f
the English people and the English Constitution. As much as this,
however, might be said of more than one actor in the political history
of the period covered by Burke's public life. But the influence which
Burke exercised upon his time, the force he brought to bear upon his
political generation, were a greater influence and a stronger force
than that directed by any other statesman of the age. Whether for good
or for evil, according to the standards by which his critics may judge
him, Burke swayed the minds of masses of his countrymen to a degree
that was unequalled among his contemporaries. With the two great
events of the century--the revolt of the American colonies and the
French Revolution--his name was the most intimately associated, his
influence the most potent. With what in their degree must be called
the minor events of the reign--with the trial of Wilkes, with the trial
of Warren Hastings--he was no less intimately associated, and in each
case his association has been the most important feature of the event.
Where he was right as where he was wrong, and whether he was right or
whether he was wrong, he was always the most interesting, always the
most commanding figure in the epoch-making political controversies of
his day. Grenville wrote of him finely, many years after his death,
that he was in the political world what Shakespeare was in the moral
world.

[Sidenote: 1729-59--Burke's early life]

Burke entered political life, or entered active political life, when he
was returned to Parliament in the December of 1765. Up to that time
his life had been largely uneventful; much of it must be called as far
as we are concerned eventless, for of a great gap of his life, a gap of
no less than nine years, we know, if not absolutely nothing, certainly
next to nothing. It is not even quite certain where or when he was
born. The most approved account is that he was born in Dublin on
January 12, 1729, reckoning according to the new style. The place of
his birth is still pointed out to the curious in Dublin: one of the
many modest houses that line the left bank of the Liffey. His family
was supposed to stem from Limerick, from {97} namesakes who spelled
their name differently as Bourke. His mother's family were Catholic;
Burke's mother always remained stanch to her native faith, and, though
Burke and his brothers were brought up as the Protestant sons of a
Protestant father, the influence of his mother mus