In
opposing this policy, Burke lost his seat as representative for Bristol, then
the second city of England; spent fourteen of the best years of his life in
conducting the impeachment of Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India; and,
greatest of all, delivered his famous speeches on Taxation and Conciliation, in
behalf of the American colonists.
Notwithstanding the distinctly modern tone of Burke's ideas, it would be wrong
to think of him as a thoroughgoing reformer. He has been called the Great
Conservative, and the title is appropriate. He would have shrunk from a purely
republican form of government, such as our own, and it is, perhaps, a fact that
he was suspicious of a government by the people. The trouble, as he saw it, lay
with the representatives of the people. Upon them, as guardians of a trust,
rested the responsibility of protecting those whom they were chosen to serve.
While he bitterly opposed any measures involving radical change in the
Constitution, he was no less ardent in denouncing political corruptions of all
kinds whatsoever. In his Economical Reform he sought to curtail the enormous
extravagance of the royal household, and to withdraw the means of wholesale
bribery, which offices at the disposal of the king created.
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