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Another Eve and Paradise are thine, May'st thou be father of as long a line! Your heart so fix'd on her, and hers on you, As if the world afforded but the two,

That to this age your constancy may prove, There yet remains on earth a power call'd love.

These to my friend, in lays not vainly loud, The palm, unknowing to the giddy crowd I sung, for these demand his steady truth, And friendship growing from our earliest youth; A nobler lay unto his sire should grow, To whose kind care my better birth I owe, Who to fair science did my youth entice, Won from the paths of ignorance and vice.

CHAPTER V

BURKE AND THE LUCAS CONTROVERSY

T has been persistently asserted that Burke's first effort in political writing was a refutation of the democratic principles of the celebrated Dublin politician, Charles Lucas, contained in a series of pamphlets written in such close imitation of the style of Lucas as to deceive the public. Burke is said to have used the ironic method with great effect by assuming the premises of his opponent and then reducing his conclusions to absurdity, thus demonstrating "the pernicious consequences of the teaching of the 'demagogue,' and anticipating in the confutation of Lucas his subsequent refutation of Bolingbroke in the Vindication of Natural Society." A further assertion is frequently coupled with it, that at the same time he ridiculed Henry Brooke, author of Gustavus Vasa and the Fool of Quality, who, as the writer of the Letters from the Farmer to the Free and Independent Citizens of Dublin, was one of the most prominent supporters of Lucas in his candidature for Parliament in 1748-49. Burke, it is said, satirised Brooke under the title of Diabetes and Lucas as Epaminondas1.

There seems to be no basis whatever for this legend, not a single line of a single pamphlet has ever been quoted in which Burke satirised either Brooke or Lucas. Not a title is given, nor a particular supplied. Bissett begins the story in 17982, Prior follows in 18283, Croly in 18404, Rogers in 18425, Wills in 18476, Peter Burke in 18537, and Prior again in 1854. These biographers iterate and reiterate it, plagiarising, apparently, from one another in succession and varying only in the vehemence of the adjectives used in the denunciation of Lucas. Macknight (1858) rejects the statement as "most improbable.' Lord Morley does not notice it in his article in the Encyclopedia Britannica, or in his other works dealing with Burke's writings and life, nor does the author of the fine contribution on Burke contained in the Dictionary of National Biography. An examination of the pamphlets poured out from the Dublin printing houses in the years

1 Prior, 2nd ed., p. 19; 5th ed., p. 30.
2 P. 28.

5 P. v.

7 P. 30.

$ P. 19.

4 P. 10.

6 Lives of Illustrious Irishmen.
8 The Rev. W. H. Hunt.

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1748-9, when Burke is stated to have appeared as the ironic exposer of the "pernicious demagogue" Lucas, together with some study of the "Lucasian Controversy," and an apprehension of the reforms for which Lucas was contending, will not only lead to the conclusion that this tradition should be added to the list of

those inscrutable rumours that (as Lord Morley writes in reference to Burke's alleged visit to America) hovered about Burke's name, just as untrue as that he became a convert to the Catholic faith; or that he was the lover of Peg Woffington; or that he contested Adam Smith's chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow along with Hume, and that both Burke and Hume were alike rejected in favour of some fortunate Mr James Clow, all alike unfounded1,

but will compel the conviction that not merely was Burke not the opponent of Lucas, but that veiled in anonymity, he was incomparably the ablest advocate of the principles for which Lucas contended, and an admirer of the honesty and disinterestedness of his motives and career; and that Burke, as his first contribution to politics, then penned in favour of Lucas pamphlets, which stand out distinctively, towering in ability over the mass of the literature of this controversy, and are charged with the classical grace and historical knowledge, penetrative criticism, and illustrative eloquence which characterise even the earliest writings of Edmund Burke, and are treatises of permanent value, like those of his maturer years, full of the philosophy of lofty statesmanship and doctrines of disciplined and ennobling liberty, applicable not only to the transient conflicts of the day, but teaching for all time. It is strange that the many biographers who tell that Burke took part in the passionate agitation that tossed Dublin during his collegiate life, seem never to have searched through the voluminous literature of that agitation, to ascertain what really was Burke's part in it. Had they done so they could not have discovered any pamphlet written by any controversialist in the style of Lucas other than those written by Lucas himself. His is a style plain and practical, but verbose and wearying, inimitabile vitiis—a style that did not lend itself to the ironic treatment; one which, if even by an effort so treated, it would have been absurd to parody, with the object of convincing, through a refined sarcasm, a populace such as the Dublin electorate "that Dr Lucas was a man who had hustled himself into importance, with the demand of rights that were worth nothing and the complaint of wrongs that existed only in his own brain?." 1 Burke (English Men of Letters series), p. II. 2 See Croly's Life of Burke, vol. 1, p. 10.

There is no difficulty in identifying all Lucas' pamphlets, he signed his name to most of them. In the few instances in which he wrote under an assumed title there was practically no disguise of the author's identity. It was patent, and they were at once replied to as being his productions. In after years he collected them and republished them. The protagonists on each side of the controversy were well known at the time. On Lucas' side the leader was Henry Brooke, who wrote the ten Letters from the Farmer. Against Lucas the most prominent writer was Dr Paul Hiffernan, writing as the "Tickler" and under other titles. His productions are quite distinctive. There was also James Taylor, a well-known brewer and member of the Common Council, knighted subsequently, and Lord Mayor of Dublin, 1765-1766. He was the author of Lucas Detected, a laboured and abusive pamphlet, written to vindicate the Aldermen "whose only crimes are their exalted characters and stations, as much above the impotent Malice of this Reptile (Lucas) as his person is below their notice." It was at first issued anonymously but subsequently published with the author's name1. On the 4th August, 1749, the Sheriffs and Commons of the City of Dublin showed their appreciation of this literary achievement of one of their body by resolving: "That the thanks of the House be returned to their worthy member for his vindication of the Honour and Dignity of the House in answer to the Scandalous Aspersions thrown upon them by Charles Lucas."

But by far the most powerful and virulent opponent of Lucas was Sir Richard Cox, Bart., Member for Clonakilty in the Irish House of Commons, who moved in 1749 in the House a resolution, which was carried unanimously, declaring Lucas an enemy of the country, and directing him to be prosecuted, and "that he be committed to the Gaol of Newgate for his infringement of the privileges of the House." Sir Richard Cox was the author of a series of seven pamphlets intitled The Cork Surgeon's Antidote against the Dublin Apothecary's Poyson for the Citizens of Dublin, by Anthony Litten. A study of the

1 In the very valuable article by Mr Dunlop on Charles Lucas in the Dictionary of National Biography, it is stated that Lucas Detected was "conjectured to have been written by Edmund Burke at that time a student in Trinity College, Dublin.” The authority cited for this statement is Madden, who, in his History of Irish Periodical Literature, vol. 1, p. 231, attributed it to Burke, but he evidently was only acquainted with the anonymous edition. It was certainly not written by Burke. Madden says he traces the style of Burke in it, but it is impossible to agree with him in this criticism. The pamphlet has no resemblance to Burke's style. It is a farrago of personalities and assertions against Lucas the "Hypocrite," "Slanderer," "Incendiary"-who is compared to "That Hellish agent of France and Rome, the detestable Sacheverell of infamous memory."

part taken by Sir R. Cox in the controversies of 1748-9, when Lucas came forward as a candidate for Parliament, and of certain remarkable pamphlets dealing with his writings and actions, indicates that Edmund Burke wrote as the antagonist of the political principles of Sir Richard Cox, "the Cork Surgeon," not of Lucas, "the Dublin Apothecary"; and that Bissett, who first gave currency to the story that Burke's earliest venture in politics was a confutation of Lucas, probably mistook the personages, confused the traditions, and had never looked into the tangled and tedious literature of the forgotten contest, which had taken place in Dublin half a century before he wrote. Prior and the rest of the repeating biographers merely pirate from Bissett. They add nothing to his authority, or want of authority. It is true that Prior in his first (1826) and other early editions, prefaces the statement with "as adds the highest College Authority." He refrains from informing us who this authority was. He writes nearly eighty years after the events. "Highest Authority" is generally to be suspected; but when it is "highest College Authority," experience mistrusts the gossip of Commons and the Common Room as the mirage of veracity.

It is desirable to reconstruct briefly the historical setting when considering the probabilities of the assertion about Burke's attitude in the controversy. The Irish Parliament, which had been summoned when George II came to the throne 22 years before, was still subsisting. It continued till his death, a period of thirty-three years in all. There was no Septennial Act in Ireland, and the Irish Octennial Act was not passed until 1767. The House of Commons was full of pensioners, many of whom had neither estates, place, property, interest or residence in the kingdom. It was the day of "The Undertakers," the great borough mongers, who managed Parliament in return for the command of place and patronage. A few great families controlled the Administration. There were, properly speaking, no Parliamentary parties. Divisions there were according as each group of jealous Undertakers by alternate obstruction and subservience to the designs of the English Administration as represented by the Lord-Lieutenant, sought to enlarge their own power and strengthen through jobbery the number of their dependents and followers. We get a glimpse of the "management" from a disclosure by Lucas' opponent, Sir Richard Cox, who had posed as one of the heads of the opposition in 1737 to a reduction of the currency of gold coin by the Executive, notwithstanding a vote of the House of Commons.

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