Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution

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spk_0 Welcome to For the Ages, a history podcast presented by the New York Historical Society

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spk_0 Hello, I'm David Rubensdain, and I'm pleased to be joining Conversation with James Grant,

spk_0 the founder of Grant's interest rate observer, and the author of Friends Until the End,

spk_0 Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution.

spk_0 Jim, thank you very much for joining us.

spk_0 Oh, you're entirely welcome, it's my pleasure.

spk_0 You were widely known in the financial world for your writings and talks on interest rates,

spk_0 but you're also an author of bestselling books on non-financial, non-interest rate subjects.

spk_0 What prompted this second career and when did it start?

spk_0 I guess it started in 1983, and that was the year I produced my first album.

spk_0 It was the first book, the Great Investor and Speculator Bernard M. Baruch.

spk_0 One book led to another, as one child seems to lead to another, and before you know it,

spk_0 40 years of past, you've got 10 books under your bill.

spk_0 So here we are.

spk_0 So how long does it take you to write the non-financial books, and how do you have time for that

spk_0 when you're writing so many things on interest rates and other financial subjects?

spk_0 Now, the night's weekend is in the 4th of July.

spk_0 Just to answer to the second part of the question.

spk_0 The skirt one was about four and a half, five years in the making, I guess.

spk_0 It's, I think no author these days wants to actually calculate the hours spent doing it,

spk_0 because the outcome would be too discouraging, because one would be comparing the hours expended

spk_0 with the income received, and one would want to go off and have a drink, and then where would one be?

spk_0 So in the interest rate world, when you write about interest rates, you often see the impact of interest rates

spk_0 doing or not doing what you think within a day, a week, maybe a month, two months, three months, something like that.

spk_0 We're going, keep going.

spk_0 Well, I could take longer sometimes, but when you're writing a book and you're three and a half for four years into it,

spk_0 do you ever say I wish I hadn't started this book?

spk_0 Well, that depends upon the subject.

spk_0 Now, I write about people I try to whose company I want to keep.

spk_0 And there is nothing I find more enjoyable than coming home after a long days,

spk_0 working the interest rate field or settling down for a weekend of historical study,

spk_0 and finding myself in the company of really interesting people.

spk_0 So I write these things for the pleasure of the company I can keep with men mostly, I guess, who have lived at a different age.

spk_0 And this goes for Mr. Speaker, Thomas B. Reef, Speaker of the House of Representatives, late 19th century, and goes for, especially for John Adams, who I loved.

spk_0 It goes a little bit for Walter Badget, the Victorian man of letters, and I kind of mues to the sexual backers up until this day.

spk_0 I found him a little bit dry and off-way, but I dearly love Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke.

spk_0 And their company was and is for me to delight.

spk_0 Before you wrote about these individuals in this book, had you thought much about Edmund Burke or known much about Edmund Burke or thought much about Charles Fox or known much about Charles Fox?

spk_0 Not much to about Fox, but I had resolved since I was in Collins, certainly in Grasquil, one day to write something about the great Edmund Burke.

spk_0 And David, I have done it.

spk_0 Well, congratulations on living up to that ambition. Very few people plan something in college and get to live up to doing it. So congratulations.

spk_0 For those who are not familiar with these individuals, who was Edmund Burke and who was Charles Fox?

spk_0 Edmund Burke was perhaps the greatest orator of the 18th century of great speakers.

spk_0 He served in Parliament for many years and he was, he was, he had to express, oh yes, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll put this way.

spk_0 That William Pitt, kind of a book sparring partner for many years in Parliament.

spk_0 This one's described as a halfway between man and God.

spk_0 And that is the way many people have come to regard Burke from fluency of speech and his writings and the contributions in major, the history of political thought.

spk_0 Fox was a difference animal altogether. He was an orator. He was a scoundrel. He was bankrupt. He was awake.

spk_0 He was a principal man. He was born as Burke said, born to be loved and by myself was smitten.

spk_0 So the two of them together make a very odd couple. You know, they say that opposite's attract and certainly they have in this, in this particular friendship.

spk_0 What was Edmund Burke's background and hadn't he learned to write and talk with such eloquence?

spk_0 Was he viewed as being so eloquent at the time that he was living or was it in subsequent years of people admired his eloquence and elegance?

spk_0 Well, he was the son of an Irish lawyer who was born in Dublin at 1729.

spk_0 And he had a very good education. He went to West Trinity College Dublin and had a formidable set of teachers and secondary schools.

spk_0 And Burke had an extraordinary gift for spoken English. And you were, of course, famously, in the reflections of the revolution.

spk_0 Francy Voter, you go to book called on conciliation with the Colombs having to do with the British policy towards the New York in 1775.

spk_0 So how did he get elected to the House of Commons? Was he very involved in politics before he got elected the House of Commons? Where those days they elect people actually were qualified?

spk_0 Well, he, he, he, he became an assistant to a nobleman they were rocking.

spk_0 And it was through rocking, as with the influence on another well to do a British politician that became a member of parliament.

spk_0 You know, those days, you can kind of buy your way in. I guess you, I guess that he still can, but you can go to what we now call with the Americans certainly called disparaging the rotten burrow and burrow typically have five or six voters.

spk_0 And they would be amenable to a certain amount of drinking and eating in exchange for a vote.

spk_0 And that was a little bit how it came to be first elected to parliament is certainly a fact we came elected to parliament that was directly through influence and not through public appeal.

spk_0 So in Burke's case, he gets elected to the House of Commons. He's obviously an articulate, elegant, eloquent person.

spk_0 Did he ever consider becoming or trying to become prime minister or he was just not interested in that part of being parliament?

spk_0 Well, I think he would have become prime minister in a heartbeat, but he was a, he was a funny kind of politician. He, he never courted public popularity.

spk_0 In fact, he was famous, one of his essays is famous for telling the electors of Bristol, who he was Britain's second city then that he was very glad to serve them in parliament, but he would not necessarily vote as they wanted him to.

spk_0 So Burke was the most improbable character for courting public opinion and for rising to the very top of the total British politics.

spk_0 The office he held was a kind of a lusterless post fall.

spk_0 Pay master of the forces and get this David. This is how that worked.

spk_0 Pay master of the four things before Burke took the job got the float on the crown's payment to the army and navy and with that money could speculate invest as he chose.

spk_0 No one watched over.

spk_0 And Fox's grandfather, David Fox got rich doing this and Fox's father with pay master of the forces got filthy of rich and so Burke took that office and what do you think he did?

spk_0 He made it so that he no longer would have the use of a float. So that was Burke's contribution to his own empowerment was to work it so that the pay master for his had to live on a rather modest stipend as opposed to riches beyond the dreams of the avarice during his lifetime.

spk_0 Burke was I assume widely regarded as a intellectual gifted person. But was there any reason why he decided not to become a member of the House of Lords could he have become a member of the House of Lords because of the respect that people held him in.

spk_0 Well, it's one of those things you're invited to do. I'm not sure if I wouldn't want to do it, but I think that Burke regard the House of Commons as its home.

spk_0 And he got as much more important and powerful legislative body than the House of Lords and I think he was that he was happy there certainly not happened all the time.

spk_0 If the end he felt rather be trade by some of his colleagues in the House of Commons, but it was his home when that's where he wanted to stay.

spk_0 So that was Edmund Burke, distinguished person, not from the wealthiest of families, but an upper income family. It probably was a lawyer and obviously became well known because it was intellect and his writings.

spk_0 Let's talk about Charles Fox. What was his background and how did he get elected to the parliament?

spk_0 Well, Charles Fox, what is the son of a very, very well to do the member of the parish aristocracy, who thought that his son could do nothing wrong.

spk_0 Try as he might. Charles could do nothing wrong and he was brought up in the great lap of luxury and he went to Oxford for a couple of years and Charles was a causative and spoiled rotten.

spk_0 But he sought knowledge for the love of knowledge. It was a most remarkable thing. You know, he he spoke and wrote in Italian, Spanish and French. He's rather fluent in French.

spk_0 And he treasured and Latin poetry and report and Shakespeare. This is expression with and he quoted Shakespeare by the yard.

spk_0 He got to be a member of parliament, the age of 19 when he ought not to have been because he was under age, but his father got elected and rotten bro and then brought him into parliament a year early.

spk_0 And so Fox lived a rather sweet life, certainly life without financial friction.

spk_0 So how many years did Fox and Burke served together in the House of Commons?

spk_0 Oh, 20 plus years together.

spk_0 Right. So 20 plus years and on paper, it would seem like they have nothing in common. One is a very elegant, eloquent, very careful person, writes well, talks well, not from a wealthy family.

spk_0 The other is not quite as precise, not quite as eloquent from a very wealthy family. What did they have in common?

spk_0 Well, they what they had in common for one thing was was each of them sharing this gift of eloquence and a gift for the spoken.

spk_0 They're just extraordinary together and that regard they haven't come at also a political principle in that political principle is summed up an emotion made by parliamentary named John Dunning in the 1770s, I guess, and Dunning moved the fall.

spk_0 He said that the crown has had great influence on paraphrasing bell has had great influence does have great influence and ought to have less influence.

spk_0 And that was the political principle, the banely connected Burke and Fox they they they rallied against the crown with respect to the war against the American colonies.

spk_0 They rallied against the crown with regard to the East India company, then one of the biggest, it's not the biggest company in a world.

spk_0 And so it's there were against the abuse of sovereign power.

spk_0 Hey, were they members of the same political party at that time at their own party?

spk_0 Well, they were there were members of the wig faction and more particularly layer they can't be both members of the rocking hand faction of the wig party.

spk_0 And length Fox was 20 years, Burke's junior came to lead that party and Burke gladly relinquished any claim he might have had a leadership and yielded to his former understudy of 20 years, Charles James Fox.

spk_0 People at the time think that this close relationship these individuals had was unusual and were they social friends as well as political allies.

spk_0 Not so much social they their friendship seemed to and at the doors of the House of Commons is someone said that stopped entirely true with the point survives and exaggeration they were mainly friends in in politics.

spk_0 And I don't think any people saw anything so very unusual about it. They saw a union of interest between these two great orders and they were amazed and delighted by each.

spk_0 So let's go through one of the things they have in common that you referred to earlier. Both of them were supporters of the American revolution even though many people in the parliament obviously were against the American revolution.

spk_0 That's why we thought the revolution of war for so many years was it unusual for members of the parliament to be against the American revolution of war as in terms of of siding with the British and being supportive of the American side was that unusual the time for members of parliament.

spk_0 And where they criticize by their fellow members of the House of Commons for doing that.

spk_0 Yes, certainly the beginning war had great public and political support and Charles Fox made no bones about his is all out support of the American side.

spk_0 He had dressed in buff and blue George Washington's colors.

spk_0 He said something that I found very inspiring. He said to a supporter of this great minority cause at the time.

spk_0 He said after the battle of law in Ireland, when another how brother is general and more how it chased George Washington around ball island.

spk_0 He said that you know, you must support the American pretentings in their adversity as well near prosperity. We must never abandon anyone in the losing cause of support of the principles of our revolution of 1688.

spk_0 And so Fox was all as we see today was all in sickness and health and success and in failure and he never looked back once he decided to find and neither did did did but Fox was a more flamboyant supporter and he more than right of patriotic British animus towards the overt supporters of the American cause.

spk_0 Of course, as the war dragged on unsuccessfully more members of parliament came share the views of work and Fox and work became because he was the you wrote more and can you see is rather a profit about what has been happening in America.

spk_0 So let's talk about something you mentioned earlier as well the East India company that was a very prominent company chartered in England that essentially controlled the commerce if not the entire country of India.

spk_0 How did these two individuals see the East India company and was their position on popular in the parliament at the time.

spk_0 Well, that is as big a question as was the East India company its time, but let me say this.

spk_0 The East India company was a model of corporate misgovernance.

spk_0 Remember the other saying I think it was a scribe to somebody of Berkshire Hathaway perhaps is Charlie murder himself. I guess it was Charlie and he said to show me the instead of it. I'll show you the outcome. Right.

spk_0 So the service so called employees of East India company were encouraged both by the positive other salaries and by the policy of the management to set up shop for themselves in India.

spk_0 And they did their own trading they abuse the natives in their own way and Berk got rid of this study at deeply and was appalled.

spk_0 And he took up the cause of the of the natives of India against the abuses of the East India company in particularly of one of the top executives of the East India company called Lauren Hastings.

spk_0 And you ask about the popularity of this particular cause of the burbles and later of foxes and the popular and came to dwindle to mill became a most unpopular millstone around the neck of the House of Commons Berk moved for the impeachment of Warren Hastings on crimes against the Indian people.

spk_0 And the opening speech the Berk gave lasted for four days of that trial for days. The trial itself which proceeded intermittently lasted for seven years.

spk_0 By the time it was over everyone was sick of it except Berk and Fox and was Berks for a more resistant was really sick of it.

spk_0 So both of these individuals had a position that was not favorable to the East India company, but they were united as they were united in their positions against fighting the Americans and the American Revolutionary War.

spk_0 However, these two individuals came to this agreement.

spk_0 Not on the American Revolutionary War or not on East India, but on the French Revolution.

spk_0 How did they have a different point of view and what were their points of view?

spk_0 Well, Fox regarded the French Revolution as the greatest effect probably in the history of mankind.

spk_0 In regards to tossing off, throwing off of a monarchy that had weighed on the people of France and that deserved just the fate that received for the hands that the French Revolutionary War is 1789.

spk_0 He thought it was marvelous and said so, the Peter them Berk regarded it as the antithesis of the American Revolution which was essentially an act of political sessured force upon the Americans by the misgovernance of the British crown.

spk_0 Here regard is an act of civil destruction and he wrote his book Reflections on the Russian Frash to protest this plunge and to barbarism as he regarded it.

spk_0 And Fox heard Berk and he could not believe his ears. This is my friend. This is my friend with whom we wage these fights against the East India company in Warren Hazen's Native American War.

spk_0 This is the same Berk. Berk couldn't believe his ears. Listen to Fox singing praises of the Psalms, Kulats and of the world is the guillotine and later of Napoleon, Volnivar.

spk_0 Now, sometimes the case when political allies disagree, they recognize they have some disagreement on some issues. Was this such a breach though that they stopped and affect talking to each other, socializing with each other and in the end was the relationship interrupted permanently.

spk_0 Well, yes, this was one of those cases. Berk was quite prickly about his principles and about how the world would see them.

spk_0 And he held him dear and he would be regarded as stands on certain fundamental issues. He didn't confuse the dogma of the Christian church with the dogma of his politics, but he held both in high reverence.

spk_0 And when Fox and the Pune just views on threat revolution and cast that imputation in personal terms, Berk charges back on him.

spk_0 You have nothing more to do with him. And Berk preceded Fox in death by many years and his Berkway dime.

spk_0 Fox wrote a letter to Berk's wife, Jane, and said, may I pay a visit? And Jane Berk wrote back in the next day and said, Mr. Berk asked me to write you to say that the hero greets that he is unable to see you in halls his view of the revolution France, those transactions.

spk_0 As he has always held them and is unwilling to allow the British public to think that by seeing you mischanged his mind on it.

spk_0 So the most stiff-necked obdurate, refusal to see somebody whom he had professively evolved to a fan of Berk as I certainly am, disappointing thing to see.

spk_0 And later there was a movement to get up a monument for Berk when they came to Fox and the sponsors of this came to Fox and we make a small contribution to this memorial.

spk_0 And Fox said, you know, I can't. I can't. I can't. I can't and good faith without feeling in desperate hypocrite. I can't do it.

spk_0 Very interesting that you have two people in the United States during the American Revolutionary War who became very close to each other for a period of time, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

spk_0 Then they had a fallout over the election when Jefferson beat Adams for election of president. And then they really didn't talk to each other for most of remainder of their life, though the last couple years of their life, they began a correspondence and they did reconcile.

spk_0 Here you've got the opposite. These two people never reconciled. Was it a matter of public knowledge in England at the time that these two great friends had never reconciled after the discussions about the French Revolution?

spk_0 Yes, I think it was, I think it was a matter of public knowledge.

spk_0 The world in which these great to orators and politicians and intellectuals moved was rather small one.

spk_0 So not sure splashed in all the newspapers, but certainly everyone in their world do all too well. They had failed to publish.

spk_0 And by the way, isn't the Adams and Jefferson correspondents want to think great contributions to American letters? It is just sweetness.

spk_0 I can't get rid of it enough. It's just a delight. And one, how long wishes that Fox and Burke had done exactly what they pointed out that Adams and Jefferson had done and correspond to the same way?

spk_0 What a what a contribution to the world of English letters that would have been.

spk_0 So the main message that you would like to have the readers of your book takeaway is what what is your main message to somebody who was thinking of reading the book or who has read the book?

spk_0 Well, read it again or read it.

spk_0 My message is that we live in a time of political drama to be sure.

spk_0 But it's a time of the crudest political discourse. It was before the inauguration of president number 47 and one way it has not approved since then.

spk_0 But I would like people to breathe this book and say for the wit.

spk_0 The searching attempts at political analysis in the context of serious political philosophy that passed for every day discourse in the House of Commons.

spk_0 And to know what is possible in politics. That's what I want.

spk_0 You read what they said. I want to I want to favor you if I made David as they say in the court when they went as elected consultants, his notes.

spk_0 Yes, his work in town and Zurich to Fox.

spk_0 On the occasion of the East India bill and Berk is telling the comments how much Fox. What do you sacrifice it? So he has put to hazardous ease.

spk_0 His security is interest is power, even as starlinked popularity for the benefit of our people he has never seen.

spk_0 This is the road that all heroes have tried before them. He has produced an abused former supporting supposed motives.

spk_0 He will remember that obliquely as necessary ingredient in the composition of all true glory.

spk_0 He will remember that it is not only in the Roman costumes, but it is in the nature and constitution things that calmy and abuse or essential parts of triath.

spk_0 Now, isn't that wonderful?

spk_0 Well, I wish I could write as eloquently as that.

spk_0 So it's impossible to have a conversation with James Grant about his books on non financial subjects without asking the obvious question.

spk_0 Where are we going on interest rates?

spk_0 They are to raise them. They will lower them a quarter point in September.

spk_0 Okay. So they will lower them a quarter point, not of 50 basis points, a quarter point. But you think against my best advice.

spk_0 Okay. Well, does the Fed ever consult you for your advice or not so much?

spk_0 Well, there might be a first time, but not in the last 42 years.

spk_0 Okay. Thank you very much for an interesting conversation, interesting book. I enjoyed reading it.

spk_0 So today we've been in conversation with James Grant on his book, Friends Until the End, Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution.

spk_0 It was great speaking with you. Thank you for a terrific conversation.

spk_0 Oh, you're entirely welcome. It's my pleasure.

spk_0 On behalf of the New York Historical Society, thank you for joining us for another episode of For the Ages, a History Podcast hosted by David Rubinstein.

spk_0 We hope you enjoyed it and come back for more. Thanks for your support.

spk_0 You can share your thoughts at public.programs at nyhistory.org.

Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles Fox in the Age of Revolution

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