The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1897-12-18
into the mind of the man. What was
he to his own generation7 What was
he to ours? From 1893 onward it had


ne 10 MS own generation? What was
he to ours? From 1893 onward it had
been the fashion to praise or condemn
him as mere conservative philosopher
But the idea for which Burke lived was
not to mark time and leave the world
as he found it. No one ever had a
more abiding zeal for reform than he
had. He was before all things COM
passionate and lover of his kind. feel
ing with Celtic heart, which was easi-
ly moved, as he saw with Celtic eyes
the worlds vices, and must needs pity
them and seek a remedy in cautious,
charitable wisdom. 1t was new spirit
which he brought into politics.
He (Father Barry) defined Edmund
Burke as a reformer by due course Of
law. He said that he could be nothing
else when his eyes opened on that sad
spectacle of Irish miseries, Irish pa
thence and Irish loss, which even at this
distance we could hardly bear to read
of them without rising grief and indig-
nation. Change-was there any one
who would long for it more passionate
ly than the precocious lad, the student
of life and books, who In his person
knew and felt what the Irish peasants
felt, with an old Norman name, with
Galway blood running in his veins.
with Catholic mother and sister liv-
ing In Spencer's fairyland by the en-
chanted stream of the Blackwater, hear
ing, If he did not understand, the old
Celtic tongue, fiery, sweet and mourn
full, In Desmond, where the drums and
trumpetings of three conquests had
made wilderness and left stinging
memories. Surely, he was face to face
with the Irish question. 1t lived all
around him; it addressed him with lu-
gubrious language. By the fathers side
a Cavalier, by the mothers a Jacobitc
and yet himself not under the spells Of
the Stuart-a Protestant, to whom,
therefore, Trinity College was open, he
was precisely situated where he might
consider at his leisure the circumstances
which made of his poor country bat
tletleld-the battle was over, and a
dreadful calm had followed it-but, as
Bossuet would declare, a something
that has no name In any language, for
he beheld the mutilation Of the dying
by the victor and the stripping of the
dead, leaving them unburied in their
nakedness, the awful carrying out OF
the horrible and inlpious system of serv-
itude. Burke's own words ON the penal
laws were: ''The worst species Of ty-
ranny that the insolence and perverse-
ness of mankind ever dared exercise, it
was machine Of wise and elaborate
contrivance, and as we'll fitted for the
opression, ilnpoverishement and degra-
dation of the people and the debasement
in them Of human nature itself as ever
proceeded from the perverted ingenuity
of man."
The lecturer proceeded to quote pas
sages from Lecky to show the circum-
stances under which Edmund Burke
grew up. He quoted that to the ever
testants, who brought this system to
the ground. They gloried in Swift the
great captain Of the band; they took
pride in their enlightened and philoso-
phic Bishop Berkeley; they wore in
their hearts Henry Grattan, whose
years Of martyrdom bore witness to
his sincerity when he exclaimed that
the Irish Protestant never could be free
while the Irish Catholic was slave.
To that immortal company Edmund
Burke must be added. Look upon this
starry son of genius and remember his
career in London, writing passages in
the Annual Register, one of that COM
pany Of whom Boswell had written,
none greater than the student from
Trinity College. Dublin, and from old
Abraham Shackleton's Academy Of Bal
lytore. He loved to talk of art with
Sir Joshua Reynolds, of the stage with
Garrick, Of politics with Gibbon, and
of experience of life with johnson.
There was mingling of religious awe
in Burkes philosophy. johnson NOR
allied, Burke speculated, and Johnsons
was the first of authority that struck
one down.
Burke's was the open hand of rhetoric
which they were to grasp with equal
apprehension. Burke died not so much
Of old age as Of the Indian miseries,
the great revolution, the troubles that
were coming thick and fast on ireland,
and of his sons death. He sank down
in the twilight of the gods which for
him brought no promise Of the new day.
More remarkable than his powers Of
speech or his learning, which eclipsed
every one else in Parliament, or his
industry, was Burke's acquaintance
with the only true and fruitful methods
in politics that they might assign him
to that small group which counted
among them Montesquieu, Adam Smith
and Emanuel Kant. His appeal was
always to concrete human nature, to the
spirit of laws, and the social reason,
which were above party and private
judgment. He held that in all forms
of government the DeODIe were the true