there remain four years during which his way of supporting himself
is unknown. His published works were certainly not "pot-boilers." He
was probably to some extent dependent on his wife's father, Dr. Nugent,
an Irish physician who when Burke made his acquaintance lived in Bath,
but after his daughter's marriage settled in London, and seems to have
frequented and have been acceptable in the same coffee-houses as Burke,
and for the same reasons. But Burke was not a man to remain long
dependent on any one. These nine years were evidently not spent
fruitlessly. They had made him known and brought him to the threshold of
public life.

In 1759, political discussion as we understand it--that is, those
explorations of the foundations of political society and analyses of
social relations which now form our daily intellectual food--was hardly
known. The interest in religion as the chief human concern was rapidly
declining. The interest in human society as an organism to be studied,
and if need be, taken to pieces and put together again, was only just
beginning. Montesquieu's great work, 'The Spirit of the Laws,' which
demanded for expediency and convenience in legislation the place which
modern Europe had long assigned to authority, had only appeared in 1748.
Swift's satires had made serious breaches in the wall of convention by
which the State, in spite of the convulsions of the seventeenth century,
was still surrounded. But the writer whose speculations excited most
attention in England was Bolingbroke. The charm of his style and the
variety of his interests made him the chief intellectual topic of the
London world in Burke's early youth. To write like Bolingbroke was a
legitimate ambition for a young man. It is not surprising that Burke
felt it, and that his earliest political effort was a satire on
Bolingbroke. It attracted the attention of a politician, Gerard
Hamilton, and he quickly picked up Burke as his secretary, treated him
badly, and was abandoned by him in disgust at the end of six years.

The peculiar condition of the English governmental machine made possible
for men of Burke's kind at this period what would not be possible now.
The population had vanished from a good many old boroughs, although
their representation in Parliament remained, and the selection of the
members fell to the lords of the soil. About one hundred and fifty
members of the House of Commons were in this way chosen by great landed
proprietors,