among a few great houses. That they should not have
broken through this rule in Burke's case, and admitted to the Cabinet a
man to whom they owed so much as they did to him, excited wonder in his
own day, and has down to our own time been one of the historical
mysteries on which the students of that period love to expend their
ingenuity. It is difficult to reconcile this exclusion and neglect of
Burke with the unbounded admiration lavished on him by the aristocratic
leaders of the party. It is difficult too to account for Burke's quiet
acquiescence in what seems to be their ingratitude. There had before his
time been no similar instance of party indifference to such claims as he
could well make, on such honors and rewards as the party had to bestow.

The most probable explanation of the affair is the one offered by his
latest and ablest biographer, Mr. John Morley. Burke had entered public
life without property,--probably the most serious mistake, if in his
case it can be called a mistake, which an English politician can commit.
It is a wise and salutary rule of English public life that a man who
seeks a political career shall qualify for it by pecuniary independence.
It would be hardly fair in Burke's case to say that he had sought a
political career. The greatness of his talents literally forced it on
him. He became a statesman and great Parliamentary orator, so to speak,
in spite of himself. But he must have early discovered the great barrier
to complete success created by his poverty. He may be said to have
passed his life in pecuniary embarrassment. This alone might not have
shut him out from the Whig official Paradise, for the same thing might
have been said of Pitt and Fox: but they had connections; they belonged
by birth and association to the Whig class. Burke's relatives were no
help or credit to him. In fact, they excited distrust of him. They
offended the fastidious aristocrats with whom he associated, and
combined with his impecuniousness to make him seem unsuitable for a
great place. These aristocrats were very good to him. They lent him
money freely, and settled a pension on him, and covered him with social
adulation; but they were never willing to put him beside themselves in
the government. His latter years therefore had an air of tragedy. He was
unpopular with most of those who in his earlier years had adored him,
and was the hero of those whom in earlier years he had despised. His
only son, of whose ca