Page:Biographia Hibernica volume 1.djvu/260

 BURKE Our commercial interests have been hitherto very greatly promoted by our friendly intercourse with the colonies; do not let us endanger possession for contingency; do not let us substitute untried theories for a system experimen- 249 tally ascertained to be useful. " Whatever opinion Burke," said his old friend Gerard Hamilton, "from any motive, supports, so ductile is his imagination, that he soon conceives it to be right." Burke was more accustomed to philosophise on certain questions than is usually supposed; and by revolving the question in every possible light, it is conceived that his mind was often as full of arguments on one side as on the other; hence it is, that men of quite opposite opinions have been equally desirous to quote his authority ; and that there are in his works, passages that may be triumphantly brought forward by almost any party In the summer of 1778 he paid a visit to France, where his high reputation made his society courted by the most distinguished politicians and philosophers of the day The hasty strides which republicanism and infidelity were making in that country were obvious to the eye of Burke; which is the less surprising, when we remember that they were observed about the same time by a man of much less discernment and no religion, the late Horace Walpole, Lord Orford. So deeply, however, was the mind of Burke impressed with the dreadful effects which he appre- hended from their united force, that, on his return to England, he could not avoid, in a speech in the house of commons, adverting to them as objects worthy of no com- mon dread. He professed that he was not over-fond of calling in the aid of the secular arm to suppress doctrines and opinions; but if ever it was to be raised, it should be against those enemies of their kind, who would take from us the noblest prerogative of our nature,-that of being a religious animal. And he concluded by recommending, that a grand alliance should be formed among all believers, " against those ministers of rebellious darkness, who were