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Roman Catholic emancipation. He never lived to see Roman Catholic emancipation, though it has come after his death. Conciliation with America. That never came about; Ministers would not listen to it. Economical reform, the India Bill, the impeachment of Hastings, the control of the French Revolution. Is it not a consolation for us pigmies of this time, with our halting tongues and feeble weapons, to reflect that this great master of eloquence and political genius saw so little of success in his lifetime? It only exemplifies the truth of almost the last exclamation that arose from his lips in this city of Bristol, those words of which I would remind you-" What shadows we are and what shadows we pursue!" Those memorable and pathetic words which he uttered, and which sum up the life of every politician and perhaps of every man, are not less applicable to the career of Burke than to many lesser men. It is not yet a century since he passed away. We are able to realise him as he was, but in life the objects that he pursued must have seemed to him to be shadows, and they

20

have only petrified into monuments since his death. After a long struggle between the forces of Europe and the forces of France, the French Revolution was at length controlled and subdued for a time. Roman Catholic emancipation was carried. His great policy of conciliation both to India and to Ireland was largely carried into effect, and his prospects of economical reform have been much more than realised.

And what of him? Is he a shadow ? No, he is, in my opinion, the one figure of the time which is likely never to be a shadow. He brightens on the historic canvas-as the other figures fade-by his speeches, which, as I have said, were read and not listened to. He will be remembered as long as there are readers to read, when those orators on whose lips Parliaments and people hung enthralled are forgotten with the tongues that spoke and the ears that listened to them. Day by day the powerful Ministers whom he could not persuade, the great nobles whom he had to inspire and to prompt, the sublime statesmen who, forsooth, could not