e think of the
odious mis-government in England which the constitution permitted,
between the time when Burke wrote and the passing of Lord Sidmouth's
Six Acts fifty years later, we may be inclined to class such a
constitution among the most inadequate and mischievous political
arrangements that any free country has ever had to endure. Yet it was
this which Burke declared that he looked upon with filial reverence.
"Never will I cut it in pieces, and put it into the kettle of any
magician, in order to boil it with the puddle of their compounds into
youth and vigour; on the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders;
I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a
parent's breath."

[Footnote 1: _Present Discontents_.]

[Footnote 2: _Reflections on the French Revolution_.]

He was filled with the spirit, and he borrowed the arguments, which
have always marked the champion of faith and authority against the
impious assault of reason or innovation. The constitution was sacred
to him as the voice of the Church and the oracles of her saints are
sacred to the faithful. Study it, he cried, until you know how to
admire it, and if you cannot know and admire, rather believe that you
are dull, than that the rest of the world has been imposed upon. We
ought to understand it according to our measure and to venerate where
we are not able presently to comprehend. Well has Burke been called
the Bossuet of politics.

Although, however, Burke's unflinching reverence for the constitution,
and his reluctance to lay a finger upon it, may now seem clearly
excessive, as it did to Chatham and his son, who were great men in the
right, or to Beckford and Sawbridge, who were very little men in the
right, we can only be just to him by comparing his ideas with those
which were dominant throughout an evil reign. While he opposed more
frequent parliaments, he still upheld the doctrine that "to govern
according to the sense, and agreeably to the interests, of the people
is a great and glorious object of government." While he declared
himself against the addition of a hundred knights of the shire, he
in the very same breath protested that, though the people might be
deceived in their choice of an object, he "could scarcely conceive any
choice they could make, to be so very mischievous as the existence of
any human force capable of resisting it."[1] To us this may seem very
mild and commonplace doctrine, but it was not commonplace in