This July it will be twenty-six years[12] since he became connected with a man whose memory will ever be precious to Englishmen of all parties, as long as the ideas of honor and virtue, public and private, are understood and cherished in this nation. That memory will be kept alive with particular veneration by all rational and honorable Whigs. Mr. Burke entered into a connection with that party through that man, at an age far from raw and immature,--at those years when men are all they are ever likely to become,--when he was in the prime and vigor of his life,--when the powers of his understanding, according to their standard, were at the best, his memory exercised, his judgment formed, and his reading much fresher in the recollection and much readier in the application than now it is. He was at that time as likely as most men to know what were Whig and what were Tory principles. He was in a situation to discern what sort of Whig principles they entertained with whom it was his wish to form an eternal connection. Foolish he would have been at that time of life (more foolish than any man who undertakes a public trust would be thought) to adhere to a cause which he, amongst all those who were engaged in it, had the least sanguine hopes of as a road to power. There are who remember, that, on the removal of the Whigs in the year 1766, he was as free to choose another connection as any man in the kingdom. To put himself out of the way of the negotiations which were then carrying on very eagerly and through many channels with the Earl of Chatham, he went to Ireland very soon after the change of ministry, and did not return until the meeting of Parliament. He was at that time free from anything which looked like an engagement. He was further free at the desire of his friends; for, the very day of his return, the Marquis of Rockingham wished him to accept an employment under the new system. He believes he might have had such a situation; but again he cheerfully took his fate with the party. It would be a serious imputation upon the prudence of my friend, to have made even such trivial sacrifices as it was in his power to make for principles which he did not truly embrace or did not perfectly understand. In either case the folly would have been great. The question now is, whether, when he first practically professed Whig principles, he understood what principles he professed, and whether in his book he has faithfully expressed them. When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution,--what they had been during the reign of Queen Anne,--what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.