their face the preoccupation with the immediate problems of the House of
Commons. Yet through them all the principles that emerge form a
consistent whole. Nor is this all. He hated oppression with all the
passion of a generous moral nature. He cared for the good as he saw it
with a steadfastness which Bright and Cobden only can claim to
challenge. What he had to say he said in sentences which form the maxims
of administrative wisdom. His horizon reached from London out to India
and America; and he cared as deeply for the Indian ryot's wrongs as for
the iniquities of English policy to Ireland. With less width of mind
than Hume and less intensity of gaze than Adam Smith, he yet had a width
and intensity which, fused with his own imaginative sympathy, gave him
more insight than either. He had an unerring eye for the eternal
principles of politics. He knew that ideals must be harnessed to an Act
of Parliament if they are not to cease their influence. Admitting while
he did that politics must rest upon expediency, he never failed to find
good reason why expediency should be identified with what he saw as
right. It is a stainless and a splendid record. There are men in English
politics to whom a greater immediate influence may be ascribed, just as
in political philosophy he cannot claim the persistent inspiration of
Hobbes and Locke. But in that middle ground between the facts and
speculation his supremacy is unapproached. There had been nothing like
him before in English politics; and in continental politics Royer
Collard alone has something of his moral fibre, though his practical
insight was far less profound. Hamilton had Burke's full grasp of
political wisdom, but he lacked his moral elevation. So that he remains
a figure of uniqueness. He may, as Goldsmith said, have expended upon
his party talents that should have illuminated the universal aspect of
the State. Yet there is no question with which he dealt that he did not
leave the richer for his enquiry.