1. ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. "Con [The following three extracts are from Burke's speech on ciliation with America," delivered in the House of Commons March 22, 1775. The pupil should recall the exact situation of things in the Colonies at that time. This speech, besides being one of the most finished of Burke's orations, has for us special interest from its subject. The lengthy exordium, or introduction, is taken up by an exhibition of the gravity of the situation between the Colonies and the Mother Country, the stupidity of the policy hitherto adopted, and the absolute necessity of pursuing a conciliatory course, such as would "restore the former unsuspecting confidence of the American Colonies in the Mother Country." He then makes an admirable presentation of the condition of the Colonies as to (1) their population, (2) their trade, and (3) their productive resources, especially as regards agriculture and the fisheries. The following relates to the last topic.] 1.- AMERICAN AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES. I PASS to the Colonies in another point of view, their agriculture. This they have prosecuted with such a spirit, that, besides feeding plentifully their own growing multitude, their annual export of grain, comprehending rice,1 has some years ago exceeded a million in value. Of their last harvest, I am persuaded they will export much more. At the beginning of the century, some of these Colonies imported corn 3 from the mother country. For some time past the Old World has been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating 3 1 comprehending rice = includ- | Charleston, S.C., which was planting rice. The cultivation of rice is ed, and yielded largely. referred to the latter part of the seventeenth century, when a vessel from Madagascar is said to have brought a sack of the grain to 2 a million in value=£1,000,000, which now seems to us a day of very small things. 3 corn, wheat. famine, if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. As to the wealth which the Colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries. you had all that matter fully opened to you. You surely thought those acquisitions of value, for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been exercised ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?1 Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale-fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson Bay and Davis Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South.3 Falkland Island,* 2 Whilst we, etc. Select vivid descriptive phrases. 1 what in the world is equal to | business is now nearly extinct. it? At this time Massachusetts Why? alone employed nearly two hundred vessels in the North Atlantic whale-fishery, and one hundred and twenty in the South Atlantic. The fishery was at first pursued from the shores; and then, as whales became scarce, they were pursued to their haunts. The 8 frozen serpent of the South, the Hydrus, or Water-serpent, a small constellation far to the south, within the antarctic circle. 4 Falkland Island. Locate the group. which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. 3 Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that, whilst some of them draw the line. and strike the harpoon1 on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude,2 and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people,a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered 1 draw the line and strike the harpoon. Note how much more vivid a specific, concrete statement than an abstract form as, "pursued their business." 2 run the longitude: i.e., pursue a course to the South American coast. 3 vexed, agitated. See a similar use of the word by Milton in Paradise Lost (p. 100). 4 hardy, bold, adventurous. the figure of speech? What is 6 When I contemplate, etc. What kind of sentence? to take her own way to perfection, when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivance, melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. 2.- SPIRIT OF LIBERTY IN THE COLONIES. [Burke then proceeds to urge that force should not be used to coerce the Colonies, and for these four reasons: (1) that its use is but temporary; (2) its uncertainty; (3) that it may impair the object sought; (4) that experience is against it.] THESE, sir, are my reasons for not entertaining that high opinion of untried force by which many gentlemen, for whose sentiments in other particulars I have great respect, seem to be so greatly captivated.1 But there is still behind a third consideration concerning this object, which serves to determine my opinion on the sort of policy which ought to be pursued in the management of America, even more than its population and its commerce, I mean its temper 2 and character. In this character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole; and, as an ardent is always a jealous affection, your restive, and untractable Colonies become suspicious, whenever they see the least 4 untractable. Give the modern form. Which form do you prefer? See Glossary. attempt to wrest from them by force, or shuffle from them by chicane,1 what they think the only advantage worth living for. This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any other people of the earth; and this from a great variety of powerful causes, which, to understand the true temper of their minds, and the direction which this spirit takes, it will not be amiss to lay open somewhat more largely. First, the people of the Colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The Colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; 2 and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands. They are, therefore, not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles. Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensible object;3 and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point which, by way of eminence, becomes the criterion of their happiness. 4 It happened, you know, sir, that the great contests. 1 chicane. See Webster. 2 The colonists emigrated.. predominant. What was the feeling as to liberty when the New England colonists emigrated? Burke himself wrote in 1775: "The American freeholders at present are nearly, in point of condition, what the English yeomen were of old, when they rendered us formidable to all Europe, and our name celebrated throughout the world. The former, from many obvious circumstances, are more enthusiastical lovers of liberty than even our yeomen were." 8 inheres in some sensible object, is found only in concrete form. 4 criterion, test, standard. |