Burkes Speech on Conciliation with America | Page 3

the opposition
proposed an unconditional repeal of the Tea Act. The bill was
introduced only to be overwhelmingly defeated by the same Parliament
that passed the five measures of Lord North.
In America, the effect of these proceedings was such as might have
been expected by thinking men. The colonies were as a unit in their
support of Massachusetts. The Regulating Act was set at defiance,
public officers in the king's service were forced to resign, town
meetings were held, and preparations for war were begun in dead
earnest. To avert this, some of England's greatest statesmen--Pitt
among the number--asked for a reconsideration. On February the first,
1775, a bill was introduced, which would have gone far toward
bringing peace. One month later, Burke delivered his speech on
Conciliation with the Colonies.

EDMUND BURKE
There is nothing unusual in Burke's early life. He was born in Dublin,
Ireland, in 1729. His father was a successful lawyer and a Protestant,
his mother, a Catholic. At the age of twelve, he became a pupil of
Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, who had been teaching some fifteen
years at Ballitore, a small town thirty miles from Dublin. In after years
Burke was always pleased to speak of his old friend in the kindest way:
"If I am anything," he declares, "it is the education I had there that has
made me so." And again at Shackleton's death, when Burke was near
the zenith of his fame and popularity, he writes: "I had a true honor and
affection for that excellent man. I feel something like a satisfaction in
the midst of my concern, that I was fortunate enough to have him under

my roof before his departure." It can hardly be doubted that the old
Quaker schoolmaster succeeded with his pupil who was already so
favorably inclined, and it is more than probable that the daily example
of one who lived out his precepts was strong in its influence upon a
young and generous mind.
Burke attended school at Ballitore two years; then, at the age of
fourteen, he became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and remained
there five years. At college he was unsystematic and careless of routine.
He seems to have done pretty much as he pleased, and, however
methodical he became in after life, his study during these five years
was rambling and spasmodic. The only definite knowledge we have of
this period is given by Burke himself in letters to his former friend
Richard Shackleton, son of his old schoolmaster. What he did was done
with a zest that at times became a feverish impatience: "First I was
greatly taken with natural philosophy, which, while I should have given
my mind to logic, employed me incessantly. This I call my FUROR
MATHEMATICUS." Following in succession come his FUROR
LOGICUS, FUROR HISTORICUS, and FUROR PEOTICUS, each of
which absorbed him for the time being. It would be wrong, however, to
think of Burke as a trifler even in his youth. He read in the library three
hours every day and we may be sure he read as intelligently as eagerly.
It is more than probable that like a few other great minds he did not
need a rigid system to guide him. If he chose his subjects of study at
pleasure, there is every reason to believe he mastered them.
Of intimate friends at the University we hear nothing. Goldsmith came
one year later, but there is no evidence that they knew each other. It is
probable that Burke, always reserved, had little in common with his
young associates. His own musings, with occasional attempts at writing
poetry, long walks through the country, and frequent letters to and from
Richard Shackleton, employed him when not at his books.
Two years after taking his degree, Burke went to London and
established himself at the Middle Temple for the usual routine course
in law. Another long period passes of which there is next to nothing
known. His father, an irascible, hot- tempered man, had wished him to
begin the practice of law, but Burke seems to have continued in a rather
irregular way pretty much as when an undergraduate at Dublin. His
inclinations were not toward the law, but literature. His father, angered

at such a turn of affairs, promptly reduced his allowance and left him to
follow his natural bent in perfect freedom. In 1756, six years after his
arrival in London, and almost immediately following the rupture with
his father, he married a Miss Nugent. At about the same time he
published his first two books, [Footnote: A Vindication of Natural
Society and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful] and began in earnest the life of an author.
He attracted the attention of literary