authority to examine the concerns of every department, and full
powers of control over the company's servants. Though this offer was
pressed by the directors, Burke, after anxious consideration, declined
it. What his reasons were there is no evidence; we can only guess that
he thought less of his personal interests than of those of the
country and of his party. Without him the Rockingham connection
would undoubtedly have fallen to ruin, and with it the most upright,
consistent, and disinterested body of men then in public life. "You
say," the Duke of Richmond wrote to him (November 15, 1772), "the
party is an object of too much importance to go to pieces. Indeed,
Burke, you have more merit than any man in keeping us together." It
was the character of the party, almost as much as their principles,
that secured Burke's zeal and attachment; their decorum, their
constancy, their aversion to all cabals for private objects, their
indifference to office, except as an instrument of power and a means
of carrying out the policy of their convictions. They might easily
have had office if they would have come in upon the king's terms. A
year after his fall from power Lord Rockingham was summoned to the
royal closet, and pressed to resume his post. But office at any price
was not in their thoughts. They knew the penalties of their system,
and they clung to it undeterred. Their patriotism was deliberate and
considered. Chalcedon was called the city of the blind, because its
founders wilfully neglected the more glorious site of Byzantium which
lay under their eyes. "We have built our Chalcedon," said Burke, "with
the chosen part of the universe full in our prospect." They had the
faults to which an aristocratic party in opposition is naturally
liable. Burke used to reproach them with being somewhat languid,
scrupulous, and unsystematic. He could not make the Duke of Richmond
put off a large party at Goodwood for the sake of an important
division in the House of Lords; and he did not always agree with Lord
John Cavendish as to what constitutes a decent and reasonable quantity
of fox-hunting for a political leader in a crisis. But it was part of
the steadfastness of his whole life to do his best with such materials
as he could find. He did not lose patience nor abate his effort,
because his friends would miss the opportunity of a great political
stroke rather than they would miss Newmarket Races. He wrote their
protests for the House of