There were but two acts of common justice required on the part of England to make Ireland prosperous and free.  It is glorious to say, that Burke was the first to see this, and inaugurate the reign of concession; it is pitiful, it is utterly contemptible, to be obliged to add, that what was then inaugurated is not yet fully accomplished.  Burke demanded for Ireland political and religious freedom.  Slowly some small concessions of both have been made when England has feared to refuse them.  Had the grant been made once for all with manly generosity, some painful chapters of Irish history might have been omitted from this volume—­some moments, let us hope, of honest shame might have been spared to those true-hearted Englishmen who deplore the fatuity and the folly of their countrymen.  In 1782 the Irish Volunteers obtained from the fears of England what had been vainly asked from her justice.  Burke’s one idea of good government may be summed up in the words, “Be just, and fear not.”  In his famous Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, written in 1792, upon the question of admitting the Catholics to the elective franchise, he asks:  “Is your government likely to be more secure by continuing causes of grounded discontent to two-thirds of its subjects?  Will the constitution be made more solid by depriving this large part of the people of all concern or share in the representation?”

His Indian policy was equally just.  “Our dealings with India,” says an English writer, “originally and until Burke’s time, so far from being marked with virtue and wisdom, were stained with every vice which can lower and deprave human character.  How long will it take only to extirpate these traditions from the recollections of the natives?  The more effectually their understandings are awakened by English efforts, the more vividly will they recognize, and the more bitterly resent, the iniquities of our first connexion with them.”  The Indian policy of England and her Irish policy might be written with advantage in parallel columns.  It would, at least, have the advantage of showing Irishmen that they had been by no means worse governed than other dependencies of that professedly law and justice loving nation.

I have treated, briefly indeed, and by no means as I should wish, of two of the questions of the day, and of Burke’s policy thereon; of the third question a few words only can be said.  Burke’s idea of Reform consisted in amending the administration of the constitution, rather than in amending the constitution itself.  Unquestionably a bad constitution well administered, may be incomparably more beneficial to the subject than a good constitution administered corruptly.  Burke’s great leading principle was:  Be just—­and can a man have a nobler end?  To suppress an insurrection cruelly, to tax a people unjustly, or to extort money from a nation on false pretences, was to him deeply abhorrent.  His first object was to secure the incorruptibility