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

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СКАЧАТЬ Both in principle and in his well-remunerated role as the British agent of the New York Assembly, Burke’s sympathies lay with the colonists. As the storm clouds of revolution gathered, in April 1774 he made the first of two great speeches designed to bring Parliament back to its senses, to vindicate – yet again – the policy of the Rockingham government, and to set out a proper long-term basis for relations between Britain and America.

      Burke devoted enormous time and trouble to his ‘Speech on American Taxation’, anticipating its later publication. In it he traces the odious tea tax back through a tortuous history of varied and sometimes contradictory policy: imposition of the Stamp Act by Grenville; its repeal under Rockingham; renewed taxation via the Townshend duties, passed during the chaos induced by Chatham’s temporary absence from politics; and their partial withdrawal in turn under North, leaving only the odious tea tax behind. Describing his opponents in the most generous terms, he is nonetheless perfectly clear in attributing to them the blame for Britain’s ugly predicament, in terms at once impassioned, ironic and magisterial. Though he does not say as much, the whole episode amounts for him to a case history in which failed policy derives from a failed approach to government itself.

      Experience and not abstract ideas, Burke insists, is what counts:

      Lord North asserts, that retrospect is not wise; and the proper, the only proper subject of inquiry, is ‘not how we got into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it.’ In other words, we are, according to him, to consult our invention, and reject our experience. The mode of deliberation he recommends is diametrically opposite to every rule of reason and every principle of good sense established amongst mankind.

      The Stamp Act marks a profound and disastrous shift in policy, Burke argues, in attempting for the first time to derive revenue from America itself, over and above the revenue naturally deriving from its growth and Britain’s control of trade through the Navigation Acts. America could never be governed effectively without a recognition that Americans were freeborn Englishmen abroad, to whom the tea tax was a grave insult: ‘No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of three pence. But no commodity will bear three pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and when two millions of men are resolved not to pay.’

      The only solution was to build ‘a rampart against the speculations of innovators’, embrace ‘a spirit of practicability, of moderation and mutual convenience’, and repeal the tea tax. But this in turn required Britain to return to an earlier and fundamentally different conception of empire: as non-coercive, commercial and based on shared interests and identity, not on attempts at control and retribution. Only thus, and through a far more selective exercise of national power, could Britain reconcile imperial sovereignty with imperial dominion. But without such a shift, Burke predicts, there will be disaster in the American colonies. ‘Will they be content in such a state of slavery? If not, look to the consequences. Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not … such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun.’ It was an early demonstration of his gift of prophecy.

      The ‘Taxation’ speech signally failed to secure the repeal of the tea tax. Published in January 1775, it and its sister speech on ‘Conciliation’ with America are gems of historical analysis and statesmanship. But they also marked a small but important watershed in political communication. Speeches by parliamentarians had been published before, but these were some of the earliest occasions on which they had been self-consciously used to build a basis of knowledge and shared education within politics, a reputation outside Parliament and indeed – such was the interest that they attracted in America – a degree of international renown.

      This was all to the good. But in April 1774 Burke was having difficulty in securing a platform even in his own country. A general election was imminent, but his patron Lord Verney had been all but destroyed financially by his speculations in the East India Company. Verney’s pocket borough at Wendover was a valuable asset, which would undoubtedly be put out to bid. The result was that Burke had nowhere to stand for Parliament. Disaster stared him in the face.

      THREE

      Ireland, America and King Mob, 1774–1780

      IN EARLY 1774 EDMUND BURKE was facing an imminent and enforced departure from the House of Commons. But characteristically his first reaction was to think not of himself but of William. Thanks to his ever-generous patron Lord Verney, William Burke had been elected for Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire in 1766. But Lord Verney’s finances were now such that this seat too would be lost; and as William had graciously given way to Edmund in 1765, so he should have the priority now. All the more so since no seat meant no immunity from prosecution, and so no protection from his numerous and pressing creditors. At Burke’s urging William was duly enabled to stand for Haslemere in Surrey, but was defeated. Judgements were soon filed against him in the Court of King’s Bench.

      For Burke himself the parliamentary landscape was considerably more complicated than it had been in 1765. In the modern era, it is a truism that no two constituencies are quite alike. Various in their political geography and party affiliation, constituencies also widely differ in the volunteer associations which select and adopt candidates, and then – it is hoped – campaign for them to win office. Surprisingly often the result is to form a long-term bond of loyalty and affection, which ties MP and constituency together through political thick and thin. Sometimes, however, the counterpart of a ‘safe’ seat, with a solid majority already in place, is a constituency association only too aware of its power to choose the MP – and willing to choose another if the current incumbent does not toe the line on its favoured issues.

      Eighteenth-century constituencies were quite different, owing far more to individual patronage and informal groups of supporters than to local party organization. The most famous of them today are perhaps the ‘rotten boroughs’ such as Dunwich, which had fallen into the sea, or Old Sarum, long owned by the Pitt family, which had three houses, seven voters – and two MPs. But this caricature does a disservice to the fantastical complexity of the electoral structure that had grown up by the 1770s. At that time Parliament had 558 members, comprising 489 from England, 45 from Scotland and the balance of 24 from Wales. Ireland had its own Parliament until 1800 so there were no Irish seats at Westminster, though some MPs with Irish connections sat in both places.

      The English seats were heavily weighted towards the south and south-west, especially sea ports: Cornwall alone had forty-four Members of Parliament, and it and its four neighbouring counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire contained roughly a quarter of the seats. London, by contrast, had 10 per cent of the whole population, but only ten seats; Nottingham and Newcastle, then both large and important towns, had just two seats each. Birmingham and Manchester had none.

      The most important English constituencies were the forty counties, which returned two members each, chosen by ‘forty-shilling freeholders’, or those with freehold property worth £2 or forty shillings per year. The property qualification had originally been introduced in 1430, but three and a half centuries of inflation and exception-making had reduced the effective threshold and so greatly enlarged the voting population. However, the counties, while prestigious, were vastly outnumbered by the 203 cities and boroughs, from which a total of 405 MPs were elected (there were also four university seats). These city and borough seats ranged from near-universal male franchise through those controlled by local corporations to ‘burgage’ boroughs, where votes were attached to local properties, known as burgages, which could be bought and sold in order to achieve electoral control. At a time when voting was by open ballot, corruption was less СКАЧАТЬ