mal-administration of the government.  To this period belong, in addition to lesser works, his great speeches On American Taxation (1774) and On Conciliation with America (1775), as well as his spirited Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777).  He had been elected member of parliament for Bristol in 1774, but he lost his seat in 1780 because he had advocated the relaxation of the restrictions on the trade of Ireland with Great Britain and of the penal laws against Catholics.  In the second administration of Rockingham (1782) and in that of Portland (1783) he was paymaster of the forces, a position which he lost on the downfall of the Whigs in the latter year, and he never again held public office.  His speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings in 1788 is universally and justly ranked as a masterpiece of eloquence.  When the French Revolution broke out, he opposed it with might and main.  His Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) had an enormous circulation, reached an eleventh edition inside of a year, was read all over the continent as well as in the British Isles, and helped materially not only to keep England steady in the crisis, but also to incite the other powers to continue their resistance to French aggression.  He continued his campaign in Thoughts on French Affairs and Letters on a Regicide Peace.  He was given two pensions in 1794, and would have been raised to the peerage as Lord Beaconsfield, had not the succession to the title been cut off by the premature death of his only son.  He himself died in 1797 and was buried at Beaconsfield, where, as far back as 1768, he had purchased a small estate.

As an orator and a deep political thinker, Burke holds a foremost place among those of all time who distinguished themselves in the British parliament.  His keen intellect, his powerful imagination, his sympathy with the fallen, the downtrodden, and the oppressed, and his matchless power of utterance of the thoughts that were in him have made an impression that can never be effaced.  His wise and statesman-like views on questions affecting the colonies ought to endear him to all Americans, although, if his counsels had been hearkened to, it is probable that the separation from the mother country would not have occurred as soon as it did.  For his native land he used his best endeavors when and how he could, and although, as her defender, he was faced by obloquy as well as by the loss of that parliamentary position which was as dear to him as the breath of his nostrils, he did not flinch or shrink from supporting her material and spiritual interests in his own generous, manly, whole-hearted way.  Trinity College, Dublin, has done well in placing his statue at her outer gates as representing the greatest Irishman of his generation.