and tuncaws, of gomastahs and soucaring; all with such a suffusion of interest and colour, with such nobility of idea and expression, as could only have come from the addition to genius of a deep morality of nature, and an overwhelming force of conviction.  A space less than one of these pages contains such a picture of the devastation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali, as may fill the young orator or the young writer with the same emotions of enthusiasm, emulation, and despair that torment the artist who first gazes on the Madonna at Dresden, or the figures of Night and Dawn and the Penseroso at Florence.  The despair is only too well founded.  No conscious study could pierce the secret of that just and pathetic transition from the havoc of Hyder Ali to the healing duties of a virtuous government, to the consolatory celebration of the mysteries of justice and humanity, to the warning to the unlawful creditors to silence their inauspicious tongues in presence of the holy work of restoration, to the generous proclamation against them that in every country the first creditor is the plough.  The emotions which make the hidden force of such pictures come not by observation.  They grow from the sedulous meditation of long years, directed by a powerful intellect and inspired by an interest in human well-being, which of its own virtue bore the orator into the sustaining air of the upper gods.  Concentrated passion and exhaustive knowledge have never entered into a more formidable combination.  Yet when Burke made his speech on the Nabob of Arcot’s debts, Pitt and Grenville consulted together whether it was worth answering, and came to the conclusion that they need not take the trouble.

Neither the scornful neglect of his opponents nor the dissensions of some who sat on his own side, could check the ardour with which Burke pressed on, as he said, to the relief of afflicted nations.  The fact is, that Burke was not at all a philanthropist as Clarkson and Wilberforce were philanthropists.  His sympathy was too strongly under the control of true political reason.  In 1780, for instance, the slave-trade had attracted his attention, and he had even proceeded to sketch out a code of regulations which provided for its immediate mitigation and ultimate suppression.  After mature consideration he abandoned the attempt, from the conviction that the strength of the West India interest would defeat the utmost efforts of his party.  And he was quite right in refusing to hope from any political action what could only be effected after the moral preparation of the bulk of the nation.  And direct moral or philanthropic apostleship was not his function.