will substitute an immediate and lasting peace for the disorders which Lord North's measures have created. The unbought loyalty of a free people, thus secured, will give us more revenue than any coercive measure. Indeed, it is the only cement that can hold together the British Empire." II EDINBURGH, Sept. 20, 1887.--Edmund Burke was the theme of a lecture delivered last night before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society by Mr. Augustine Birrell. "Nobody is fit to govern this country who has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke," said Mr. Birrell, and he backed up this contention with a wealth of wit and argument which delighted and convinced his audience. The following is a summary of his lecture: "To give a full account of Burke's public life is no part of my plan. I propose merely to sketch his early career, to explain why he never obtained a seat in the cabinet, and to essay an analysis of the essential elements of his greatness. Born in 1729 in Dublin, he grew up with a brother who speculated and a sister of a type who never did any man any serious harm; acquired at school a brogue which death alone could silence; at Trinity College, Dublin, became an omnivorous reader; came in 1750 to London to study law, armed with a cultivated curiosity and no desperate determination to make his fortune; immediately, like the sensible Irishman he was, fell in love with Peg Woffington; for six years rambled everywhere his purse permitted, read everything he could lay his hands on, and talked everlastingly; in 1756 published an 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' and married Miss Jane Mary Nugent; in 1758 dared at David Garrick's dinner table to contradict Dr. Johnson; in 1765 became a member of Parliament; and for the next sixteen years was the life and soul of the Whig party. When that party, in 1782, finally came into power, Burke's only reward, however, was a minor office, a fact which, in view of his great merits, has amazed posterity. The explanation is that his contemporaries probably knew him, not as a commanding genius, but as an Irishman who was always in debt, whose relatives were rather disreputable, whose judgment was often wrong, and whose temper was violent. His significance for us grows from the fact that he applied the imagination of a poet of the first order to the business of life. He saw organized society steadily and saw it whole. Perceiving that only a thin crust of conventionality protects organized society from the volcanic heats of anarchy, he was afraid of reformers. He could not agree to dispense with the protection afforded by the huge mountains of prejudice and the ancient rivers of custom. He was the High Priest of Order. He loved justice and hated iniquity. The world needs his wisdom to-day."