SUPERINTENDENT OF SCHOOLS, MARSHALLTOWN, IOWA FORMERLY HEAD OF THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STEELE HIGH SCHOOL, DAYTON, OHIO NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1900 BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Printed in the United States of America PREFACE IN this edition of Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America the purpose has been to aid the student in the development of his power of argumentation. This has been fully explained in the division entitled " The Purpose of the Study of Burke's Speech on Con- ciliation" (p. 1).
The " Study Plan " in the Introduction is given on account of many requests from teachers that such a plan be included in this edition 01 the great speech.
The adoption of the Study Plan is not in any way a J necessity; for many teachers may have a better one in Sthe matter of details. The only value of an " edition " of a classic over a , simple text is in the help that the editor may give to , teacher and student in his Introduction and Notes; therefore it may be assumed that, after an edition has been chosen, the teacher and the student should give S^ the Introduction and Notes a careful examination; otherwise a simple text would do as well.
In the Notes the aim has been to explain the es- pecially difficult parts of the text; to give such informa- tion as may not be readily accessible to the student; vi BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION and especially to aid in the comprehension of Burke's argument.
Little claim can now be made to originality in the citation of references, as these have been used so many times that they have become common property. The many references not original with the present editor have been carefully verified.
The editor hereby gratefully acknowledges his in- debtedness to the many toilers who have wrought in the same field; to his pupils, who have successfully ex emplified the " Study Plan " (pp. 5-23 and 43-54); and especially to Mr. H. Orrin Jones, of Dayton, Ohio, to whose intelligent help he is deeply indebted.
DAYTON, OHIO.
CONTENTS I. Purpose of the study of Burke's Speech on Conciliation. 1 II. The method of the study of the Speech. -.. 5 A. Study plan 5 1. The nature of the quarrel Burke *vas trying to conciliate 7 a. New England 8 b. Virginia and the South...8 c. Maryland 8 d. Pennsylvania 9 e. New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. 9 2. A method for the study of the history leading up to the Speech 10 a. A chart of the problem...14 b. The processes in the preparation of a report upon a question...14 c. The training value of recitations prepared upon separate assignments. 15 8. Preliminary debates for practice...17 a. Debating by sections 18 i. The choosing of a question and the limitation of its terms...18 ii. Making the outline...18 iii. Preparation of the briefs...18 iv. Division of time...19 v. Chairman of the debate...19 vi. Programme 19 vii. Briefs to be given to the teacher for examination 20 viii Taking notes 20 vii BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION PAGE b. Decisions upon debates...20 i. Purpose 20 ii. Weighing of evidence from the briefs taken 20 iii. Time of the decision...21 iv. Appointment of judges.. 21 v. Some cautions in deciding.. 22 vi. Criticism 22 a. Interior of the House of Commons in the time of Burke (illustration)...54 5. The orator himself „ 24 a. Outline for the study of Burke's life.. 24 b. Sketch of the life of Edmund Burke.. 25 i. Burke's political life and principles. 28 x. Burke and American affairs. 29 y. Burke and the affairs of India. 80 z. Burke and the French Revow. Generosity 36 x. His irritability in old age.. 37 z. As a literary man...38 iv. Life influence 38 6. Bibliography 39 a. How to find books 39 c. Look first at home for books...40 d. Scarcity of books in smaller cities and towns 40 CONTENTS IX PAGE 7. Introduction to the study of the brief.. 43 a. The thing of greatest importance in the comprehending of Burke's argument. 43 b. The first reading of the Speech...43 c. The making of the brief...43 d. The system of numbering in the brief. 44 e. Final instructions for the comparison of the brief of the Introduction with the Introduction to the Speech...45 f. Brief of Burke's Speech on Conciliation. 46 B. THE TEXT OF BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION...55 j, NOTES IN EXPLANATION OF THE TEXT 135 IX INDEX 177 INTRODUCTION PURPOSE OF THE STUDY OF BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION IT is a matter of agreement among teachers of English that Burke's Speech on Conciliation should be studied, not as an end in itself, nor simply to acquire a knowledge of it, but as a means toward certain definite training of the student. Compared with its training value, the simple matter of knowing what the classic means is of little import; but there is very great value in the study of it as the best possible means for the development of the student's power to do, under like circumstances, the same thing that Burke attempted to do in the English Parliament. It may be said that the most important word in the teaching of English, or in any teaching, is the word purpose. A teacher's work is peculiarly like that in any other business or profession: it can be done successfully only when it is undertaken with a definitely formed purpose in exactly the same way as an architect purposes to build a residence or a cathedral, chooses his means accord- ingly, and applies them logically. His gathering of bricks and stones to any amount whatever would re- sult in nothing but unsightly heaps of bricks and stones. The bricks and stones are of value only as they are applied in accordance with a clearly and definitely 1 1 2 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION formed purpose. This is just as true with respect to the study of classics at school. The simple possession of what they contain by the student is of small value. They constitute but an infinitesimal fragment of what a well-read man or woman must know. They may be made of the greatest value, however, as a means toward the great desideratum of English teaching — the key- note of our work, the training of the pupil to certain Bowers. What are these powers? They may be reduced to four in number, as follows: 1. The power to read.
2. The power to speak.
3. The power to ivrite.
4. The power to appreciate.
The development of these powers, in their deeper and truer meaning, will make that kind of man or woman who is a self-guiding creature, able to become personally acquainted, in later life, and without the further help of any one, with the best thoughts of our great literary men and women. Surely this is a thing much more to be desired than to be turned out of school with a memorized knowledge of some dozen or more classics, and without the power, unaided, to delve de- lightfully into the books in which real readers find the highest delight in life. This training has been largely accidental with most of us; that is, our love of reading and of books has been brought about by accident rather than through any aid that we may have received from others. Countless thousands have missed this delight- ful love of books because the accident of wise guidance did not happen to them. The teaching of a classic, therefore, should be preceded by a carefully formed pur- pose, the keynote of which is to be found in the word training. English classics, in school life, are of value as means rather than as ends. That other desideratum, INTRODUCTION 3 INTRODUCTION 3 literary knowledge, will, with training as a purpose and the classics as means, take care of itself.
The student who is earnestly seeking training in the four particulars given above might profitably consider them with some painstaking care, for no one of these words always means the same thing; it has degrees of meaning. Dr. \Y. H. Venable has called attention to the fact that when, in childhood, we were askod — " Can you read? Can you write? Can you smoke Your daddy's pipe? " — we unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. An at- tempt on the part of the ordinary reader to read the Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of History will quickly show him that he was somewhat hasty in his statement that he could read, if to read means to get the meaning of the author. An attempt to express with a pen his understanding of what he has read will show that he was equally hasty in his statement that he could write. The fact is that the average pupil who " reads " in so beautiful an elocutionary manner frequently does not read at all; he simply pronounces the words in ac- cordance with certain rules for inflection and accent, while he may be blissfully ignorant of the thought that the author intended to convey. A student's remem- brance of the manner in which he used to read Kienzi's Address to the Romans will demonstrate this fact to him. Eienzi might as well have "come not here to talk," as far as the average pupil's understanding of him was concerned. This power to read, or to get the mean- ing or content out of a book, is, of all separate acquisi- tions of a student, the most valuable, for it is the key to the treasures in all his other studies.
4 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION • But the word " to read " does not always mean the same thing. The student should know that to read a narrative is one thing, to read a description is another thing, to read an exposition is yet another thing, while to read an argument is still another and much more difficult thing. Any ordinary reader can read a narra- tive like Uncle Tom's Cabin, but none other than a trained reader can read an argument like Burke's Speech on Conciliation; for while the former implies the sim. pie following through of the narrative or story, the latter implies that the reader shall comprehend not only what the orator means in the rapid succession of his points, but he must comprehend also their inter- dependence, their interrelations, and the reason why, with respect to his particular audience, he brought for- ward this or that particular argument at this or that particular place. Simply to know what Burke means is to read the speech as a narrative, but not as an ar- gument.
Now, what is the value of reading the speech as an argument? The student should realize that the value of this speech to him consists in comprehending the argument of the speech for the purpose of developing his own potver in the same line, and the test of this is the making of an argument on similar lines by the student himself. He can " read," he can " write," then, in an argumentative sense, when he can comprehend Burke's Speech on Conciliation as an argument, and when he can "speak" or "write" such a one in proportion to his ability. The student will realize, then, that the purpose of the study of Burke's Speech on Conciliation is to read the speech in such a manner as to develop the student's own power of.argumentation. It is evident, therefore, that a student should undertake the study of this speech only when he has a developed power of reading INTRODUCTION 5 writing, speaking and appreciating, narrative, descrip- tive, and expository composition.
The proper place for the study of Burke's Speech on Conciliation is in the final year of a high school whose pupils have been given the training named above.
THE METHOD The purpose of the study of Burke's Speech on Con~ dilation — the training of the student to a certain de- gree of argumentative power — having been formed, we should proceed to the study of the speech in such a manner as to attain this purpose. This leads to the development of the STUDY PLAN To read this speech as an argument, the student evi- dently must know the circumstances which brought about the speech; or, to tabulate the matter, he must know the following things: 1. What parties was Burke attempting to conciliate?
2. What was their quarrel about?
3. Before whom did he make his speech?
4. Who and what was Edmund Burke? To develop these points: The student must understand as far as possible the details of the quarrel between England and her Amer- ican colonies, or the development of the spirit of resist- ance in America; and he must understand the details of the attempt, on the part of the British ministries, " to make the colonies useful to the mother country."
Upon examination, it will be found that the spirit of resistance did not begin in America, but that it began in England prior to the Puritan Revolution of 1041 — long before the people of Massachusetts had, to any great B BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION extent, settled in America. It will also be found that there were several very different spirits of resistance in America, and that these spirits of resistance, to a point ihat required conciliation, were produced as a result of certain ideas that the colonists brought with them, these ideas being very different in the different colonies. A very slight knowledge of American history will call out the fact that there was one spirit of resistance in Massa- chusetts, another and a very different spirit in Virginia, a still different one in Maryland, another in Pennsylva- nia, and possibly another in New York and New Jersey. A knowledge of the causes that impelled the members of these different colonies to leave their native lands will show why the real resistance began in New Eng- land.
No student can, in the true sense, read Burke's Speech on Conciliation without an accurate knowledge of the causes and the development of this spirit of re^ sistance to British oppression that impelled Burke, in the second paragraph of his speech, to say, " Surely it is an awful subject, or there is none so on this side of the grave." The student who hurries on to the study of the speech itself without this preliminary under> standing will never, in the true sense, read the speech. He must be able to realize, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, " the causes that impel us to separation." The modern reader of Burke's Speech on Conciliation may be able to realize, even more deeply than did Burke, the awfulness of this subject, on account of a better opportunity to know the tremendous destinies in store for those colonies.
The student should not, therefore, get in the usual hurry to " cover ground," but should strive patiently to lay deep and well the foundations of a clear knowledge of the quarrel between the parties whom. Burke, in INTRODUCTION 7 words of such awful significance and with the consci- entious devotion of his great soul, was endeavoring to conciliate. The student should understand clearly and without prejudice both the British and American sides of the question, finding books upon the subject and read- ing them carefully, never forgetting that there is value in the present instance in those facts only that throw light upon the cause and development of the colonial spirit of resistance as summed up in the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson realized the necessity of this knoAvledge when he prefaced the counts of his terrible indictment of George the Third in these words: " To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." The following is suggested as the steps of A PLAN FOR THE STUDY OF BURKE'S SPEECH 1. Careful formation of purpose by teacher and class.
2. A study of the history leading up to the Speech.
3. Debates on subjects chosen from the history.
4. A brief study of the House of Commons.
5. A study of the life of the orator himself.
6. The study of the Speech itself.
7. Final debates modeled on the Speech.
8. Each student's debate speech developed into a written thesis.
THE XATURE OF THE QUARREL BURKE WAS TRYING TO CONCILIATE As has been said before, the subject to be traced in the history is the development of the spirit of resistance in America, and its causes through the conduct of George the Third and his ministers. It will be found necessary to trace four or five different spirits of resistance, all of which were aroused under different circumstances.
8 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION New England. — The people of New England brought with them an inherent disrespect for kings, and a ready willingness to resist stubbornly upon very slight provo- cation. The history of their spirit of resistance begins prior- to the English Puritan Ee volution of 1641. A very little knowledge of the previous history of the New England colonists will show why the resistance of America began in a New England colony.
Virginia and the South. — The people of Virginia and of the colonies farther south were chiefly descendants or retainers of the Cavaliers, who, in the Puritan Revolu- tion before mentioned, gave up all they possessed in de- fense of the king and his so-called divine right. So it was not much wonder that Patrick Henry, in his speech before the Virginia Convention, found it necessary to call attention to the tardy resistance of Virginia by say- ing, " Our brethren in the North are already in the field, why stand we here idle? "; or to read Washing- ton's statement, " I abhor the idea of independence "; for the Virginia colonists had inherited not a willing- ness to resist the king, but a sense of duty, respect, and sacrifice for him. Besides, they were Episcopalians, who hated the Puritanism of Massachusetts, and whose an- cestors had met in battle the ancestors of the New-Eng- landers on the bloody fields of the Puritan Revolution. So we shall find that the rise of the spirit of resistance in Virginia and the South was due to a cause very differ- ent from that in New England.
Maryland. — In Maryland there was another spirit of resistance, for these people, in the early history of the colony, were mainly Roman Catholics, the ancestors of wliom, in the days of Elizabeth, James the First, and the later monarchs, had been bitterly persecuted by the an- cestors of both the Virginians and the New-Englanders; so they hated with a bitter hatred both the Virginian of INTRODUCTION c, the Established Church and the New England Puritan, But at heart they were, as retainers of the Calverts, a& strictly royalists as were the Virginians. Besides, their liberal charter gave them no cause for resistance until the passage of the Stamp Act; so we must expect that the spirit of resistance in Maryland developed much more slowly than did the same spirit in New England. And here will be found a spirit of resistance arising from a basis different from that in either New England or in Virginia.
Pennsylvania. — The fourth spirit of resistance, or rather, in earlier times, of non-resistance, is to be found in Pennsylvania. Its settlement by Quakers bespeaks at once the non-resistant spirit of that sect; and it was largely through immigrants, like Eranklin, from New England and other colonies, that the spirit of resistance arose in this colony.
New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. — There was a fifth spirit of resistance in New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, whose Dutch and Swedish settlers of the earlier history of these colonies did not, of course, bring English ideas with them. Their peculiar manners and customs caused them to stand aloof from the English colonists. The conglomeration of nationalities in New York in particular will make it plain that here again the spirit of resistance arose under circumstances and condi- tionsdiffering from those in the colonies beforementioned.
We have, then, five different spirits of resistance to trace, until we find that they gradually merged into a common spirit of resistance in the Eevolution of 1776. These spirits were a Puritan spirit, an Episcopalian- Cavalier spirit, a Roman Catholic spirit, a Quaker spirit modified by immigration, and a non-English spirit among the peoples of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. student should trace these spirits separately until he 10 BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION finds religious and racial differences gradually becoming forgotten in the growing similarity of their industrial conditions and their political wrongs, at which time the various spirits of resistance became unified in what may be called the " first Americans."
A knowledge of these facts impresses one with the value of the oppressions of the king and the British ministries as a negative good, in bringing together and unifying in a common spirit of resistance these dis- cordant elements — a thing so wonderful as to cause "Washington to say that in his opinion it was little less than a miracle.
As it was these various spirits of resistance, unified, that Burke was attempting to persuade the British min- istry to conciliate, it must be evident to the student that Burke's effort to bring about conciliation can not be understood by any one who attempts to read it without a knowledge of these spirits of resistance and their devel- opment through the oppressive acts of the king and his ministers. Burke himself takes cognizance of these different spirits when, in paragraph forty-five of his speech, he names among the " six capital sources " of the trouble the following: " Of descent, of form of gov- ernment, of religion in the northern provinces, of man- ners in the southern provinces, and of education." He says, " From all these causes a fierce spirit of liberty has grown up."
It is the development of this " fierce spirit of liberty " that the student must understand to be able to read the great speech in the true sense.
A METHOD FOR THE STUDY OF THE HISTORY LEADING UP TO THE SPEECH It may be permissible to suggest here a method of studying the development of the various spirits of resist- INTRODUCTION H ance in such a manner as to accomplish the purpose of developing argumentative power on the part of the stu- dents.
Xo better opportunity can be offered for the training of the student in the preliminary steps of the prepara< tion of an argument than is to be found in the study of the development of the spirit of resistance in the colo" nies, provided the ordinary method of single questions with brief answers be laid aside, and an opportunity be given the student to take up a certain line of study in the development of the spirit of resistance in a colony, to read up on the subject, to work out his reading into connected form, and to give an extended and connected report on the same. Isolated thoughts will not make an argument, nor even a respectable talk or narrative. It is the power of connected and logical thought upon a subject that a student should seek to develop. Each one should understand that his training is distinctively his own, and that, like training in anything else, i'; de- pends upon processes through which he himself must go; that no other person's going through these pro- cesses will make the student an adept in them any more than some one else's practicing upon the piano will make the student a good pianist. He should go patiently to work through the various processes in the formation of a speech or an argument until he can, without assistance, accomplish these processes with that degree of ease and success that should be expected in high-school work, and that will be of value to him in his later life in college or out in the world.
The student should not worry because he does not seem to be " covering enough ground "; that he is not " going through " a sufficient number of classics. He should expurgate these expressions from his vocabulary. It is not a question of " covering ground "; it is, as Dr.
12 BTJRKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION W. N. Hailmann says, a question of "going into the ground "; and it is a question of training. If the student feels that he is daily developing power while undergoing this study preparatory to the study of Burke's speech, he should keep right on: he is doing well enough. The question at last will be, both in college and out in life, not "How many classics have you read? " but "How much training have you received? " or " What can you do? " An interesting evidence of this is to be found in the remark introductory to the questions on English at a recent examination (1899) for admission to Cornell University. The examiner says: " The main object of this examination is not to test the candidate's knowledge of the books involved, though gross ignorance will be rejected, but rather to test the candidate's training in written expression."
Training in the preparation and delivery of an argu- ment is the thing to be sought in the study of Burke, at all expense whatsoever.
The aim should be to give to each student opportu- nities to practice certain necessary processes preliminary to the processes required in the preparation of an argu- ment. The following processes are those most necessary to the beginner: * 1. The choice and limitation of the terms of a subject.
* This book makes no pretension of being a treatise on argumen- tation. It does not pretend even to state, as should be done in a more elaborate work, the final steps in the preparation of an argu- ment. It simply states certain steps, the carrying out of which will be necessary to any student who takes up afterward the study of scientific argumentation. It asserts, however, that the mastery of these steps is necessary to any person who expects ever to make a right use of books in any line of study.
For the best statement of the principles of argumentation, see Baker's Principles of Argumentation. Ginn & Co.
INTRODUCTION 13 2. The learning how to find for one's self books upon this subject.
3. The reading of the books and the taking of notes.
4. The rearrangement of the notes in logical order.
5. The expansion of the notes into a speech or a written thesis.
The student should seek every opportunity to go through these processes, as he must know how to do these things in order to do the work preliminary to the preparation of an argument.
The following method for the study of the history leading up to the Speech on Conciliation is suggested as furnishing opportunities for practice in the steps given in the preceding chapter: The class may be divided into sections, to each of which should be assigned the tracing of the spirit of resistance in one of the five colonies mentioned, care being taken to impress each section that it is not tracing the history of the colonies in general, but that it is trac- ing, in the history, of the colonies, the development of the spirit of resistance to British oppression in regard to the particular colony assigned to that section.
In the student's search for related facts upon his sub- ject, to the exclusion of?mrelated facts, is to be devel- oped the training for that all-important step in the preparation of an argument — the power to collect material.
The subject of the development of the spirit of re- sistance may, in classes of twenty-four to thirty, be sub- divided, with reference to each colony, to great advan- tage, as will be shown hereafter, as follows: Should there be six in a section, the following sub- division may be made, one part being given to each student to trace: 1. The settlement of the colony, and the cause of the settlement in relation to //.s spirit of resistance.
BURKE'S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 2. The development of the first evidences of a spirit of resistance, citing the causes.
3. The Board of Trade * and the British ministries, with their plans for " making the colonies useful to the mother country," especially by means of the Navigation Acts and the Stamp Act.
4. The further development of the spirit of resistance to the taking up of arms.
5. A report upon the various British and colonial statesmen who were concerned, pro and con, in the de- velopment of the spirit of resistance.
6. A study of the respective points of view of the mother country and of the colonies, discussing the just- ness of these viewpoints.
At the close of these reports from the class should come a general discussion of the forgetting of old inter- colonial quarrels and prejudices, and the unification of the colonists as Americans.
The following chart will illustrate the problem which the class is to solve. It is self-explanatory.
THE PROCESSES IN THE PREPARATION OF A KEPORT UPON A QUESTION The processes through which a student should go in the development of a report upon his special question are: * The Board of Trade was.a board consisting of thirteen mem- bers, whose duty it was to establish agents in the colonies in order to secure information concerning colonial resources, and to form INTRODUCTION 15 1. A careful consideration of the meaning of the question.
2. A careful reflection as to what he already knows about it.
3. A search for books in which further information can be found.