Burke effected for the whigs what Bolingbroke in a preceding
age had done for the tories: he restored the moral existence
of the party. He taught them to recur to the ancient
principles of their connection, and suffused those principles
with all the delusive splendour of his imagination. He raised
the tone of their public discourse; he breathed a high spirit
into their public acts. It was in his power to do more for
the whigs than St John could do for his party. The oligarchy,
who had found it convenient to attaint Bolingbroke for being
the avowed minister of the English Prince with whom they were
always in secret communication, when opinion forced them to
consent to his restitution, had tacked to the amnesty a clause
as cowardly as it was unconstitutional, and declared his
incompetence to sit in the parliament of his country. Burke
on the contrary fought the whig fight with a two-edged weapon:
he was a great writer; as an orator he was transcendent. In a
dearth of that public talent for the possession of which the
whigs have generally been distinguished, Burke came forward
and established them alike in the parliament and the country.
And what was his reward? No sooner had a young and dissolute
noble, who with some of the aspirations of a Caesar oftener
realised the conduct of a Catiline, appeared on the stage, and
after some inglorious tergiversation adopted their colours,
than they transferred to him the command which had been won by
wisdom and genius, vindicated by unrivalled knowledge, and
adorned by accomplished eloquence. When the hour arrived for
the triumph which he had prepared, he was not even admitted
into the Cabinet, virtually presided over by his graceless
pupil, and who, in the profuse suggestions of his teeming
converse, had found the principles and the information which