them all. He thought these great and essential members ought to be
preserved, and preserved each in its place,--and that the monarchy ought
not only to be secured in its peculiar existence, but in its preeminence
too, as the presiding and connecting principle of the whole. Let it be
considered whether the language of his book, printed in 1790, differs
from his speech at Bristol in 1774.

With equal justice his opinions on the American war are introduced, as
if in his late work he had belied his conduct and opinions in the
debates which arose upon that great event. On the American war he never
had any opinions which he has seen occasion to retract, or which he has
ever retracted. He, indeed, differs essentially from Mr. Fox as to the
cause of that war. Mr. Fox has been pleased to say that the Americans
rebelled "because they thought they had not enjoyed liberty enough."
This cause of the war, _from him_, I have heard of for the first time.
It is true that those who stimulated the nation to that measure did
frequently urge this topic. They contended that the Americans had from
the beginning aimed at independence,--that from the beginning they meant
wholly to throw off the authority of the crown, and to break their
connection with the parent country. This Mr. Burke never believed. When
he moved his second conciliatory proposition, in the year 1776, he
entered into the discussion of this point at very great length, and,
from nine several heads of presumption, endeavored to prove the charge
upon that people not to be true.

If the principles of all he has said and wrote on the occasion be viewed
with common temper, the gentlemen of the party will perceive, that, on a
supposition that the Americans had rebelled merely in order to enlarge
their liberty, Mr. Burke would have thought very differently of the
American cause. What might have been in the secret thoughts of some of
their leaders it is impossible to say. As far as a man so locked up as
Dr. Franklin could be expected to communicate his ideas, I believe he
opened them to Mr. Burke. It was, I think, the very day before he set
out for America that a very long conversation passed between them, and
with a greater air of openness on the Doctor's side than Mr. Burke had
observed in him before. In this discourse Dr. Franklin lamented, and
with apparent sincerity, the separation which he feared was inevitable
between Great Britain and her colonies. He certainly spoke of it as