Burke | Page 6

a Letter
to Lord ----, by a late Noble Writer.
Bolingbroke had died in 1751, and in 1754 his philosophical works
were posthumously given to the world by David Mallet, Dr. Johnson's
beggarly Scotchman, to whom Bolingbroke had left half-a-crown in his
will, for firing off a blunderbuss which he was afraid to fire off himself.
The world of letters had been keenly excited about Bolingbroke. His

busy and chequered career, his friendship with the great wits of the
previous generation, his splendid style, his bold opinions, made him a
dazzling figure. This was the late Noble Writer whose opinions Burke
intended to ridicule, by reducing them to an absurdity in an
exaggeration of Bolingbroke's own manner. As it happened, the public
did not readily perceive either the exaggeration in the manner, or the
satire in the matter. Excellent judges of style made sure that the writing
was really Bolingbroke's, and serious critics of philosophy never
doubted that the writer, whoever he was, meant all that he said. We can
hardly help agreeing with Godwin, when he says that in Burke's treatise
the evils of existing political institutions, which had been described by
Locke, are set forth more at large, with incomparable force of reasoning
and lustre of eloquence, though the declared intention of the writer was
to show that such evils ought to be considered merely trivial. Years
afterwards, Boswell asked Johnson whether an imprudent publication
by a certain friend of his at an early period of his life would be likely to
hurt him? "No, sir," replied the sage; "not much; it might perhaps be
mentioned at an election." It is significant that in 1765, when Burke
saw his chance of a seat in Parliament, he thought it worth while to
print a second edition of his Vindication, with a preface to assure his
readers that the design of it was ironical. It has been remarked as a very
extraordinary circumstance that an author who had the greatest fame of
any man of his day as the master of a superb style, for this was indeed
Bolingbroke's position, should have been imitated to such perfection by
a mere novice, that accomplished critics like Chesterfield and
Warburton should have mistaken the copy for a firstrate original. It is,
however, to be remembered that the very boldness and sweeping
rapidity of Bolingbroke's prose rendered it more fit for imitation than if
its merits had been those of delicacy or subtlety; and we must
remember that the imitator was no pigmy, but himself one of the giants.
What is certain is that the study of Bolingbroke which preceded this
excellent imitation left a permanent mark, and traces of Bolingbroke
were never effaced from the style of Burke.
The point of the Vindication is simple enough. It is to show that the
same instruments which Bolingbroke had employed in favour of
natural against revealed religion, could be employed with equal success

in favour of natural as against, what Burke calls, artificial society.
"Show me," cries the writer, "an absurdity in religion, and I will
undertake to show you a hundred for one in political laws and
institutions.... If, after all, you should confess all these things, yet plead
the necessity of political institutions, weak and wicked as they are, I
can argue with equal, perhaps superior force, concerning the necessity
of artificial religion; and every step you advance in your argument, you
add a strength to mine. So that if we are resolved to submit our reason
and our liberty to civil usurpation, we have nothing to do but to
conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar notions which are connected
with this, and take up the theology of the vulgar as well as their politics.
But if we think this necessity rather imaginary than real, we should
renounce their dreams of society, together with their visions of religion,
and vindicate ourselves into perfect liberty."
The most interesting fact about this spirited performance is, that it is a
satirical literary handling of the great proposition which Burke enforced,
with all the thunder and lurid effulgence of his most passionate rhetoric,
five and thirty years later. This proposition is that the world would fall
into ruin, "if the practice of all moral duties, and the foundations of
society, rested upon having their reasons made clear and demonstrative
to every individual." The satire is intended for an illustration of what
with Burke was the cardinal truth for men, namely, that if you
encourage every individual to let the imagination loose upon all
subjects, without any restraint from a sense of his own weakness, and
his subordinate rank in the long scheme of things, then there is nothing
of all that the opinion of ages has agreed to regard as excellent and
venerable, which would