dumped 342 cases of tea from them into the harbour.

      The ‘Boston tea party’ scandalized Parliament and British public opinion alike. With feelings running high both in the country and on the backbenches, Lord North and his ministers prepared draconian measures to crack СКАЧАТЬ