, that all the accredited
courtesies of debate are violated, once, at least, in every five
minutes. In any American legislative assembly he would have been called
to order at least once in five minutes. The images which the orator
brings in to give vividness to his argument are sometimes coarse; but,
coarse as they are, they admirably reflect the moral turpitude of the
men against whom he inveighs. Among these is the image with which he
covers Dundas, the special friend of Pitt, with a ridicule which
promises to be immortal. Dundas, on the occasion when Fox and Burke
called for papers by the aid of which they proposed to demonstrate the
iniquity of the scheme by which the ministry proposed to settle the
debts of the Nabob of Arcot, pretended that the production of such
papers would be indelicate,--"that this inquiry is of a delicate nature,
and that the state will suffer detriment by the exposure of this
transaction." As Dundas had previously brought out six volumes of
Reports, generally confirming Burke's own views of the corruption and
oppression which marked the administration of affairs in India, he laid
himself open to Burke's celebrated assault. Dundas and delicacy, he
said, were "a rare and singular coalition." And then follows an image of
colossal coarseness, such as might be supposed capable of rousing
thunder-peals of laughter from a company of festive giants,--an image
which Lord Brougham declared offended _his_ sensitive taste,--the
sensitive taste of one of the most formidable legal and legislative
bullies that ever appeared before the juries or Parliament of Great
Britain, and who never hesitated to use any illustration, however
vulgar, which he thought would be effective to degrade his opponents.

But whatever may be thought of the indelicacy of Burke's image, it was
one eminently adapted to penetrate through the thick hide of the
minister of state at whom it was aimed, and it shamed him as far as a
profligate politician like Dundas was capable of feeling the sensation
of shame. But there are also flashes, or rather flames, of impassioned
imagination, in the same speech, which rush up from the main body of its
statements and arguments, and remind us of nothing so much as of those
jets of incandescent gas which, we are told by astronomers, occasionally
leap, from the extreme outer covering of the sun, to the height of a
hundred or a hundred and sixty thousand miles, and testify to the
terrible forces ragin