Selections from the Speeches and Writings | Page 9

of Fox
upon his supposed inconsistency, Mr. Burke thus replies:--
"I pass to the next head of charge,--Mr. Burke's inconsistency. It is
certainly a great aggravation of his fault in embracing false opinions,
that in doing so he is not supposed to fill up a void, but that he is guilty
of a dereliction of opinions that are true and laudable. This is the great
gist of the charge against him. It is not so much that he is wrong in his
book (that however is alleged also), as that he has therein belied his
whole life. I believe, if he could venture to value himself upon anything,
it is on the virtue of consistency that he would value himself the most.
Strip him of this, and you leave him naked indeed.
"In the case of any man who had written something, and spoken a great
deal, upon very multifarious matter, during upwards of twenty?five
years' public service, and in as great a variety of important events as
perhaps have ever happened in the same number of years, it would
appear a little hard, in order to charge such a man with inconsistency, to
see collected by his friend, a sort of digest of his sayings, even to such
as were merely sportive and jocular. This digest, however, has been
made, with equal pains and partiality, and without bringing out those
passages of his writings which might tend to show with what
restrictions any expressions, quoted from him, ought to have been
understood. From a great statesman he did not quite expect this mode

of inquisition. If it only appeared in the works of common
pamphleteers, Mr. Burke might safely trust to his reputation. When
thus urged, he ought, perhaps, to do a little more. It shall be as little as
possible, for I hope not much is wanting. To be totally silent on his
charges would not be respectful to Mr. Fox. Accusations sometimes
derive a weight from the persons who make them, to which they are not
entitled for their matter. "A man who, among various objects of his
equal regard, is secure of some, and full of anxiety for the fate of others,
is apt to go to much greater lengths in his preference of the objects of
his immediate solicitude than Mr. Burke has ever done. A man so
circumstanced often seems to undervalue, to vilify, almost to reprobate
and disown, those that are out of danger. This is the voice of nature and
truth, and not of inconsistency and false pretence. The danger of
anything very dear to us removes, for the moment, every other affection
from the mind. When Priam had his whole thoughts employed on the
body of his Hector, he repels with indignation, and drives from him
with a thousand reproaches, his surviving sons, who with an officious
piety crowded about him to offer their assistance. A good critic (there is
no better than Mr. Fox) would say, that this is a master?stroke, and
marks a deep understanding of nature in the father of poetry. He would
despise a Zoilus, who would conclude from this passage that Homer
meant to represent this man of affliction as hating, or being indifferent
and cold in his affections to the poor relics of his house, or that he
preferred a dead carcass to his living children.
"Mr. Burke does not stand in need of an allowance of this kind, which,
if he did, by candid critics ought to be granted to him. If the principles
of a mixed constitution be admitted, he wants no more to justify to
consistency everything he has said and done during the course of a
political life just touching to its close. I believe that gentleman has kept
himself more clear of running into the fashion of wild, visionary
theories, or of seeking popularity through every means, than any man
perhaps ever did in the same situation.
"He was the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election,
rejected the authority of instructions from constituents; or who, in any
place, has argued so fully against it. Perhaps the discredit into which
that doctrine of compulsive instructions under our constitution is since
fallen, may be due, in a great degree, to his opposing himself to it in

that manner, and on that occasion.
"The reformers in representation, and the Bills for shortening the
duration of Parliaments, he uniformly and steadily opposed for many
years together, in contradiction to many of his best friends. These
friends, however, in his better days, when they had more to hope from
his service and more to fear from his loss than now they have, never
chose to find any inconsistency between his acts and expressions in
favour of liberty, and his votes on those questions.