Page:Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America.djvu/23

Rh town meetings were held, and preparations for war were begun in dead earnest. To avert this, some of England's greatest statesmen&mdash;Pitt among the number&mdash;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.

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