question which came with the lengthened wars, and the Republic early took care to
avoid bankruptcy by enormous contributions levied on the countries which fell under its
yoke. The main predictions of Burke, however, were literally fulfilled. “The Assignats,
after having poured millions into the coffers of the ruling rebellion, suddenly sank into
the value of the paper of which they were made. Thousands and tens of thousands were
ruined. The nation was bankrupt, but the Jacobin Government was rich; and the
operation had thus all the results it was ever made for.”
48
On the appearance of M.
Calonne’s work, “De l’Etat de France,” Burke considerably altered this Second Part of
the work, and the text of the first edition differs, therefore, in many places, from the
subsequent ones.
Burke’s Tract provoked, in reply, as is well known, a whole literature of its own, no
single representative of which is now held in any account, if we except the “Vindiciae
Gallicae,” the early work of Sir James Mackintosh. It had, of course, its replies in French
literature; but its general influence on France is best traced in De Bonald,
49
De Maistre,
Chateaubriand, and other littérateurs of the reaction. The same kind of influence is
traceable in German thought in the works of Goerres, Stolberg, Frederick Schlegel, and
others. Burke’s true value was early appreciated in Germany, and A. M. von Müller,
lecturing at Dresden in 1806, even remarked on the circumstance that Burke only met
with his due honours from strangers. “His country but half understands him, and feels
only half his glory, considering him chiefly as a brilliant orator, as a partisan, and a
patriot. He is acknowledged in Germany as the real and successful mediator between
liberty and law, between union and division of power, and between the republican and
aristocratic principles.” Burke certainly has not been without his effect on the political
notions of the non-theological philosophers, as Schelling, Steffens, Reinhold, &c.; and if
the student should wish to set by the side of Burke for purposes of contrast the views of
a competent professor of scientific theory, he should turn to the pages of Ancillon.
50
He
must, however, be prepared to encounter a vast army of desperate commonplaces.
Gentz, the translator of Burke, himself a considerable politician, is well imbued with his
model; and at home the school of Burke is represented by the names of Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Southey, Macaulay, Arnold, and Whately.
51
These few names will suffice
to indicate approximately Burke’s peculiar place in general literature; but his influence
in every way extends far more widely than any line which could be usefully drawn.
Considering that Burke stands unapproachably the first of our political orators, and
indeed in the very first rank as a writer and a thinker, it seems strange that so few
express and formal tributes have been paid to his memory. Had Burke been a
Frenchman, nearly every French critic, great or small, would have tried his hand on
such a subject, not in parenthetical allusion, or in a few brief words of ardent praise, but
in regular essays and notices without number. Where we have placed a stone, they
would have piled a cairn. Thus have the Cousins, Saint-Beuves, Guizots, and
Pontmartins taken every opportunity for long disquisition upon their Montaigne, Pascal,
Bossuet, Molière, La Fontaine, and the other great authors of France. With us,
Pa
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