Burke’s Prose style in the Speech
Burke’s speeches are specimens of the great orations of a great rhetorician. His prose style is characterized by the extensive but natural use of rhetorical devices and figures. His language is rich and florid, ornate, and passionate. The language in which Burke speaks in the speech is vibrant and rich. Burke’s imagination is so rich that at times it appears that a poet is speaking in prose. He makes abundant use of poetic devices. His metaphors are brilliant; his imageries are fanciful and pleasing. As an orator, Burke adorns his speeches with rhetorical devices. He makes abundant but effective uses of the great devices of irony and sarcasm. In the speech, his prose is marked by alteration of periods and short sentences. The interplay between long and short sentences relieves the audience from the monotony of the deliberation. But, Burke’s style is not flawless; it has defects. He is not sweet in the ordinary sense. He is not even easy. There is little humor in his prose. He is at times pungent and even bitterly ironic.
In the “Speech on Conciliation with America,” Burke adopts the policy of compromise because he fully estimates the strength of the colonies and also the difficulty to govern those freedom-loving people from a great distance. He tries his best to stop the Government from driving the American colonies into rebellion. Unfortunately, the House turns a deaf ear to the appeal of this great the War of Independence, and a rapture between two English politicians. The results are not sweet for England – Britain’s defeat in speaking peoples. The subsequent historical happenings culminating in the independence of America show bitterly how right Burke was.
