ple was surely a doctrine entirely in conso- now to be sacrificed. Fox ha risen during nance with the historical traditions of the the evening, had denounced the enemies of Whigs. But this right Fox obstinately de- liberty, and lauded in eloquent words the renied. Again, in 1788, on the question of the generated society of France. Burke found it regency, what course did he adopt? He as- impossible to remain silent any longer. He serted that the Prince of Wales was gifted was, he said, no friend to tyranny. He hated with an inherent and inherited authority, tyranny, but he hated it most where most which he could under circumstances like those were concerned; for he knew that the tyrwhich had then occurred, assume, without the anny of a multitude was a multiplied tyranny. sanction or intervention of the Houses of Par- Nor was he an enemy to liberty; but the liament, an authority so unmitigated that its liberty that he loved was a liberty associated existence was challenged by a Tory minister! with order and honesty, that not only existed Was this monarchical right a doctrine recog- along with virtue and justice, but that could nized by the Whig revolution of 1688-a rev- not exist without them. This was not the olution which detected a divine right not in liberty that had been asserted by the French the king, but in the people? Finally, his Republicans; on the contrary, they had been conduct in regard to the French Revolution urged on by a ferocious indocility that seemed is admitted, even by his strongest partisans, to have destroyed their social nature, and to have been characterized by a reckless dis- made them little better than the brutes. Beregard of the peculiar duties and responsibili- fore Burke had finished his harangue, Fox ties that his office imposed on him. We do expressed a confident hope that though they not mean to question his sincerity. There is might differ as to public affairs, there would abundant evidence to the contrary in the let- be no loss of private fellowship. But Burke ters which Lord John Russell has published. publicly refused the proffered amnesty. There But was it cautious or politic in a party was something, he declared, so malignant in leader? He must have known that the rev- this detested constitution that it seemed to olution was an event hostile to the sentiments envenom every thing that it touched, and he of the great body of the nation, and repug- knew that in doing his duty he had lost his nant to the opinions of the most important friend. When he resumed his seat Fox rose members of his own party. There was no to speak, but for some time was too much necessity, to say the least, why he should agitated to address the House; then, in a have assumed the uncompromising position burst of passionate tenderness, he appealed he thought fit to maintain, or voluntarily to his revered and venerated friend-to the united himself with those who were regarded memory of their old affection-to the rewith suspicion and dislike by the most power-membrance of their inalienable friendship! ful classes of English society. Of all his political blunders, none were freighted with more malignant consequences to himself and his party than this; for it thoroughly thinned the ranks and weakened the influence of the liberal opposition during half a century. But Burke was inexorable. He would hold no communion with any one who sympathized with France. Her friends should be his enemies, and her enemies should be his friends. And, henceforth, the old comrades were parted by a gulf" more bitter than the bitterness of death." Thus the result of Fox's leadership was to extinguish Whiggism as the leading power in the state for wellnigh fifty years. From 1784 until the era of the Reform Bill the The first act of the revolution was consummated in 1789; but it was not until the 6th of May, 1792, that the schism in the opposition became publicly known. The revolution absolutely exasperated Burke. He took it in the light of a personal insult. There was un-party was politically extinct. No doubt, unquestionably a tinge of insanity in the angry vehemence with which he assailed it. During the last session, upon this very subject, bitter recriminations had passed between him and Sheridan, which might have been spared, "if only for the ghost of a departed friendship." And a yet earlier and dearer fellowship was lucky accidents did occur, whose evil consequences the severest prudence could not en tirely have obviated; but the Whigs were banished from office because Fox, alike as a man and as a politician, had failed to conciliate the confidence of the people. As a man he was pronounced profligate; as a politician unsafe; and neither versatility nor eloquence | hardihood to enter deliberately into a life-andcould retrieve the position which want of death conflict with the turbulent and despotic character had forfeited. Pitt, in either respect, stands out in striking he would have fallen irretrievably; but he contrast to his rival. Commons of England. Had he then fallen never faltered, never wavered, never laid aside his arms, until the enemy was routed and victory won. His domestic life was blameless. The tone of his mind was singularly pure and elevated. Like the Arthur of romance, William Pitt The conflict between the youthful premier was "a stainless gentleman." Nor was his and the combined opposition of North and purity, as his enemies asserted, exclusively Fox is one of the most bitter recorded in the due to the reserve and coldness of his tem- annals of parliamentary warfare. That Pitt perament. It is known that he was at one asserted the doctrine of the constitution cantime deeply attached to Lady Eleanor Eden, not now be questioned. That the ministers and that the conviction that the ties of do- of the crown are entitled to appeal to the mestic life were inconsistent with the engross- constituencies against the verdict of an ading claims of public duty alone prevented him verse parliament has been admitted and enfrom making her his wife-a sacrifice dictated forced by Lord John Russell himself. But by a fine sense of duty no doubt, but still in in 1784 the opposition, secure in the support many respects to be lamented. Lady Elean- of a majority of the House of Commons, deor's noble beauty and grand and thought-termined to guard against a dissolution, and ful brow would not unfitly have associated in the attempt did not hesitate to employ the with the austere memory of the incorruptible statesman. Such a union, too, would probably have proved beneficial to Pitt himself. His integrity was somewhat icy. There was a certain hardness in his character which this union might have relaxed. But when he had once decided he never relented. And so his life went on, cast in the same mould, till its close-cold, simple, incorruptible, wanting in the finer lights and subtler perceptions of the affections, but fascinating by its grand, imposing, and sombre masses. The last scene -the dead minister lying alone and unregarded in the deserted house-is very sad, but not out of keeping with the rest of the incidents, and with the cheerless burden of ambition he had voluntarily undertaken to bear. Pitt's public no less than his private career compelled confidence. He undoubtedly enjoyed many natural advantages. The House of Commons could not behold unmoved the son of the great commoner. A noble opportunity, moreover, opened to him on the very threshold of his parliamentary career; but even his enemies admitted that he turned it to account with infinite skill and tact. It needed indeed marvellous nerve and moral Pitt had few friends or intimates. Dundas, and subsequently Canning, were the only men he thoroughly trusted. Even his own chancellor intrigued against him. Thurlow, indeed, with ponderous hypocrisy denied the charge. When I forget my king, may God forget me!" see you d-d first!" retorted Wilkes. "The best thing that can happen to you," said Burke. "He'll most violent and arbitrary expedients. To new Octa and the history and practice of parliament. | identified Toryism. Feudal England had Its taunts and its reproaches he treated with become the England of mercantile and mehaughty silence and that superb contempt chanical enterprise, and under the direction which is described by those who knew him of "the infant Atlas of the State," conservaas a marked feature in his character. When tism ceased to be a feudal, and became a the contest had lasted for nearly four months, commercial, principle. Granting the people when the government had undergone a suc- the only freedom they really cared for at the cession of ignominious defeats, when invective time-the freedom to create and accumulate and argument had been alike exhausted, the capital-he relieved the springs of national majority was at length forced to admit that industry and augmented the sources of nathe House of Commons had been discomfited tional wealth. He was the first minister of in a desperate conflict by a minister not five- the crown who recognized that the philosophand-twenty! "In all my researches in mod-ical genius of Adam Smith "furnished the ern and ancient times," is the testimony of best solution to every question connected with the great English historian of Rome, "I have nowhere met with his parallel, who, at so early a period of his life, discharged so important a trust with so much credit to himself and with so much advantage to his country." the history of commerce and with the systems of political economy." He was the first chancellor of the exchequer who brought with him to office the principles of a scientifie finance. When he came into power the income of the country, after the prolonged drain of the American war, did not supply the means of supporting even a moderate his tariff-a tariff constructed upon the principle that has dictated all our recent legislation, the increase of the revenue through an increase in the consumption rather than through an increase in the taxation-produced a magnificent surplus. But while he profited England, he saved conservatism. Constructing his policy on wise and liberal principles, he incorporated with a worn-out creed a new and vital element of strength, and imparted to a powerless and unimaginative party the force and the refinement of genius. In the popular interests of a mer cantile community, and in the maxims of an enlightened finance, he sought for it a more permanent pre-eminence than could be derived from the wealth of an aristocratic connection or the influence of a shattered tradition. More than once, even within our own memory, has Toryism been in this way rescued by a subtle, profound, and prolific intellect; and if even now it can with truth be said to exert any perceptible influence upon our practical politics, it is because it has been thus redeemed from its mercenary instincts and its more literal associations. When Pitt had succeeded in defeating the coalition, his task was scarcely more than begun. He had still to give his party a bond peace establishment. Within a single year of cohesion and a principle of unity. He had to detect the exact place it was necessary to occupy between the rival political sections on the one hand and the mass of the people on the other. He had to inaugurate and work out a policy which would keep the nation with him. That he did so must ever, we think, be regarded as his peculiar triumph. The material of a party, as we have seen, lay ready to his hand; but in itself it certainly was not very promising. It was chiefly composed of the old Tory connection, which had acquired a renovated influence through the vices and blunders of its rivals. But there was no vitality in its creed; it had retained the dry form, while it had lost the religious energy of its early convictions. The Toryism of Divine right and passive obedience had manifestly answered the end it was meant to serve, and now it seemed that the sooner it was dismissed the better. But the claims of its rival were equally loose and unsatisfactory. The lofty and abstract patriotism of the Whig had practically ministered only to the selfishness of the nobility. The liberty he desired was the liberty of the oligarchy to govern gland, not the liberty of the people to The first ten years of Pitt's administration ern themselves. His aristocratic leaders present a marked contrast to those which e utterly ignorant of the popular sympa- succeeded. His genius and his sympathies es and of the popular necessities. It was were pacific; he was fitted to make a great with those sympathies and those necessities peace minister; but he was forced to become that, at the close of the coalition contest, Pitt the minister of war. "Forced," we say, 66 the aggressive shape an Englishman's moral protest generally takes. The war was indeed protracted and disastrous; before it was finished Fox and Pitt were in their graves, and a new generation had arisen. But to attribute these disasters to the policy of the minister is surely most unjust. The fate of battles was against him; the genius of Napoleon was against him; but he did his part with a lavish hand and an unshaken heart. He did not starve the war; he did not practise any of the small economies that are now so much in vogue: he bent the undivided energies of the country to the conflict and strained them to the utmost. Chatham himself could not have conducted a war with more magnificent prodigality; and it can at least be said that, from first to last, England remained mistress of the sea. because there can be no doubt that he regarded war with dislike, and that those who attribute to his ambition the participation of England in the Revolutionary War speak without knowing the facts. He struggled earnestly to keep the country aloof, and he refused to join "the coalesced kings" in their ill-advised attempt to regulate the internal organization of France. That question, he always declared was one which the French people alone were competent to decide. If," said Canuing, in 1794, describing and vindicating the policy of the ministry, "it had been a harmless, idiot lunacy, which had contented itself with playing its tricks and practising its fooleries at home, with dressing up strumpets in oak-leaves and inventing nicknames for the calendar, I should have been far from desiring to interrupt their innocent amusements; we might have looked on with The opposition alleged that after he had hearty contempt indeed, but with a contempt once embarked in the war Pitt would never not wholly unmixed with commiseration." listen to any overture for peace; but the It was not until Dumouriez had made the Ar- charge, though no doubt to some extent cordennes forest "the Thermopyle of France;" rect, can hardly be made matter of reproach it was not until the war on the part of the to the minister. Pitt accurately estimated Convention had ceased to be a war of defence the malign nature of the conflict. He was and become a war of aggression and propa- opposed to a great captain, for whose safety gandism; it was not until the king had been war was as needful as "the encasing air." put to death, that Pitt came to see that neu- Napoleon's power rested upon a military trality could no longer be preserved. It was basis; and such a power was in its very not Pitt, it was the French and the English nature a perpetual menace to Europe. To people, who made war inevitable. When make peace with this foe was, as Pitt felt, virthe Convention, on the 19th of November, tually impracticable. A truce was more un1792, decreed that it would assist with arms safe than a war, even though the war might all nations who wished to recover their lib- be burdensome and disastrous. The opposi erty, it virtually declared war against the tion thundered against the bloody and amconstituted governments of Europe. But bitious minister; but when the opposition England was by no means willing to partici- itself succeeded to power, it was forced to aepate in the contest. "The coalesced kings knowledge that Pitt was right, and that so threaten us," shouted Danton, " and we cast long as Napoleon and the French army lay at their feet, as our gage of battle the head like a thundercloud over Europe, it was imof a king." The English people eagerly ac- possible to patch up even a provisional peace. cepted the challenge. The atrocities of the revolution had horrified them, its successes had scared them; and horror-stricken and panic-stricken they threw themselves blindly into the battle, and dragged the minister along with them. The Revolutionary War has been called a war of principle: it was rather, in so far as England was involved, a war of sentiment and passion. The moral sense of the country had been outraged by the indecent and ferocious excesses of the republic, and it protested accordingly, and in Such were the two men who for twenty eventful years divided the admiration of the House of Commons-who still on either hand salute the stranger as, with uncovered head, he enters the temple of the state. Pitt-the superb Commoner, who has refused the blue ribbon, and will never accept of any reward for his great services, either from his king or his country-from childhood superior to pleas ure, temperate, abstemious, and with a reputation for unblemished integrity-fluent, clear, correct, and commanding as an orator-with 10 while he lived, I was devoted with all my heart and all my soul. Since the death of Mr. Pitt, I acknowledge no leader; my political allegiance lies buried in his grave." In very early life Canning had given indications of high talent, and of the qualities of mind which afterwards distinguished him. Even in the Microcosm of his Eton days he displayed, along with much literary cleverness, arguments that appeal rather to the reason than to the imagination-severely just and coldly inflexible-we recognize in him a great constitutional minister, a haughty defender of the ancient order, a fitting representative of the most august and powerful monarchy in Europe! Fox, on the other hand, with the light-heartedness of a boy-passionately enamoured of life-loving pleasure intensely, and quitting it with difficulty and regret a tact, moderation of judgment, and fastidiwanting, indeed, in the patient courage, fore-ousness of taste which are seldom met with sight, and energy of the disciplined intellect, at that immature period of life. The Antibut wielding with matchless skill a burning Jacobin confirmed his literary reputation. eloquence, searchingly argumentative even in His contributions to its columns will live with its most irresistible vehemence-to us he re- the language. They are very slight, but their calls the simple and courageous tribune of a classic polish and finish, their refined, subtle, degraded populace-the old orator, who could and stealthy irony, their perfect mimetic weep for very shame that they will not be grace, give them a high place among the stirred, as high above the crowd he thunders exquisite trifles of art which inherit immoragainst the insolent dictator, and casts down tality. Most of his impromptus have disapfiery words upon the upturned faces of the peared with the society in which they floated; people! but the few that remain are sufficient to indicate the skin and felicity with which he spoke and thought. What can be more perfect in casion of his contest with Mr. Brougham: Mr. Mr. Canning's speech at Liverpool on the acBrougham retorted in a powerful passage of eloquent invective: the friends and followers of Mr. Pitt, or, as they "Gentlemen, I stand up in this contest against partially designate him, the immortal statesman The lines of opposition between the two statesmen are for the most part strongly marked; but at length, as the end approaches, as the curtain drops, they approximate and unite. The life-long rivals are reconciled. Each is exhausted with the conflict; the fire burns low; "the wine of life is on the lees." The principles to which they had clung are worn out by their vehement advocacy. now no more. Immortal in the miseries of his deOne voted country! Immortal in the wounds of her after another the positions they had succes-bleeding liberties! Immortal in the cruel wars sively taken up have been abandoned. They tion! Immortal in the intolerable taxes, the count which sprang from his cold, miscalculating ambihad espoused opinions wide as the poles asun- less loads of debt which these wars have flung der; and now it has come to this,-that both upon us-which the youngest man amongst us are as one. Each had had his special the- triumphs of our enemies, and the ruin of our allies will not live to see the end of! Immortal in the ory of the universe; but the universe had de--the costly purchase of so much blood and treas clined to be theorized about, and taking its own course, had placidly brushed the theories aside as it passed. They were strong men both; but events had proved too strong for either. in They spent their lives together, and death they were not divided. Pitt died"of old age"-at forty-six; a few months elapsed, and Fox was laid by his side. The noble lament in Marmion was uttered over the sepulchre where rest the ashes of both the rivals. "Now is the stately column broke, The beacon-light is quenched in smoke, Pitt's mantle fell upon Canning. Canning was his pupil and his heir. "To one man, ure! Immortal in the afflictions of England, and results of his twenty years' reign, from the first the humiliation of her friends, through the whole rays of favor with which a delighted court gilded this instant cast upon his name by the burning his early apostasy, to the deadly glare which is at metropolis of our last ally! But may no such immortality ever fall to my lot-let me rather live innocent and inglorious: and when at last I cease to serve you, and to feel for your wrongs, may I have an humble monument in some nameless stone, to tell that beneath it there rests from his labors' in your service, an enemy of the immortal statesman -a friend of peace and of the people." Lord Brougham has criticised Mr. Canning; Mr. Stapleton tells us Mr Canning's opinion of Mr. Brougham. "I recollect one day, when riding on the grounds near Brighton, telling him that I had received a letter from London, stating that Mr. Brougham was dangerously ill. 'Poor fellow,' said Mr. Canning, I am very sorry to hear it; and then after a minute's pause, he added, 'If he there will be no one left to pound and mash.'". should be taken from the House of Commons, P. 28. |