constitution of those offices which I propose to regulate.  If I cannot reform with equity, I will not reform at all.”  Exasperated as he was by the fruitlessness of his opposition to a policy which he detested from the bottom of his soul, it would have been little wonderful if he had resorted to every weapon of his unrivalled rhetorical armoury, in order to discredit and overthrow the whole scheme of government.  Yet nothing could have been further from his mind than any violent or extreme idea of this sort.  Many years afterwards, he took credit to himself less for what he did on this occasion than for what he prevented from being done.  People were ready for a new modelling of the two Houses of Parliament, as well as for grave modifications of the Prerogative.  Burke resisted this temper unflinchingly.  “I had,” he says, “a state to preserve, as well as a state to reform.  I had a people to gratify, but not to inflame or to mislead.”  He then recounts without exaggeration the pains and caution with which he sought reform, while steering clear of innovation.  He heaved the lead every inch of way he made.  It is grievous to think that a man who could assume such an attitude at such a time, who could give this kind of proof of his skill in the great, the difficult art of governing, only held a fifth-rate office for some time less than a twelvemonth.

The year of the project of Economic Reform (1780) is usually taken as the date when Burke’s influence and repute were at their height.  He had not been tried in the fire of official responsibility, and his impetuosity was still under a degree of control which not long afterwards was fatally weakened by an over-mastering irritability of constitution.  High as his character was now in the ascendant, it was in the same year that Burke suffered the sharp mortification of losing his seat at Bristol.  His speech before the election is one of the best known of all his performances; and it well deserves to be so, for it is surpassed by none in gravity, elevation, and moral dignity.  We can only wonder that a constituency which could suffer itself to be addressed on this high level, should have allowed the small selfishness of local interest to weigh against such wisdom and nobility.  But Burke soon found in the course of his canvas that he had no chance, and he declined to go to the poll.  On the previous day one of his competitors had fallen down dead. “What shadows we are” said Burke, “and what shadows we pursue!”

In 1782 Lord North’s government came to an end, and the king “was pleased,” as Lord North quoted with jesting irony from the Gazette, to send for Lord Rockingham, Charles Fox, and Lord Shelburne.  Members could hardly believe their own eyes, as they saw Lord North and the members of a government which had been in place for twelve years, now lounging on the opposition benches in their greatcoats, frocks, and boots, while Fox and Burke shone in the full dress that was then worn by ministers, and cut