The "age of small
factions" was now succeeded by an age of great principles, and selfish ties
of mere families and persons were transformed into a union resting on
common conviction and patriotic aims. It was Burke who did more than any
one else to give to the Opposition, under the first half of the reign of
George III., this stamp of elevation and grandeur. Before leaving office
the Rockingham government repealed the Stamp Act; confirmed the personal
liberty of the subject by forcing on the House of Commons one resolution
against general warrants, and another against the seizure of papers; and
relieved private houses from the intrusion of officers of excise, by
repealing the cider tax. Nothing so good was done in an English parliament
for nearly twenty years to come. George Grenville, whom the Rockinghams had
displaced, and who was bitterly incensed at their formal reversal of his
policy, printed a pamphlet to demonstrate his own wisdom and statesmanship.
Burke replied in his _Observations on a late Publication on the Present
State of the Nation_ (1769), in which he showed for the first time that he
had not only as much knowledge of commerce and finance, and as firm a hand,
in dealing with figures as Grenville himself, but also a broad, general and
luminous way of conceiving and treating politics, in which neither then nor
since has he had any rival among English publicists.

It is one of the perplexing points in Burke's private history to know how
he lived during these long years of parliamentary opposition. It is
certainly not altogether mere impertinence to ask of a public man how he
gets what he lives upon, for independence of spirit, which is so hard to
the man who lays his head on the debtor's pillow, is the prime virtue in
such men. Probity in money is assuredly one of the keys to character,
though we must be very careful in ascertaining and proportioning all the
circumstances. Now, in 1769, Burke bought an estate at Beaconsfield, in the
county of Buckingham. It was about 600 acres in extent, was worth some L500
a year, and cost L22,000. People have been asking ever since how the
penniless man of letters was able to raise so large a sum in the first
instance, and how he was able to keep up a respectable establishment
afterwards. The suspicions of those who are never sorry to disparage the
great have been of various kinds. Burke was a gambler, they hint, in Indian
stock, like his kinsmen Richard and William, and li