The Sun.
London, England, 1845-03-03 00:00:00

TAIT S MAGAZINE.

The article on " The Correspoz_dence of Edmund
Burke" is in every respect excellent. It gives, with-
out pretensions, a graphic description of his active
and varied life, his political connexions, his change of
politics (if his marked detest:l'6on of the horrors of
the French Revolution deserve the name), the neglect
with which he was treated by a party that he had
long served faithfully and effectually, the comparative
solitude and gloom in which he was left in the decline
of life, and the melancholy sufferings which closed a
life embittered at last, beyond endurance, by the
death of a brother and a son to whom he was ardently
attached. Impartiality, truth, and kindness are the
principal features in the pictiire here given of this'
beautitul writer and sp'endid orator. His faults and
frailties are not extenuated, but they are p urtraved
as if by the hand of a friend—his great qualities, Phis
eloquence, varied information, industry, and genius,
though incidentally mentioned, are placed in full
view ; and the reflections on his death are expressed
in glowing language, and bear all the marks of sin-
cere conviction. After quoting a letter addressed to
Burke on his death. bed, by the daughter-in-law of
the venerable Quaker at whose school he had received

his early education, the last, or among the last, which
ne received, the writer thus concludes :—" And so

Edmund liurke sank to his long sleep—the innocent
memories of childhood hovering round his pillow, the
blessing of pious friendship resting upon his head.
The overworked heart, whose beatings literally
destroyed it, had ceased to beat at last. Th,:i worn-
out body was deposited in that quiet village church,
where the beloved son and brother lay already, and
where, many years afterwards, the aged widow was to
lie down beside her own. There, too, lay buried the
distrusts and animosities, the disappointments and
regrets ; there lay buried all of sorrow and of suffer-
ing, which, imparted by birth to the human spirit,
the cold hand of death wipes away. On earth, nought
survived but the name of the dead, and the works
which have made that name immortal: the name of a
man who sometimes erred in thought, and often
sinned in feeling and in act, but who yet was wise,
and good, and great; works which, in spite of
grievous faults, are among the noblest monuments
ever created in the arts of thinking and of commu-
nication."

The article is long, extending to seventeen pages ;
but, with the judicious remarks of the reviewer and
the extracts from his letters, is full of interest ; and
we may, therefore, be excused-for giving the follow-
ing additional extract, as it displays at once the in-
dependence and sineerity of his political opinions,
and the deep interest which he took in the sufferings
of his persecuted countrymen :
He obeyed the Ministry in nothing: he would not
even agree with them, unless when they chose to obey
him. lie resisted them stoutly, even in their policy with
regard to the events which alone drew him and them to-
gether. lie differed from them diametrically as to the
conduct of that unlucky war, which he, like them (and
much more decidedly than their leader, Pitt), held to he

just and necessa.ry.' He remonstrated against their
feeble measures privately; he denounced them publicly
in the pamphlets which he published after his retirement
from Parliament. Never was Ministry plagued with
such a partisan. Or rather, to express the relation more
correctly, never was party perplexed by such an ally—an
ally too powerful not to be sourced, yet too thoroughly
unmanageable to be efficiently used. Nor was this all.
There was one great question, upon which his head and
heart were alike sound to the very last. To Ireland his
affection was always true. In regard to the treatment of
Ireland, his indignation never waxed cold: —the genuine
remedies for the evils of Ireland were alwa3s clearly and
steadily present to his view. It is consolatory to be able
to close the survey of his agitated career with a notice
of events in which his enlightened patriotism shone out
with steady brightness, and in which an honourable part
was borne by one whi was dearer to him than fame or
i:e..

['here is another rather long article giving numerous ex-
tracts from recent novels on the Condition-of Ireland
question, which are descriptive of the habits of the
people, and the state of the country, and one entitled
" Opinions of the Germans on the Scottish Church
Question." We looked wi'h some interest to the
subject, in hopes of discovering what the honest Ger-
mans thought of the disruption, but were sadly dis-
appointed, for these " Opinions" are all monopolised
by one Deutseher, called Herr Sydow, a chaplain of
his Majesty the King of Prussia. It appears he went
to Edinburgh to study the non•intrusion question,
and came away convinced that the Free Church was
in the right. But " one swallow don't make a sum
mer." The political article is on the opening of
Parliament, and the state of parties, which concludes
thus :

"We trust, meanwhile, that the representatives of
Great Britain will not give another weapon to the repeal
armoury, by allowing the session to go much further
without a vigorous parliamentary -protest against the
iniquities of the monster trial. The very discreditable
abdication of duty, on the part of the Irish absentee
Members. do, s not alter the case in the least. The ques-
tion is not Irish, but imperial. It was not Irish, but
British imperial law, that was twisted for Mr. O'Con-
nell's conviction ; and the attempt to make trial by jury
a mockery, a delusion, and a snare,' and to smuggle
into our jurisprudence the atrocious doctrines of construc-
tive complicity and inferential conspiracy, was a blow,
aimed not at Irish but at British liberties. In the very
lowest view of the case, there has been an enormous and
disgraceful blunder in the management of the public
business : the Executive has put out the utmost of its
strength and skill, for wi eks and months together, in
the cooduct of a State prosecution of first-class import-
ance, and has ignominiously broken down at last.. If
this is slot a subject for Parliamentary inquiry, what is ?
It will be really shameful, should our supineness or dis-
satisfaction with the proceedings of the persons imme-
diately interested, allow such a complication of injustice
and bungling to pass uncensored. The absence of the
Members for Cork and Limerick has no more to do with

the matter, supposing the Union a reality, than would
the absence of the Members for Caithness and Banff. To
make a Parliamentary discussion of this business contin-
gent on the presence or absence of Irish Members, would
be a virtual adoption of the repeal theory, at the expense,
too, of the common popular franchises of the empire, to
which we should be heartily sorry to see English and
Scottish Liberals commit themselves."