BURGOYNE-BURGUNDY. of the river Arlanzon, in lat. 42° 20′ N., and long. The that sent to Portugal. In 1830 he was appointed chairman of the Board of Public Works in Ireland; and in 1845, Inspector-General of Fortifications in England. In 1851, he obtained the rank of Lieutenant-general, and in 1854 was made D. C. L. of Oxford University. During the same year he was sent to Turkey, to devise measures against the advance of the Russians; and in the Crimean war he was chief of the engineering department of the British army till recalled in 1855. For his services at Sebastopol, he received from the Sultan the order of the Medjidie, and from the French emperor that of grand officer of the Legion of Honour. He was made general in 1855, and created a baronet in 1856. BURGUNDY (Fr. Bourgogne), an ancient province of France, now forming the departments of Côte d'Or, Saone-et-Loire, Ain, and part of Yonne. Dijon was the capital of Burgundy. The ancient Burgundians (Burgundi or Burgundiones), originally a German tribe, were at first settled on the banks of the Oder and the Vistula, and afterwards extended themselves to the Rhine and the Neckar, and, in 407, penetrated into Roman Gaul. Their conversion to Christianity took place in the course of eight days! They adopted a brief Arian confession of faith, and were baptized. From 407 to 534, the kingdom of B. was several times divided; and in 451, Gundicar, king of B., with 10,000 men, confronted Attilla, but was defeated and slain. The tradition of this overthrow of the old Burgundians is preserved in a confused form in the Nibelungen Lied. BURGOYNE, JOHN, а British general and dramatist, natural son of Lord Bingley, early entered the army, and in August 1759 was appointed lieutenant-colonel commandant of the 16th Light In 534, B. passed under the rule of the Franks; but Dragoons. In 1761 he served at Belle Isle, and the weak government of the later Carlovingian kings in 1762 commanded a force sent into Portugal for allowed it to become once more independent, and the defence of that kingdom against the Spaniards, it was named the kingdom of Arles, from the resiwhen he surprised and captured Alcantara. In dence of its first king, Boso, who died 887. He 1776 he served in North America, and in the sum- was succeeded by his son Louis; and after a time of mer of 1777 he was appointed to the command of contention and division of the French territories, a large force ordered to penetrate from Canada Duke Rudolf, nephew of King Hugo of France, into the rebellious districts. The early part of the made himself ruler of Upper B., and was followed expedition was marked by his capture of Ticon- by Rudolf II. (912), who was crowned king of Italy deroga; but neglecting to preserve his communica- in 921, and united Lower B., or Arles, to his own tions with Canada, he encountered the greatest kingdom in 928. Conrad the Peaceable succeeded, difficulties, and was at last obliged to surrender and after him, Rudolf III., who dying without mole with his army to General Gates, at Saratoga.issue in 1032, bequeathed his kingdom to the EmpeSoon after his return to England, having been ror Conrad II. of Germany, whose son, Henry III., denied an audience of the king, and refused a court-made it a duchy of the German empire. martial, he went over to the opposition party, With Philip the Bold, the founder of the new and voluntarily resigned all his appointments. On ducal dynasty of B., a new and splendid era was coma change of ministry, at the close of the American menced, in 1363, and was continued to the death of war, he was appointed commander-in-chief in Charles the Bold (q. v.), in 1477, who left no male Ireland. This office he resigned two years after, issue. B. was then incorporated with France. and subsequently seems to have devoted his time to light literature. He was the author of some pamphlets in defence of his conduct, and of The Maid of the Oaks (1780), The Heiress (1786), The Lord of the Manor, and other stock dramatic pieces. B. was one of the managers for conducting the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He died June 4, 1792. BURGOYNE, SIR JOHN FOX, Bart., an eminent engineer-officer, born in 1782, entered the Royal Engineers in 1798. From 1800 to 1807, he served in the Mediterranean and the Levant; proceeded with Sir John Moore's force to Sweden, and subsequently to Portugal, and was at Corunna in 1809. The same year, he became attached to the Third Division of the army under Sir Arthur Wellesley in the Peninsula, and till the conclusion of the war in 1814, was present at all its sieges, distinguishing himself in those of San Sebastian and Burgos, and was twice wounded. He became Lieutenant-colonel April 27, 1812; in 1814, was commanding engineer of the expedition to New Orleans, and in 1826, of BURGUNDY, LOUIS, DUKE OF, the grandson of Louis XIV. of France, and Dauphin of France after the death of his father, was born at Versailles in 1682. Even in childhood he was ungovernable, and became excessively violent and haughty, and abandoned to all gross and sensual passions. Although educated under the care of the Abbé Fénélon, he used, when 30 years of age to divert himself with drowning flies in oil, and blowing up living frogs with gunpowder. He had the misfortune to be deformed; his deportment and manners were undignified, and his mind was imbued with bigotry. When only about 15 years of age, he was married to the Princess Adelaide of Savoy, and spent his time wholly in amusements in the company of his spouse and of the ladies of the court. Nevertheless, in 1701, he was nominally appointed generalissimo of the army, really under the command of the Duke de Vendôme, and is said to have shewn some spirit in a cavalry-fight at Nimeguen; but he quarrelled with Vendôme, chiefly because he had once been compelled to establish his head-quarters BURGUNDY PITCH-BURIAL. in a nunnery. He lost the respect of the army, and was exposed to many humiliations, partly proceeding from intrigues set on foot against him out of envy by his father. He returned to the court more eccentric, gloomy, and unsociable than before. But when he became, on h.. father's death, the second person in the kingdom, all his defects vanished from the sight of the courtiers, and flattery bestowed on him the title of the Great Dauphin. He died suddenly in the year 1712. A few days previously, his wife and her son, the Duke of Bretagne, had died, and the same hearse carried father, mother, and child to St. Denis. The Duke of Orleans, subsequently regent, and his daughter, the Duchess of Berri, were accused, but without reason, of having caused them to be poisoned. BURGUNDY PITCH, a resinous substance prepared from common frankincense (q. v.), the spontaneous exudation of the Norway spruce-fir (Abies excelsa; see FIR) by melting it in hot water, by which means it is freed from a considerable part of the volatile oil which it contains. By straining it through a coarse cloth, impurities are also removed. B. P. is of a yellowish-white colour, hard and brittle when cold, but softening by the heat of the hand, and readily adhering to the skin. It has a not unpleasant resinous odour, and a slightly bitter taste. It is used in medicine as an external application only, and generally acts as a mild irritant. A very common application of it is as a plaster in complaints of the chest, and in rheumatic complaints. It enters also as ingredient with resin, oils, &c., into a compound plaster of similar use. The B. P. of commerce is now principally brought from Hamburg; but the greater part of what is sold under that name is really manufactured of common rosin and palmoil, or from American turpentine. It has a fuller yellow colour than the genuine B. P., and a less agreeable odour. and ferocity towards the living. People of a low and barbarous type carelessly permit the remains of the dead to lie in the way of the living, and there are a few instances in which the object of artificial arrangements has been to preserve a decorated portion of the body-as for instance, a gilded skullamong survivors. The general tendency of mankind, however, has always been to bury the dead out of sight of the living; and various as the methods of accomplishing this end have been, they have resolved themselves into three great classifications: 1. The simple closing up of the body in earth or stone; 2. The burning of the body, and the entombing of the cinders; and, 3. The embalming of the body. The first of these seems to be the earliest form of which we have any record, and it is the form most amply sanctioned by the existing practice of the civilised world. It is the method referred to in the earliest Scriptures; and all are familiar with the touching scene in which Abraham buries Sarah in the cave in the land of Canaan which belonged to Ephron, but was, after a solemn and courteous negotiation, secured to Abraham for a possession to bury his dead in (Gen. c. 23). The horrible fate of being left unburied, either from scorn or neglect, is powerfully told in the prophecy of Jeremiah against Jehoiakim: 'He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, drawn and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.' There is frequent allusion in the later Scriptures, and especially in the New Testament, to the embalming of the body in antiseptics and fragrant substances; and the burning of the bodies of Saul and his sons is accounted for by commentators on the supposition that they were too far decayed to be embalmed. The Israelites may have learned the practice of embalming from the Egyptians, among whom it was an art so greatly cultivated and extensively practised, that Egyptian corpses, as inoffensive as any article of wood or stone, are scattered over Europe in museums, and are even BURGUNDY WINES are chiefly the produce soil and climate of Upper Egypt seem to be found as curiosities in private houses. The to have of vineyards cultivated on the hilly lands form- afforded facilities for embalming unmatched in ing the Côte d'Or, between Dijon and Chalons. These hills average about from 800 to 1000 feet any other part of the world; and in other places the vestiges of the practice are comparatively in height; the vineyards ascend up the slopes rare, though it is usual even yet to embalm royal in terraces, and spread along the table-land on In richness of flavour and in per- of mummies, as in the vault of the monastery of the summit. corpses, and in some places to preserve a series fume, and all the more delicate qualities of the Kreuzberg, at Bonn, where the monks have been sucjuice of the grape, the wines grown here unques-cessively preserved in their costume for centuries. tionably rank as the finest in the world.' The most celebrated of the red wines of Burgundy are the Closvougeot (near Beaune), Nuits, Chambertin (the favourite wine of Louis XIV. as well as of Napoleou) the Romané-Conti, Richebourg, Volnay, and Pomard. Of other red wines of Burgundy not grown on the Côte d'Or, those of Pitoy, Perrière Preaux, and Auxerne, are held in most repute. The white wines of Burgundy are also the finest in France, but being produced in less quantity, they have less celebrity. The quantity of wine annually produced in Burgundy averages 3,500,000 hectolitres (77,000, 000 gallons), of which only about about a fifth is consumed in the district. an BURIAL, a word of Teut. origin (Ang.-Sax. birgan, to conceal), is applied to the prevalent method among civilised nations of disposing of the dead, by hiding them in the earth. As there is almost nothing else so deeply interesting to the living as the disposal of those whom they have loved and lost, so there is perhaps nothing else so distinctive of the condition and character of a people as the method in which they treat their dead. Hence, funeral customs associate themselves with a wide variety of sentiments, from gentle and rational sorrow, up to deification of the departed, accompanied sometimes with cruelty The practice of incremation, or of the burning of the body, and the entombing of the ashes, deserves more inquiry than it has yet obtained. In Greece, in Etruria-both before and after it came under the Romans--and in the north of Europe, the simple burial of the body, and its prior reduction to ashes, were both practised, and sometimes contemmuch of it going to the adornment of the urns of poraneously. The tombs of Etruria are rich in art, baked clay in which the ashes of the dead are kept. Vessels of terra-cotta, or cooked earth, containing human remains, have been found, often so large that they appear to have served as coffins for containing the whole body. Vessels of this kind were found in the valley of the Scamander by some British officers while spending their leisure time after the siege of Sebastopol, upon the ground supposed to have been occupied by the besiegers of Troy. Smaller cinerary urns have been found over so extensive a portion of the world, that it is difficult to define the limits to which they belong. The Danish antiquaries say, that in their stone period, when the use of metals was unknown, the dead were all buried unburned in stone chambers, and that the burning of the bodies and the preservation of the ashes in urns came in with the age of bronze. These antiquaries associate BURIAL-BURIAL ACTS. with the older system those amorphous mounds of was given to the Privy Council to close the city earth or stone called barrows or tumuli, which are graveyards. The act was modified two years afterto be found all over the north of Europe. Mr. wards, by transferring the duties of managing cemeIt Bremner, in travelling among the steppes of the teries to local boards appointed by the vestries. Ukraine, saw multitudes of these small mounds, was in London that the danger was most urgent which reminded him at once of what he had seen on and the remedy immediate. It was extended to the plain of Troy, at Upsala in Sweden, in Scotland, the English provinces in 1853, and to Scotland in and in Ireland. The Irish tumulus of New Grange 1855. | is perhaps the most remarkable of all, forming a connecting link between the simple barrow on the moor and the pyramids of Egypt, which are the perfection of the same kind of structure applied to the same purpose-the burial of the distinguished dead. These structures open up a large field of curious inquiry. The simple theory, that they were raised over the dead, has lately been disturbed by the discovery that many of them are not artificial, but relics of sheets of alluvial matter, the mass of which has been carried away; and even in these, human remains have been found, the natural mounds having been used as monuments. Even when human remains are connected with barrows, cromlechs, or the large shapeless pillars commonly called Druidical, it is often questionable whether the monument was made to receive such remains. It is certainly ascertained to have been a practice in ancient times to bury bodies in tombs which were themselves ancient when they received their inmates. In England, burial in some part of the parish churchyard is a common law right, without even paying for breaking the soil, and that right will be enforced by mandamus. But the body of a parishioner cannot be interred in an iron coffin or vault, or even in any particular part of a churchyard, as, for instance, the family vault, without the sanction of the incumbent. To acquire a right to be buried in a particular vault or place, a faculty must be obtained from the ordinary, as in the case of a pew in the church. But this right is at an end when the family cease to be parishioners. All such rights, by faculty or otherwise, are expressly saved by the BURIAL ACTS (q. v.). By the canons of the Church of England, clergymen cannot refuse or delay to bury any corpse that is brought to the church or churchyard; on the other hand, a conspiracy to prevent a B. is an indictable offence, and so is the wilfully obstructing a clergyman in reading the B. service in a parish church. It is a popular error, that a creditor can arrest or detain the body of a deceased debtor; and the doing such an act is indictable as a misdemeanour. It is also an error, that permitting a funeral procession to pass over private grounds creates a public right of way. By the 3 Geo. IV. c. 126, s. 32, the inhabitants of any parish, township, or place, when going to or returning from attending funerals of persons in England who have died and are to be buried there, are exempted from any toll within these limits. And by the 4 Geo. IV. c. 49, s. 36, the same regulation is extended to Scotland; the only difference being, that in the latter case the limitation of the district is described by the word parish alone. The 6 and 7 Will. IV. c. 86 regulates the registry of deaths. The 4 Geo. IV. c. 52 abolished the barbarous mode of burying persons found felo de se, and directs that their B. shall take place, without any marks of ignominy, privately in the parish churchyard, between the hours of nine and twelve at night, under the direction of the coroner. The B. of dead bodies cast on shore is enforced by 48 Geo. III. c. 75. See Wharton's Law Lexicon. Some of the grandest buildings in the world have been tombs; such are the pyramids, the castle of St. Angelo, the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, and many temples scattered over Hindustan and other eastern countries. Thus, the respect paid by the living to the dead has preserved for the world many magnificent fruits of architectural genius and labour. A notion that the dead may require the things they have been fond of in life, has also preserved to the existing world many relics of the customs of past ages. The tombs of Egypt have supplied an immense quantity of them, which have taught the present age more of the manners of ancient nations than all the learned books that have been written. It is an awful remembrance, at the same time, that inanimate things were not all that the dead were expected to take with them. Herodotus tells us of favourite horses and slaves sacrificed at the holocaust of the dead chief. The same thing has been done in our own day in Ashantee. In many countries, the wives had the doom, or privilege, as it was thought, of departing with their husbands; and down to the present generation the practice has lived in full vigor in the Hindu sutti. Among the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, and many ancient nations, the dead were buried beyond the towns. The stop, traveller!' was a usual memorandum on Roman tombs. In Christian countries, if the remains of the saint to whom a church was dedicated could be obtained-or anything passing for the remains-they were buried near the altar in the choir. It became a prevalent desire to be buried near these saints, and the bodies of men eminent for their piety, or high in rank, came thus to be buried in churches. The extension of the practice was the origin of churchyards. These, in crowded towns, became offensive and unhealthy. It can scarcely be said that this practice, so detrimental to the public health, as the burial within churches, was checked in this country until the whole system of intramural interment, as it was called, was attacked, about the year 1844, by Mr. By some clerical error or inadvertence, this act is Chadwick and other sanitary reformers. Measures erroneously described in the preamble of the 20 and 21 were afterwards carried for shutting graveyards in Vict. c. 81, which professes to amend it. It is there described as the 18 and 19 Vict. c. 78, and it is also crowded cities, and placing interments in open ceme- erroneously entitled. The effect of this mistake may teries under sanitary control. The first great measure be serious, for it is plain that the act intended to be was passed in 1850, when the Board of Health was amended by the 20 and 21 Vict. cannot strictly be said made a Burial Board for the Metropolis, and power | to be affected by the provisions of the latter. In Scotland, the right of B. in a churchyard is an incident of property in the parish; but it is a mere right of B., and there is not necessarily any corresponding ownership in the solum or ground of the churchyard. In Edinburgh, however, the right to special B. places in churchyards is recognised.-For B. in cemeteries in England and Scotland, see CEMETERY. BURIAL ACTS. These are the 15 and 16 Vict. c. 85, for London; the 16 and 17 Viet. c. 134, the 17 and 18 Viet. c. 87, and the 18 and 19 Vict. cc. 79* and 128, for places in England beyond the limits of the metropolis-all as amended by the 20 and 21 Vict. c. 81, and the 22 Vict. c. 1. The regulations relate to the appointment of BURIAL SOCIETIES-BURKE. burial-boards for parishes-the authorising new burial-places, proper sanitary regulations, the control by the government, and by order in council, and many other details too numerous to specify here. Our readers must be content with our referring them to the acts themselves, 、 to their lawyers. The corresponding acts for Scotland are the 18 and 19 Vict. c. 68, amended by the 20 and 21 Vict. c. 42. BU'RIAL SOCIETIES are friendly societies constituted in the usual manner, and with the express object of supplying a fund for paying the funeral expenses of the members on their death. See FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. It became customary to enter the names not only of adults, but of children, in such societies. The proceedings of the criminal courts have shewn that, in some instances, children on whose lives such an insurance was effected have been killed or allowed to die of neglect, and the alarm created by such instances, was enhanced by the discovery that children were frequently insured in more than one society. To obviate this calamitous use of a beneficial arrangement, it was provided that no insurance of a child under six years of age in a burial society should be legal. It was attested to the Select Committee of the Com mons on Friendly Societies in 1849, that the from this crime. BURIDAN, JEAN, a scholastic metaphysician of the nominalist party, was born at Bethune, in Artois, in the 14th c., and studied at Paris under Occam, where he also became a teacher of philosophy. The events of his life, as well as the manner of his death, are very obscure. One account states, that he was thrown into the Seine, by command of Marguerite de Bourgogne, daughterin-law of Philippe le Bel, whose infidelities he had rebuked. Another, later, but less mythicallooking account, states that B. was driven from France as a disciple of Occam, and fled to Austria, where he founded a school. His elucidations of Aristotle are among his most useful writings. In his Logic, his great endeavour was to facilitate the discovery of middle terms for all kinds of syllogisms. The celebrated sophism known to the schoolmen under the name of BURIDAN'S Ass, has been discussed at superfluous length, and with needless ingenuity, by Bayle. It is not at all likely that it was ever adduced by B., but more probably by his adversaries, who wished to ridicule his metaphysical doctrine of Determinism―viz., that in every mental and bodily action the will must be determined by something out of itself. The sophism referred to is, that if a hungry ass be placed exactly between two bundles of hay of equal size and attractiveness, it must starve, as there is nothing to determine the will of the animal towards either bundle. His chief works are-Summula Dialectica (Paris, 1487), Compendium Logica (Venice, 1489; Oxford, 1637), In Aristotelis Metaphysica (Paris, 1518). BU'RIN, or GRAVER, the principal instrument used in copper-engraving, is made of tempered steel, | and is of prismatic form, the graving end being ground off obliquely to a sharp point. The style of a master is frequently described by the expression soft B., graphic B., brilliant B., or whatever other character may belong to it. BURITI PALM (Mauritia vinifera ; see MAURITIA), a beautiful palm, which grows in great abundance in the swamps of some parts of the Its leaves are fan-shaped, and form a large globular north of Brazil. It is one of the loftiest of palms. head at the top of the stem. It produces a great number of nuts about the size of a small hen's egg, covered with rhomboidal scales arranged in a spital manner. Between these scales and the albuminous substances of the nut, there is an oily reddish pulp, which is boiled with sugar, and made into a sweetmeat. An emulsion is also prepared from it, which, when sweetened with sugar, is a very palatable beverage, but if much used, is said to tinge the skin of a yellow colour. The juice of the stem also makes a very agreeable drink; but to obtain it, the tree must be cut down, when several holes about 6 inches square, 3 inches deep, and 6 feet apart, are cut in the trunk with a small axe; and these in a short time are filled with a reddish-coloured liquid, having much the flavour of sweet wine. BURKE, EDMUND, a philosopher and politician, distinguished over all the men of his times for eloquence and political foresight, was born in 1730, in Dublin, where his father had an extensive practice as an attorney. As a school-boy, he displayed those traits of character and the germs of those powers which ultimately gave him greatness. In 1744, B. entered the university of Dublin, of which he became a scholar. His undergraduate course of successful application; but it would appear was not unmarked by the ordinary distinctions. that he mainly devoted himself to his favourite In February 1748, he graduated B. A., and in studies of poetry, oratory, history, and metaphysics. 1751 took his degree as Master of Arts. In the interval (1750), being destined for the English bar, he proceeded to London, to keep his terms at the Middle Temple. To legal studies, however, he the idea of becoming a barrister. During the years never took kindly, and ultimately he abandoned 1750-1756 he would appear to have occupied himself in travelling through England, enjoying the society of literary men, in study, and finally in writing for various periodicals. B., when yet at the university, had achieved a local reputation for literary talent and eloquence. Among the compositions of his undergraduate life, the most noticeable perhaps is his translation of the conclusion of the second Georgic of Virgil, which shews poetic talent of no mean order. His first important publication, however, was the celebrated Vindication of Natural Society, written in imitation and ridicule of the style and reasoning of Lord Bolingbroke, in which, with well-concealed irony, he confutes his lordship's views of society by a reductio ad absurdum. This work, published anonymously in 1756, at the age of 26, attracted considerable attention. Soon after, in the same year, appeared his well-known essay, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful the various sources of the ideas referred to, but which ---a work containing a comprehensive induction of must be pronounced a failure, so far as it pretends of the sublime and beautiful, to analyse into their primary elements the emotions The essay on the Sublime and Beautiful attained a rapid popularity, and its author soon found himself courted by all the eminent men of his time. Garrick was already one of his friends; among them he soon could count Reynolds, Soame Jenyns, Lord Lyttelton, Warburton, Ilume, and Dr. BURKE. for patient research that was unlimited, and an eloquence that has never been transcended. This terized as 'a tempest of invective and eloquence.' No idea can be conveyed of the effect which it produced. The trial lasted seven years, and closed with another great and splendid oration from B., lasting over nine days. Hastings, it is well known, was acquitted. While this trial was advancing, B. found time to take part in all the current business. In 1790 appeared his Reflections on the Revolution of France, which sold in tens of thousands, and is said to have produced an effect never produced before nor since by any political essay. Hereafter, the world showered honours on B., of which space forbids even the enumeration. Having, in 1791, withdrawn from the Whigs on the French question, he offered for the consideration of govern. ment, Thoughts on French Affairs, which, however, was not published till after his death. Heads for Consideration on the Present State of Affairs, and Reply to a Noble Lord, next followed, the latter being relative to himself personally. His last work, Thoughts on a Regicide Peace, showed that he retained to the end of his life his whole powers unimpaired. Johnson. Notwithstanding this popularity, how ever, his progress continued slow; for three years yet, he had to occupy himself with periodical Before proceeding to remark on the character and writing, devoting his leisure principally to politi- powers of B., a very brief notice must be taken of cal subjects. What is considered a joint work of his leading literary efforts connected with his poliB. and his cousin, William Bourke, appeared in tical labours. Little more than a catalogue can here 1757-viz., An Account of the European Settle- be given of them. Omitting a variety of valuable ments in America—and shews how carefully at letters-several on the condition of Ireland—notice this date he had studied the condition of the must be taken of his Observations on a Pamphlet on colonies. In 1761, Mr. W. G. Hamilton ('Single- the Present State of the Nation, being his first polispeech Hamilton'), then Secretary for Ireland, hav- tical pamphlet, published in 1769, in answer to one ing appointed him his private secretary, he returned variously ascribed to Fox or Grenville. In 1770, to Dublin, where, during two years' service, he he published a pamphlet On the Cause of the Present demonstrated his aptitude for political business, Discontents. On the 13th February 1788, he com-. receiving in 1763, in reward of his services, a pen- menced his celebrated speech opening the trial sion on the Irish establishment of £300, which, of Warren Hastings (q. v.), the most remarkable however, he did not long enjoy. trial, perhaps, in the history of the world. Returning to London, B., in 1764, along with Rey-speech lasted over four days, and has been charac nolds, founded the Literary Club, the history of which is associated with almost every considerable name in the literature of the period. But literary society did not call off his attention from the chances of a political career. He became private | secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, on his becoming premier, and at the same time entered parliament as member for Wendover. Here his eloquence at once made him the reputation of being 'the first man in the Commons.' The Rockingham administration, however, lived only a few months, and with it terminated this his second political employment. To trace his subsequent career in parliament is more than the limits of this article will allow; it must suffice to state briefly that his parliamentary life extended from 1766 to 1794 without intermission; that he was successively member for Wendover, Bristol, and Malton; twice held the post of Paymaster of the Forces, once under Rockingham, and again under Lord North, with the standing of a privy councillor; that after a career in parliament remarkable for the laboriousness, earnestness, and brilliancy with which every duty was discharged, and extending over nearly 30 years, he retired at last, receiving the thanks of the Commons for his numerous public services, and rewarded by government, on the express request of his sovereign, with pensions amounting in all to £3700. It would be wrong, however, to omit that as Paymaster of the Forces he, with a scrupulous regard to public economy, sacrificed all the perquisites of his office, exhibiting a severe integrity unexampled among public men; and that in his relation with the constituency of Bristol, which was alienated from him by his advocacy of the claims of the Roman Catholics and of the opening up of the trade of Ireland, he was the first to maintain the doctrine of the independence of parliamentary representatives—that they are not machines to vote for measures approved by their constituencies simply for that reason, but men and thinkers chosen by them to calmly consider and legislate for the gool of the commonwealth. It must also be mentioned, that during his career he rendered more important service to the cause of humanity than any man of his time: he prepared the way for the abolition of the slave-trade, a measure which was destined to ripen to success in the hands of Wilberforce; he advocated the cause of humanity in India against the voracious greed of stockholders, who regarded its millions simply as materials for plunder, and largely contributed to improve the government of that country. Towards America he advocated a policy of justice and conciliation, which, had it been adopted, would have averted the horrors of the War of Independence, and retained the colonies in amity with the mother-country. And to the advocacy of every cause which he espoused, he brought a capacity Few men have been the subject of higher panegyric than B., and, on the whole, few have better deserved praise. He was noble-minded, pure in his life, and a purist in politics. Intellectually, he was most richly endowed; with much imagination, rare powers of observation, and indefatigable industry, there was no subject which he could not master, and none which, having mastered, he could not expound with unparalleled richness of language. But with these virtues and powers were conjoined defects, which, without bating their greatness, largely neutralised their influence. He was, it may be said, too literary to be a philosopher, and too philosophic to be a politician. His career would seem to illustrate this position. His oratory astounded by its brilliancy rather than persuaded by its tone and argument; and in the long-run, the eloquence which failed to command the reason, ceased to captivate the ear. The man who at first evoked the enthusiasm of the House by the brilliancy and power of his eloquence, did actually at last empty it by persistence in the monotonous splendours of his speeches. Passionate, and in a great degree untractable, he was unsuited for party politics, and drifted from all his connections, breaking up slowly all party ties, and even the ties of friendship, till he reached at last a state of almost political isolation. At the same time, it must not be forgotten how great an influence he, half phi· losopher half politician, exercised on the counsels of the state; many of his views on politics and public economy were anticipations of science, as many of his previsions of the course of events were prophecies. B. died on the 9th July 1797, in his 68th year. |