BURKE THE PATRIOT The penal laws against the Catholics, the iniquitous restrictions on Irish trade and industry, the selfish factiousness of the parlia ment, the jobbery and corruption of administration, the absen teeism of the landlords, and all the other too familiar elements of that mischievous and fatal system, were then in full force. As was shown afterwards, they made an impression upon Burke that was never effaced. So much iniquity and so much disorder may well have struck deep on one whose two chief political sentiments were a passion for order and a passion for justice. He may have anticipated with something of remorse the reflection of a modern historian, that the absenteeism of her landlords has been less of a curse to Ireland than the absenteeism of her men of genius. At least he was never an absentee in heart. He always took the inter est of an ardent patriot in his unfortunate country; and, as we shall see, made more than one weighty sacrifice on behalf of the principles which he deemed to be bound up with her welfare.
When Hamilton retired from his post, Burke accompanied him back to London, with a pension of £300 a year on the Irish Estab lishment. This modest allowance he hardly enjoyed for more than a single year. His patron having discovered the value of so labori ous and powerful a subaltern, wished to bind Burke permanently to his service. Burke declined to sell himself into final bondage of this kind. When Hamilton continued to press his odious pre tensions they quarrelled (1765), and Burke threw up his pension. He soon received a more important piece of preferment than any which he could ever have procured through Hamilton.
The accession of George III. to the throne in i 76o had been followed by the disgrace of Pitt, the dismissal of Newcastle, and the rise of Bute. These events marked the resolution of the court to change the political system which had been created by the revolution of 1688. That system placed the government of the country in the hands of a territorial oligarchy, composed of a few families of large possessions, fairly enlightened principles, and shrewd political sense. It had been preserved by the existence of a Pretender. The first two kings of the house of Hanover could keep the crown on their own heads only by conciliating the Revo lution families and accepting Revolution principles. By 176o all peril to the dynasty was at an end. George III., or those about him, insisted on substituting for the aristocratic division of politi cal power a substantial concentration of it in the hands of the sovereign. The ministers were no longer to be the members of a great party, acting together in pursuance of a common policy accepted by them all as a united body; they were to become nomi nees of the court, each holding himself answerable not to his colleagues but to the king, separately, individually, and by depart ment. George III. had before his eyes the government of his cousin, the great Frederick ; but not every one can bend the bow of Ulysses, and, apart from difference of personal capacity and historic tradition, he forgot that a territorial and commercial aris tocracy cannot be dealt with in the spirit of the barrack and the drill-ground. But he made the attempt, and resistance to that attempt supplies the keynote to the first 25 years of Burke's political life.
Along with the change in system went high-handed and abso lutist tendencies in policy. The first stage of the new experiment was very short. Bute, in a panic at the storm of unpopularity that menaced him, resigned in 1763. George Grenville and the less enlightened section of the Whigs took his place. They proceeded to tax the American colonists, to interpose vexatiously against their trade, to threaten the liberty of the subject at home by gen eral warrants, and to stifle the liberty of public discussion by prosecutions of the press. Their arbitrary methods disgusted the nation, and the personal arrogance of the ministers at last dis gusted the king. The system received a temporary check. Gren ville fell, and the king was forced to deliver himself into the hands of the orthodox section of the Whigs. The marquess of Rocking ham (July i o, 1765) became prime minister, and he was induced to make Burke his private secretary. Before Burke had begun his duties, an incident occurred which illustrates the character of the two men. The old duke of Newcastle, probably desiring a post for some nominee of his own, conveyed to the ear of the new minister various absurd rumours prejudicial to Burke—that he was an Irish papist, that his real name was O'Bourke, that he had been a Jesuit, that he was an emissary from St. Omer's. Lord Rockingham repeated these tales to Burke, who of course denied them with indignation. His chief declared himself satisfied, but Burke, from a feeling that the indispensable confidence between them was impaired, at once expressed a strong desire to resign his post. Lord Rockingham prevailed upon him to reconsider his resolve, and from that day until Lord Rockingham's death in 1782, their relations were those of the closest friendship and confidence.
The first Rockingham administration lasted only a year and a few days, ending in July 1766. The uprightness and good sense of its leaders did not compensate for the weakness of their politi cal connections. They were unable to stand against the coldness of the king, against the hostility of the powerful and selfish fac tion of Bedford Whigs, and, above all, against the towering pre dominance of William Pitt. That Pitt did not join them is one of the many fatal miscarriages of history, as it is one of the many serious reproaches to be made against that extraordinary man's chequered and uneven course. An alliance between Pitt and the Rockingham party was the surest guarantee of a wise and liberal policy towards the colonies. He went farther than they did, in holding, like Lord Camden, the doctrine that taxation went with representation, and that therefore parliament had no right to tax the unrepresented colonists. The ministry asserted, what no com petent jurist would now think of denying, that parliament is sov ereign; but they went heartily with Pitt in pronouncing the exer cise of the right of taxation in the case of the American colonists to be thoroughly impolitic and inexpedient. No practical differ ence, therefore, existed upon the important question of the hour. But Pitt's prodigious egoism, stimulated by the mischievous coun sels of men of the stamp of Lord Shelburne, prevented the fusion of the only two sections of the Whig party that were at once able, enlightened and disinterested enough to carry on the government efficiently, to check the arbitrary temper of the king, and to command the confidence of the nation. Such an opportunity did not return.