ere then passing in the world. The
scheme was probably born of the circumstances of the hour, for this
was the climax of the Seven Years' War. The clang of arms was heard in
every quarter of the globe, and in East and West new lands were being
brought under the dominion of Great Britain.

In this exciting crisis of national affairs, Burke began to be
acquainted with public men. In 1759 he was introduced, probably by
Lord Charlemont, to William Gerard Hamilton, who only survives in our
memories by his nickname of Single-speech. As a matter of fact, he
made many speeches in Parliament, and some good ones, but none so
good as the first, delivered in a debate in 1755, in which Pitt, Fox,
Grenville, and Murray all took part, and were all outshone by the
new luminary. But the new luminary never shone again with its first
brilliance. He sought Burke out on the strength of the success of the
_Vindication of Natural Society_, and he seems to have had a taste for
good company. Horace Walpole describes a dinner at his house in the
summer of 1761. "There were Garrick," he says, "and a young Mr. Burke,
who wrote a book in the style of Lord Bolingbroke, that is much
admired. He is a sensible man, but has not worn off his authorism yet,
and thinks there is nothing so charming as writers, and to be one. He
will know better one of these days." The prophecy came true in time,
but it was Burke's passion for authorism that eventually led to a
rupture with his first patron. Hamilton was a man of ability, but
selfish and unreasonable. Dr. Leland afterwards described him
compendiously as a sullen, vain, proud, selfish, canker-hearted,
envious reptile.

In 1761 Hamilton went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Halifax, and
Burke accompanied him in some indefinite capacity. "The absenteeism of
her men of genius," an eminent historian has said, "was a worse wrong
to Ireland than the absenteeism of her landlords. If Edmund Burke had
remained in the country where Providence had placed him, he might have
changed the current of its history." [1] It is at least to be said
that Burke was never so absorbed in other affairs as to forget the
peculiar interests of his native land. We have his own word, and his
career does not belie it, that in the elation with which he was filled
on being elected a member of Parliament, what was first and uppermost
in his thoughts was the hope of being somewhat useful to the place of
his birth and education; and to the last