"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which,
if he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the
principles of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to
justify to consistency everything he has said and done during the course
of a political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman
has kept himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild,
visionary theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than
any man perhaps ever did in the same situation.

"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election,
rejected the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any
place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which
that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since
fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in
that manner, and on that occasion.

"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the
duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many
years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These
friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from
his service and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never
chose to find any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in
favour of liberty, and his votes on those questions. But there is a time
for all things." We need not, however, confine our vindication of Burke
to his own eloquence, but invite the especial attention of his accusers
and defamers unto two forgotten facts: 1st. A few weeks before Fox died,
he dictated a despatch to Lord Yarmouth, which confirmed all the policy
for which Pitt for fifteen years had contended: moreover, in a debate on
Wyndham's "Military System," 1806, Fox thus delivered his own
recantation:--"Indeed, by the circumstances of Europe, I AM READY TO