The most probable explanation of the affair is the one offered by his latest and ablest biographer, Mr. John Morley. Burke had entered public life without property,--probably the most serious mistake, if in his case it can be called a mistake, which an English politician can commit. It is a wise and salutary rule of English public life that a man who seeks a political career shall qualify for it by pecuniary independence. It would be hardly fair in Burke's case to say that he had sought a political career. The greatness of his talents literally forced it on him. He became a statesman and great Parliamentary orator, so to speak, in spite of himself. But he must have early discovered the great barrier to complete success created by his poverty. He may be said to have passed his life in pecuniary embarrassment. This alone might not have shut him out from the Whig official Paradise, for the same thing might have been said of Pitt and Fox: but they had connections; they belonged by birth and association to the Whig class. Burke's relatives were no help or credit to him. In fact, they excited distrust of him. They offended the fastidious aristocrats with whom he associated, and combined with his impecuniousness to make him seem unsuitable for a great place. These aristocrats were very good to him. They lent him money freely, and settled a pension on him, and covered him with social adulation; but they were never willing to put him beside themselves in the government. His latter years therefore had an air of tragedy. He was unpopular with most of those who in his earlier years had adored him, and was the hero of those whom in earlier years he had despised. His only son, of whose capacity he had formed a strange misconception, died young, and he passed his own closing hours, as far as we can judge, with a sense of failure. But he left one of the great names in English history. There is no trace of him in the statute book, but he has, it is safe to say, exercised a profound influence in all succeeding legislation, both in England and America. He has inspired or suggested nearly all the juridical changes which distinguish the England of to-day from the England of the last century, and is probably the only British politician whose speeches and pamphlets, made for immediate results, have given him immortality. [Illustration: Signature: E. L. Godkin] FROM THE SPEECH ON 'CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA'