Burkes Speech on Conciliation with America | Page 3

men. The colonies were as a unit in their support of Massachusetts. The Regulating Act was set at defiance, public officers in the king's service were forced to resign, town meetings were held, and preparations for war were begun in dead earnest. To avert this, some of England's greatest statesmen--Pitt among the number--asked for a reconsideration. On February the first, 1775, a bill was introduced, which would have gone far toward bringing peace. One month later, Burke delivered his speech on Conciliation with the Colonies.

EDMUND BURKE
There is nothing unusual in Burke's early life. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1729. His father was a successful lawyer and a Protestant, his mother, a Catholic. At the age of twelve, he became a pupil of Abraham Shackleton, a Quaker, who had been teaching some fifteen years at Ballitore, a small town thirty miles from Dublin. In after years Burke was always pleased to speak of his old friend in the kindest way: "If I am anything," he declares, "it is the education I had there that has made me so." And again at Shackleton's death, when Burke was near the zenith of his fame and popularity, he writes: "I had a true honor and affection for that excellent man. I feel something like a satisfaction in the midst of my concern, that I was fortunate enough to have him under my roof before his departure." It can hardly be doubted that the old Quaker schoolmaster succeeded with his pupil who was already so favorably inclined, and it is more than probable that the daily example of one who lived out his precepts was strong in its influence upon a young and generous mind.
Burke attended school at Ballitore two years; then, at the age of fourteen, he became a student at Trinity College, Dublin, and remained there five years. At college he was unsystematic and careless of routine. He seems to have done pretty much as he pleased, and, however methodical he became in after life, his study during these five years was rambling and spasmodic. The only definite knowledge we have of this period is given by Burke himself in letters to his former friend Richard Shackleton, son of his old schoolmaster. What he did was done with a zest that at times became a feverish impatience: "First I was greatly taken with natural philosophy, which, while I should have given my mind to logic, employed me incessantly. This I call my FUROR MATHEMATICUS." Following in succession come his FUROR LOGICUS, FUROR HISTORICUS, and FUROR PEOTICUS, each of which absorbed him for the time being. It would be wrong, however, to think of Burke as a trifler even in his youth. He read in the library three hours every day and we may be sure he read as intelligently as eagerly. It is more than probable that like a few other great minds he did not need a rigid system to guide him. If he chose his subjects of study at pleasure, there is every reason to believe he mastered them.
Of intimate friends at the University we hear nothing. Goldsmith came one year later, but there is no evidence that they knew each other. It is probable that Burke, always reserved, had little in common with his young associates. His own musings, with occasional attempts at writing poetry, long walks through the country, and frequent letters to and from Richard Shackleton, employed him when not at his books.
Two years after taking his degree, Burke went to London and established himself at the Middle Temple for the usual routine course in law. Another long period passes of which there is next to nothing known. His father, an irascible, hot- tempered man, had wished him to begin the practice of law, but Burke seems to have continued in a rather irregular way pretty much as when an undergraduate at Dublin. His inclinations were not toward the law, but literature. His father, angered at such a turn of affairs, promptly reduced his allowance and left him to follow his natural bent in perfect freedom. In 1756, six years after his arrival in London, and almost immediately following the rupture with his father, he married a Miss Nugent. At about the same time he published his first two books, [Footnote: A Vindication of Natural Society and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful] and began in earnest the life of an author.
He attracted the attention of literary men. Dr. Johnson had just completed his famous dictionary, and was the centre of a group of writers who accepted him at his own valuation. Burke did not want for company, and wrote copiously.[Footnote: Hints for an Essay on the Drama. Abridgement of the History of England] He became associated with Dodsley,