lf. There are some things it is very easy to do,
and to write a pamphlet is one of them; but to write such a pamphlet as
future generations will read with delight is perhaps the most difficult
feat in literature. Milton, Swift, Burke, and Sydney Smith are, I think,
our only great pamphleteers.

I have now rather more than kept my word so far as Burke's
pre-parliamentary life is concerned, and will proceed to mention some of
the circumstances that may serve to account for the fact that, when the
Rockingham party came into power for the second time in 1782, Burke, who
was their life and soul, was only rewarded with a minor office. First,
then, it must be recorded sorrowfully of Burke that he was always
desperately in debt, and in this country no politician under the rank of
a baronet can ever safely be in debt. Burke's finances are, and always
have been, marvels and mysteries; but one thing must be said of them--that
the malignity of his enemies, both Tory enemies and Radical enemies, has
never succeeded in formulating any charge of dishonesty against him that
has not been at once completely pulverized, and shown on the facts to be
impossible. {159} Burke's purchase of the estate at Beaconsfield in
1768, only two years after he entered Parliament, consisting as it did of
a good house and 1,600 acres of land, has puzzled a great many good
men--much more than it ever did Edmund Burke. But how did he get the
money? After an Irish fashion--by not getting it at all. Two-thirds of
the purchase-money remained on mortgage, and the balance he borrowed; or,
as he puts it, 'With all I could collect of my own, and by the aid of my
friends, I have established a root in the country.' That is how Burke
bought Beaconsfield, where he lived till his end came; whither he always
hastened when his sensitive mind was tortured by the thought of how badly
men governed the world; where he entertained all sorts and conditions of
men--Quakers, Brahmins (for whose ancient rites he provided suitable
accommodation in a greenhouse), nobles and abbes flying from
revolutionary France, poets, painters, and peers; no one of whom ever
long remained a stranger to his charm. Burke flung himself into farming
with all the enthusiasm of his nature. His letters to Arthur Young on
the subject of carrots still tremble with emotion. You all know Burke's
_Thoughts on the Present Discontents_. You remember--it is hard to
forget--his speech on Conciliation