n disguise
(1765), down to the time when the Duke of Bedford, himself battening
"in grants to the house of Russell, so enormous as not only to outrage
economy, but even to stagger credibility," assailed the Government for
giving Burke a moderate pension, we may almost imagine that if Johnson
had imitated the famous Tenth Satire a little later, he would have
been tempted to apply the poet's cynical criticism of the career
heroic to the greater Cicero of his own day. "I was not," Burke said,
in a passage of lofty dignity, "like his Grace of Bedford, swaddled
and rocked and dandled into a legislator; _Nitor in adversum_ is the
motto for a man like me. I possessed not one of the qualities, nor
cultivated one of the arts, that recommend men to the favour and
protection of the great. I was not made for a minion or a tool. As
little did I follow the trade of winning the hearts, by imposing on
the understandings of the people. At every step of my progress in
life, for in every step was I traversed and opposed, and at every
turnpike I met, I was obliged to show my passport, and again and again
to prove my sole title to the honour of being useful to my country, by
a proof that I was not wholly unacquainted with its laws and the whole
system of its interests both abroad and at home; otherwise no rank, no
toleration even for me."

CHAPTER III

THE CONSTITUTIONAL STRUGGLE

Foreign observers of our affairs looked upon the state of England
between the accession of George III. and the loss of the American
colonies (1760-76) with mixed disgust and satisfaction. Their instinct
as absolute rulers was revolted by a spectacle of unbridled faction
and raging anarchy; their envy was soothed by the growing weakness of
a power which Chatham had so short a time before left at the highest
point of grandeur and strength. Frederick the Great spoke with
contempt of the insolence of Opposition and the virulence of parties;
and vowed that, petty German prince as he was, he would not change
places with the King of England. The Emperor Joseph pronounced
positively that Great Britain was declining, that Parliament was
ruining itself, and that the colonies threatened a catastrophe.
Catherine of Russia thought that nothing would restore its ancient
vigour to the realm, short of the bracing and heroic remedy of a war.
Even at home, such shrewd and experienced onlookers as Horace Walpole
suspected that the state of the country was more serious th