Title: Critical and Historical Essays — Volume 1
Author: Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
Language: English
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CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS

VOLUME 1

by THOMAS BABBINGTON MACAULAY



CONTENTS OF VOL. 1

ENGLISH HISTORY

EDITOR'S NOTE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
HALLAM'S HISTORY
BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES
JOHN HAMPDEN
MILTON
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
HORACE WALPOLE
WILLIAM PITT
THE EARL OF CHATHAM
CLIVE
WARREN HASTINGS
LORD HOLLAND
INDEX



EDITOR'S NOTE

By

AJ Grieve

A French student of English letters (M. Paul Oursel) has written
the following lines:

"Depuis deux siecles les Essais forment une branche importante de
la litterature anglaise; pour designer un ecrivain de cette
classe, nos voisons emploient un mot qui n'a pas d'equivalent en
francais; ils disent: un essayist. Qu'est-ce qu'un essayist?
L'essayist se distingue du moraliste, de l'historien, du critique
litteraire, du biographe, de l'ecrivain politique; et pourtant il
emprunte quelque trait a chacun d'eux; il ressemble tour a tour a
l'un ou a l'autre; il est aussi philosophe, il est satirique,
humoriste a ses heures; il reunit en sa personne des qualities
multiples; il offre dans ses ecrits un specimen de tous les
genres. On voit qu'il n'est pas facile de definir l'essayist;
mais l'exemple suppleera a la definition. On connaitra exactement
le sens du mot quand on aura etudie l'ecrivain qui, d'apres le
jugement de ces compatriotes, est l'essayist par excellence, ou,
comme on disait dans les anciens cours de litterature, le Prince
des essayists."

Macaulay is indeed the prince of essayists, and his reign is
unchallenged. "I still think--says Professor Saintsbury (Corrected
Impressions, p. 89 f.)--that on any subject which Macaulay has
touched, his survey is unsurpassable for giving a first bird's-
eye view, and for creating interest in the matter. . . . And he
certainly has not his equal anywhere for covering his subject in
the pointing-stick fashion. You need not--you had much better
not--pin your faith on his details, but his Pisgah sights are
admirable. Hole after hole has been picked in the "Clive" and the
"Hastings," the "Johnson" and the "Addison," the "Frederick" and
the "Horace Walpole," yet every one of these papers contains
sketches, summaries, precis, which have not been made obsolete or
valueless by all the work of correction in detail."

Two other appreciations from among the mass of critical
literature that has accumulated round Macaulay's work may be
fitly cited, This from Mr. Frederic Harrison:-

"How many men has Macaulay succeeded in reaching, to whom all
other history and criticism is a sealed book, or a book in an
unknown tongue! If he were a sciolist or a wrongheaded fanatic,
this would be a serious evil. But, as he is substantially right
in his judgments, brimful of saying common-sense and generous
feeling, and profoundly well read in his own periods and his
favourite literature, Macaulay has conferred most memorable
services on the readers of English throughout the world. He
stands between philosophic historians and the public very much as
journals and periodicals stand between the masses and great
libraries. Macaulay is a glorified journalist and reviewer, who
brings the matured results of scholars to the man in the street
in a form that he can remember and enjoy, when he could not make
use of a merely learned book. He performs the office of the
ballad-maker or story-teller in an age before books were known or
were common. And it is largely due to his influence that the best
journals and periodicals of our day are written in a style so
clear, so direct, so resonant."

And this from Mr. Cotter Morison

"Macaulay did for the historical essay what Haydn did for the
sonata, and Watt for the steam engine; he found it rudimentary
and unimportant, and left it complete and a thing of power. . . .
To take a bright period or personage of history, to frame it in a
firm outline, to conceive it at once in article-size, and then to
fill in this limited canvas with sparkling anecdote, telling bits
of colour, and facts, all fused together by a real genius for
narrative, was the sort of genre-painting which Macaulay applied
to history. . . . And to this day his essays remain the best of
their class, not only in England, but in Europe. . . . The best
would adorn any literature, and even the less successful have a
picturesque animation, and convey an impression of power that
will not easily be matched. And, again, we need to bear in mind
that they were the productions of a writer immersed in business,
written in his scanty moments of leisure, when most men would
have rested or sought recreation. Macaulay himself was most
modest in his estimate of their value. . . . It was the public
that insisted on their re-issue, and few would be bold enough to
deny that the public was right."

It is to Mr. Morison that the plan followed in the present
edition of the Essays is due. In his monograph on Macaulay
(English Men of Letters series) he devotes a chapter to the
Essays and "with the object of giving as much unity as possible
to a subject necessarily wanting it," classifies the Essays into
four groups, (1)English history, (2)Foreign history,
(3)Controversial, (4)Critical and Miscellaneous. The articles in
the first group are equal in bulk to those of the three other
groups put together, and are contained in the first volume of
this issue. They form a fairly complete survey of English
history from the time of Elizabeth to the later years of the
reign of George III, and are fitly introduced by the Essay on
Hallam's History, which forms a kind of summary or microcosm of
the whole period.

The scheme might be made still more complete by including certain
articles (and especially the exquisite biographies contributed by
Macaulay to the Encyclopaedia Britannica) which are published in
the volume of "Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches." Exigencies
of space have, however, compelled the limitation of the present
edition to the "Essays" usually so-called. These have also been
reprinted in the chronological arrangement ordinarily followed
(see below) in The Temple Classics (5 vols. 1900), where an
exhaustive bibliography, etc., has been appended to each Essay.

Chief dates in the life of Thomas Babington Macaulay, afterwards Baron
Macaulay:--

1800 (Oct. 25). Birth at Rothley Temple, Leicestershire.
1818-1825.      Life at Cambridge (Fellow of Trinity, 1824).
1825.           Essay on Milton contributed to Edinburgh Review.
1826.           Joined the Northern Circuit.
1830           @M.P. for Calne (gift of the Marquis of Lansdowne).
1833.           M.P. for Leeds.
1834-38.        Legal Adviser to the Supreme Council of India. Work at
                the Indian Penal Code.
1839.           M.P. for Edinburgh, and Secretary at War In Melbourne's
                Cabinet.
1842.           Lays of Ancient Rome.
1843.           Collected edition of the Essays.
1847.           Rejected at the Election of M.P. for Edinburgh.
1848.           England from the Accession of James II. vols.
                i. and ii.
1852.           M.P. for Edinburgh; serious illness.
1855.           History of England, vols. iii. and iv.
1857.           Raised to the peerage.
1859 (Dec. 28). Death at Holly Lodge, Kensington. (Buried in
                Westminster Abbey, 9th January 1860.)

The following are the works of Thomas Babington Macaulay:

Pompeii (Prize poem), 1819; Evening (prize poem), 1821; Lays of
Ancient Rome (1842); Ivry and the Armada (Quarterly Magazine),
added to Edition of 1848; Critical and Historical Essays
(Edinburgh Review), 1843.

The Essays originally appeared as follows:

Milton, August 1825; Machiavelli, March 1827; Hallam's
"Constitutional History," September 1828; Southey's "Colloquies,"
January 1830; R. Montgomery's Poems, April 1830; Civil
Disabilities of Jews, January 1831; Byron, June 1831; Croker's
"Boswell," September 1831; Pilgrim's Progress, December 1831;
Hampden, December 1831; Burleigh, April 1832; War of Succession
in Spain, January 1833; Horace Walpole, October 1833; Lord
Chatham, January 1834; Mackintosh's "History of Revolution," July
1835; Bacon, July 1837; Sir William Temple, October 1838;
"Gladstone on Church and State," April 1839; Clive, January 1840;
Ranke's "History of the Popes," October 1840; Comic Dramatists,
January 1841; Lord Holland, July 1841; Warren Hastings, October
1841; Frederick the Great, April 1842; Madame D'Arblay, January
1843; Addison, July 1843; Lord Chatham (2nd Art.), October 1844.

History of England, vols. i. and ii., 1848; vols. iii. and iv.,
1855; vol. v., Ed. Lady Trevelyan, 1861; Ed. 8 vols., 1858-62
(Life by Dean Milman); Ed. 4 vols., People's Edition, with Life
by Dean Milman, 1863-4; Inaugural Address (Glasgow), 1849;
Speeches corrected by himself, 1854 (unauthorized version, 1853,
by Vizetelly); Miscellaneous Writings, 2 vols. 1860 (Ed. T. F.
Ellis). These include poems, lives (Encyclo. Britt. 8th ed.), and
contributions to Quarterly Magazine, and the following from
Edinburgh Review:

Dryden, January 1828; History, May 1828; Mill on Government,
March 1829; Westminster Reviewer's Defence of Mill, June 1829;
Utilitarian Theory of Government, October 1829; Sadler's "Law of
Population," July 1830; Sadler's "Refutation Refuted," January
1831 Mirabeau, July 1832; Barere, April 1844.

Complete Works (Ed. Lady Trevelyan), 8 vols., 1866.

BOOKS OF REFERENCE

Sir G.0. Trevelyan: The Life and Letters Of Lord Macaulay (2
vols. 8vo., 1876, 2nd ed. with additions, 1877, subsequent
editions 1878 and 1881).

J. Cotter Morison: Macaulay [English Men of Letters], (1882).

Mark Pattison: Art. "Macaulay" in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Leslie Stephen: Hours in a Library [new ed. 1892], ii. 243-376.
Art. "Macaulay" in Dictionary of National Biography.

Frederic Harrison: Macaulay's Place in Literature (1894).
Studies in Early Victorian Literature, chap. iii. (1895).

G. Saintsbury: Corrected Impressions, chaps. ix. x. (189,5).
A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, pp. 224-232 (1896).

P. Oursel: Les Essais de Lord Macaulay (1882).

D.H. Macgregor: Lord Macaulay (1901).

Sir R.C. Jebb: Macaulay (1900).

F.C. Montague. Macaulay's Essays (3 vols. 1901).



A. J. G. August 1907.



HALLAM
(September 1828)

The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of
Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By HENRY HALLAM. In 2 vols.
1827

History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound
of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind
by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents.
But, in fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have
never been known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length,
in our own time, they have been completely and professedly
separated. Good histories, in the proper sense of the word, we
have not. But we have good historical romances, and good
historical essays. The imagination and the reason, if we may use
a legal metaphor, have made partition of a province of literature
of which they were formerly seized per my et per tout; and now
they hold their respective portions in severalty, instead of
holding the whole in common.

To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us
in the society of a great man or on the eminence which overlooks
the field of a mighty battle, to invest with the reality of human
flesh and blood beings whom we are too much inclined to consider
as personified qualities in an allegory, to call up our ancestors
before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and
garb, to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables,
to rummage their old-fashioned ward-robes, to explain the uses of
their ponderous furniture, these parts of the duty which properly
belongs to the historian have been appropriated by the historical
novelist. On the other hand, to extract the philosophy of
history, to direct on judgment of events and men, to trace the
connection of cause and effects, and to draw from the occurrences
of former time general lessons of moral and political wisdom, has
become the business of a distinct class of writers.

Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus
divided, the one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted
landscape. The picture, though it places the country before us,
does not enable us to ascertain with accuracy the dimensions, the
distances, and the angles. The map is not a work of imitative
art. It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us
exact information as to the bearings of the various points, and
is a more useful companion to the traveller or the general than
the painted landscape could be, though it were the grandest that
ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which Claude
ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

It is remarkable that the practice of separating the two
ingredients of which history is composed has become prevalent on
the Continent as well as in this country. Italy has already
produced a historical novel, of high merit and of still higher
promise. In France, the practice has been carried to a length
somewhat whimsical. M. Sismondi publishes a grave and stately
history of the Merovingian Kings, very valuable, and a little
tedious. He then sends forth as a companion to it a novel, in
which he attempts to give a lively representation of characters
and manners. This course, as it seems to us, has all the
disadvantages of a division of labour, and none of its
advantages. We understand the expediency of keeping the functions
of cook and coachman distinct. The dinner will be better dressed,
and the horses better managed. But where the two situations are
united, as in the Maitre Jacques of Moliere, we do not see that
the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which the
pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other.

We manage these things better in England. Sir Walter Scott gives
us a novel; Mr. Hallam a critical and argumentative history. Both
are occupied with the same matter. But the former looks at it
with the eye of a sculptor. His intention is to give an express
and lively image of its external form. The latter is an
anatomist. His task is to dissect the subject to its inmost
recesses, and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and
all the causes of decay.

Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other
writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has
great industry and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive,
various, and profound. His mind is equally distinguished by the
amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. His
speculations have none of that vagueness which is the common
fault of political philosophy. On the contrary, they are
strikingly practical, and teach us not only the general rule, but
the mode of applying it to solve particular cases. In this
respect they often remind us of the Discourses of Machiavelli.

The style is sometimes open to the charge of harshness. We have
also here and there remarked a little of that unpleasant trick,
which Gibbon brought into fashion, the trick, we mean, of telling
a story by implication and allusion. Mr. Hallam however, has an
excuse which Gibbon had not. His work is designed for readers who
are already acquainted with the ordinary books on English
history, and who can therefore unriddle these little enigmas
without difficulty. The manner of the book is, on the whole, not
unworthy of the matter. The language, even where most faulty, is
weighty and massive, and indicates strong sense in every line. It
often rises to an eloquence, not florid or impassioned, but high,
grave, and sober; such as would become a state paper, or a
judgment delivered by a great magistrate, a Somers or a
D'Aguesseau.

In this respect the character of Mr. Hallam's mind corresponds
strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently
judicial. Its whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the
bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither
to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating
nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alternately biting
their lips to hear their conflicting misstatements and sophisms
exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the
Constitutional History the most impartial book that we ever read.
We think it the more incumbent on us to bear this testimony
strongly at first setting out, because, in the course of our
remarks, we shall think it right to dwell principally on those
parts of it from which we dissent.

There is one peculiarity about Mr. Hallam which, while it adds to
the value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something
from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any
historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its
esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the
initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its
mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of
those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of
pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It
has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and
pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals
and its legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told,
deserted the High Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their oblations
on the shrine of St. Thomas. In the same manner the great and
comfortable doctrines of the Tory creed, those particularly which
relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by
squires and rectors in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister
who was as bad a representative of the system which has been
christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On
the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and
Sidney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an
honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference
between Ship-money and the Habeas Corpus Act. It may be added
that, as in religion, so in politics, few even of those who are
enlightened enough to comprehend the meaning latent under the
emblems of their faith can resist the contagion of the popular
superstition. Often, when they flatter themselves that they are
merely feigning a compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar,
they are themselves under the influence of those very prejudices.
It probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that
Socrates taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state
honoured, and bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying
breath. So there is often a portion of willing credulity and
enthusiasm in the veneration which the most discerning men pay to
their political idols. From the very nature of man it must be so.
The faculty by which we inseparably associate ideas which have
often been presented to us in conjunction is not under the
absolute control of the will. It may be quickened into morbid
activity. It may be reasoned into sluggishness. But in a certain
degree it will always exist. The almost absolute mastery which
Mr. Hallam has obtained over feelings of this class is perfectly
astonishing to us, and will, we believe, be not only astonishing
but offensive to many of his readers. It must particularly
disgust those people who, in their speculations on politics, are
not reasoners but fanciers; whose opinions, even when sincere,
are not produced, according to the ordinary law of intellectual
births, by induction or inference, but are equivocally generated
by the heat of fervid tempers out of the overflowing of tumid
imaginations. A man of this class is always in extremes. He
cannot be a friend to liberty without calling for a community of
goods, or a friend to order without taking under his protection
the foulest excesses of tyranny. His admiration oscillates
between the most worthless of rebels and the most worthless of
oppressors, between Marten, the disgrace of the High Court of
justice, and Laud, the disgrace of the Star-Chamber. He can
forgive anything but temperance and impartiality. He has a
certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as
with that of his associates. In every furious partisan he sees
either his present self or his former self, the pensioner that
is, or the Jacobin that has been. But he is unable to comprehend
a writer who, steadily attached to principles, is indifferent
about names and badges, and who judges of characters with equable
severity, not altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from
the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

We should probably like Mr. Hallam's book more if, instead of
pointing out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark
spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the
one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it
far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for
cold rigid justice, the one weight and the one measure, we know
not where else we can look.

No portion of our annals has been more perplexed and
misrepresented by writers of different parties than the history
of the Reformation. In this labyrinth of falsehood and
sophistry, the guidance of Mr. Hallam is peculiarly valuable. It
is impossible not to admire the even-handed justice with which he
deals out castigation to right and left on the rival persecutors.

It is vehemently maintained by some writers of the present day
that Elizabeth persecuted neither Papists nor Puritans as such,
and that the severe measures which she occasionally adopted were
dictated, not by religious intolerance, but by political
necessity. Even the excellent account of those times which Mr.
Hallam has given has not altogether imposed silence on the
authors of this fallacy. The title of the Queen, they say, was
annulled by the Pope; her throne was given to another; her
subjects were incited to rebellion; her life was menaced; every
Catholic was bound in conscience to be a traitor; it was
therefore against traitors, not against Catholics, that the penal
laws were enacted.

In order that our readers may be fully competent to appreciate
the merits of this defence, we will state, as concisely as
possible, the substance of some of these laws.

As soon as Elizabeth ascended the throne, and before the least
hostility to her government had been shown by the Catholic
population, an act passed prohibiting the celebration of the
rites of the Romish Church on pain of forfeiture for the first
offence, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and of
perpetual imprisonment for the third.

A law was next made in 1562, enacting, that all who had ever
graduated at the Universities or received holy orders, all
lawyers, and all magistrates, should take the oath of supremacy
when tendered to them, on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment
during the royal pleasure. After the lapse of three mouths, the
oath might again be tendered to them; and if it were again
refused, the recusant was guilty of high treason. A prospective
law, however severe, framed to exclude Catholics from the liberal
professions, would have been mercy itself compared with this
odious act. It is a retrospective statute; it is a retrospective
penal statute; it is a retrospective penal statute against a
large class. We will not positively affirm that a law of this
description must always, and under all circumstances, be
unjustifiable. But the presumption against it is most violent;
nor do we remember any crisis either in our own history, or in
the history of any other country, which would have rendered such
a provision necessary. In the present case, what circumstances
called for extraordinary rigour? There might be disaffection
among the Catholics. The prohibition of their worship would
naturally produce it. But it is from their situation, not from
their conduct, from the wrongs which they had suffered, not from
those which they had committed, that the existence of discontent
among them must be inferred. There were libels, no doubt, and
prophecies, and rumours and suspicions, strange grounds for a law
inflicting capital penalties, ex post facto, on a large body of
men.

Eight years later, the bull of Pius deposing Elizabeth produced a
third law.  This law, to which alone, as we conceive, the defence
now under our consideration can apply, provides that, if any
Catholic shall convert a Protestant to the Romish Church, they
shall both suffer death as for high treason.

We believe that we might safely content ourselves with stating
the fact, and leaving it to the judgment of every plain
Englishman. Recent controversies have, however, given so much
importance to this subject, that we will offer a few remarks on
it.

In the first place, the arguments which are urged in favour of
Elizabeth apply with much greater force to the case of her sister
Mary. The Catholics did not, at the time of Elizabeth's
accession, rise in arms to seat a Pretender on her throne. But
before Mary had given, or could give, provocation, the most
distinguished Protestants attempted to set aside her rights in
favour of the Lady Jane. That attempt, and the subsequent
insurrection of Wyatt, furnished at least as good a plea for the
burning of Protestants, as the conspiracies against Elizabeth
furnish for the hanging and embowelling of Papists.

The fact is that both pleas are worthless alike. If such
arguments are to pass current, it will be easy to prove that
there was never such a thing as religious persecution since the
creation. For there never was a religious persecution in which
some odious crime was not, justly or unjustly, said to be
obviously deducible from the doctrines of the persecuted party.
We might say, that the Caesars did not persecute the Christians;
that they only punished men who were charged, rightly or wrongly,
with burning Rome, and with committing the foulest abominations
in secret assemblies; and that the refusal to throw frankincense
on the altar of Jupiter was not the crime, but only evidence of
the crime. We might say, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was
intended to extirpate, not a religious sect, but a political
party. For, beyond all doubt, the proceedings of the Huguenots,
from the conspiracy of Amboise to the battle of Moncontour, had
given much more trouble to the French monarchy than the Catholics
have ever given to the English monarchy since the Reformation;
and that too with much less excuse.

The true distinction is perfectly obvious. To punish a man
because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed,
though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution.
To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some
doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who
hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime is
persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

When Elizabeth put Ballard and Babington to death, she was not
persecuting. Nor should we have accused her government of
persecution for passing any law, however severe, against overt
acts of sedition. But to argue that, because a man is a Catholic,
he must think it right to murder a heretical sovereign, and that
because he thinks it right, he will attempt to do it, and then,
to found on this conclusion a law for punishing him as if he had
done it, is plain persecution.

If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data,
and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode
of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as
people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions,
and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right,
there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties
for opinions can be defended. The doctrine of reprobation, in the
judgment of many very able men, follows by syllogistic necessity
from the doctrine of election. Others conceive that the
Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine of
reprobation; and it is very generally thought that licentiousness
and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits,
as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This
chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as
that which makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it
would be rather a strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on
the ground that if they were spared, they would infallibly commit
all the atrocities of Matthias and Knipperdoling. For, reason the
matter as we may, experience shows us that a man may believe in
election without believing in reprobation, that he may believe in
reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that he may be an
Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short, is so
inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his
belief to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We do not believe that every Englishman who was reconciled to the
Catholic Church would, as a necessary consequence, have thought
himself justified in deposing or assassinating Elizabeth. It is
not sufficient to say that the convert must have acknowledged the
authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull
against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the
human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a
disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how
long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in
matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines
which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however, that
every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be
lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business
of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to
hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost
inevitable consequence of making any attempt.

Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is
scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his
country and friends to preach the Gospel among savages, and who
should, after labouring indefatigably without any hope of reward,
terminate his life by martyrdom, would deserve the warmest
admiration. Yet we can doubt whether ten of the ten thousand ever
thought of going on such an expedition. Why should we suppose
that conscientious motives, feeble as they are constantly found
to be in a good cause, should be omnipotent for evil? Doubtless
there was many a jolly Popish priest in the old manor-houses of
the northern counties, who would have admitted, in theory, the
deposing power of the Pope, but who would not have been ambitious
to be stretched on the rack, even though it were to be used,
according to the benevolent proviso of Lord Burleigh, "as
charitably as such a thing can be," or to be hanged, drawn, and
quartered, even though, by that rare indulgence which the Queen,
of her special grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion,
sometimes extended to very mitigated cases, he were allowed a
fair time to choke before the hangman began to grabble in his
entrails.

But the laws passed against the Puritans had not even the
wretched excuse which we have been considering. In this case, the
cruelty was equal, the danger, infinitely less. In fact, the
danger was created solely by the cruelty. But it is superfluous
to press the argument. By no artifice of ingenuity can the stigma
of persecution, the worst blemish of the English Church, be
effaced or patched over. Her doctrines, we well know, do not tend
to intolerance.  She admits the possibility of salvation out of
her own pale. But this circumstance, in itself honourable to her,
aggravates the sin and the shame of those who persecuted in her
name. Dominic and De Montfort did not, at least, murder and
torture for differences of opinion which they considered as
trifling. It was to stop an infection which, as they believed,
hurried to certain perdition every soul which it seized, that
they employed their fire and steel. The measures of the English
government with respect to the Papists and Puritans sprang from a
widely different principle. If those who deny that the founders
of the Church were guilty of religious persecution mean only that
the founders of the Church were not influenced by any religious
motive, we perfectly agree with them. Neither the penal code of
Elizabeth, nor the more hateful system by which Charles the
Second attempted to force Episcopacy on the Scotch, had an origin
so noble. The cause is to be sought in some circumstances which
attended the Reformation in England, circumstances of which the
effects long continued to be felt, and may in some degree be
traced even at the present day.

In Germany, in France, in Switzerland, and in Scotland, the
contest against the Papal power was essentially a religious
contest. In all those countries, indeed, the cause of the
Reformation, like every other great cause, attracted to itself
many supporters influenced by no conscientious principle, many
who quitted the Established Church only because they thought her
in danger, many who were weary of her restraints, and many who
were greedy for her spoils. But it was not by these adherents
that the separation was there conducted. They were welcome
auxiliaries; their support was too often purchased by unworthy
compliances; but, however exalted in rank or power, they were not
the leaders in the enterprise. Men of a widely different
description, men who redeemed great infirmities and errors by
sincerity, disinterestedness, energy and courage, men who, with
many of the vices of revolutionary chiefs and of polemic divines,
united some of the highest qualities of apostles, were the real
directors. They might be violent in innovation and scurrilous in
controversy. They might sometimes act with inexcusable severity
towards opponents, and sometimes connive disreputably at the
vices of powerful allies. But fear was not in them, nor
hypocrisy, nor avarice, nor any petty selfishness. Their one
great object was the demolition of the idols and the purification
of the sanctuary. If they were too indulgent to the failings of
eminent men from whose patronage they expected advantage to the
church, they never flinched before persecuting tyrants and
hostile armies. For that theological system to which they
sacrificed the lives of others without scruple, they were ready
to throw away their own lives without fear. Such were the authors
of the great schism on the Continent and in the northern part of
this island. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse,
the Prince of Conde and the King of Navarre, the Earl of Moray
and the Earl of Morton, might espouse the Protestant opinions, or
might pretend to espouse them; but it was from Luther, from
Calvin, from Knox, that the Reformation took its character.

England has no such names to show; not that she wanted men of
sincere piety, of deep learning, of steady and adventurous
courage. But these were thrown into the background. Elsewhere men
of this character were the principals. Here they acted a
secondary part. Elsewhere worldliness was the tool of zeal. Here
zeal was the tool of worldliness. A King, whose character may be
best described by saying that he was despotism itself
personified, unprincipled ministers, a rapacious aristocracy, a
servile Parliament, such were the instruments by which England
was delivered from the yoke of Rome. The work which had been
begun by Henry, the murderer of his wives, was continued by
Somerset, the murderer of his brother, and completed by
Elizabeth, the murderer of her guest. Sprung from brutal passion,
nurtured by selfish policy, the Reformation in England displayed
little of what had, in other countries, distinguished it;
unflinching and unsparing devotion, boldness of speech, and
singleness of eye. These were indeed to be found; but it was in
the lower ranks of the party which opposed the authority of Rome,
in such men as Hooper, Latimer, Rogers, and Taylor. Of those who
had any important share in bringing the Reformation about, Ridley
was perhaps the only person who did not consider it as a mere
political job. Even Ridley did not play a very prominent part.
Among the statesmen and prelates who principally gave the tone to
the religious changes, there is one, and one only, whose conduct
partiality itself can attribute to any other than interested
motives. It is not strange, therefore, that his character should
have been the subject of fierce controversy. We need not say that
we speak of Cranmer.

Mr. Hallam has been severely censured for saying with his usual
placid severity, that, "if we weigh the character of this prelate
in an equal balance, he will appear far indeed removed from the
turpitude imputed to him, by his enemies; yet not entitled to any
extraordinary veneration." We will venture to expand the sense of
Mr. Hallam, and to comment on it thus:--If we consider Cranmer
merely as a statesman, he will not appear a much worse man than
Wolsey, Gardiner, Cromwell, or Somerset. But, when an attempt is
made to set him up as a saint, it is scarcely possible for any
man of sense who knows the history of the times to preserve his
gravity. If the memory of the archbishop had been left to find
its own place, he would have soon been lost among the crowd which
is mingled

             "A quel cattivo coro
Degli angeli, che non furon ribelli,
Ne fur fedeli a Dio, per se foro."

And the only notice which it would have been necessary to take of
his name would have been

"Non ragioniam di lui; ma guarda, e passa."

But, since his admirers challenge for him a place in the noble
army of martyrs, his claims require fuller discussion.

The origin of his greatness, common enough in the scandalous
chronicles of courts, seems strangely out of place in a
hagiology. Cranmer rose into favour by serving Henry in the
disgraceful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the marriage
of Anne Boleyn with the King. On a frivolous pretence he
pronounced that marriage null and void. On a pretence, if
possible still more frivolous, he dissolved the ties which
bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He attached
himself to Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished.
He voted for cutting off Cromwell's head without a trial,
when the tide of royal favour turned. He conformed backwards
and forwards as the King changed his mind. He assisted,
while Henry lived, in condemning to the flames those who
denied the doctrine of transubstantiation. He found out,
as soon as Henry was dead, that the doctrine was false.
He was, however, not at a loss for people to burn. The
authority of his station and of his grey hairs was employed to
overcome the disgust with which an intelligent and virtuous child
regarded persecution. Intolerance is always bad. But the
sanguinary intolerance of a man who thus wavered in his creed
excites a loathing, to which it is difficult to give vent without
calling foul names. Equally false to political and to religious
obligations, the primate was first the tool of Somerset, and then
the tool of Northumberland. When the Protector wished to put his
own brother to death, without even the semblance of a trial, he
found a ready instrument in Cranmer. In spite of the canon law,
which forbade a churchman to take any part in matters of blood,
the archbishop signed the warrant for the atrocious sentence.
When Somerset had been in his turn destroyed, his destroyer
received the support of Cranmer in a wicked attempt to change the
course of the succession.

The apology made for him by his admirers only renders his conduct
more contemptible. He complied, it is said, against his better
judgment, because he could not resist the entreaties of Edward. A
holy prelate of sixty, one would think, might be better employed
by the bedside of a dying child, than in committing crimes at the
request of the young disciple. If Cranmer had shown half as much
firmness when Edward requested him to commit treason as he had
before shown when Edward requested him not to commit murder, he
might have saved the country from one of the greatest misfortunes
that it ever underwent. He became, from whatever motive, the
accomplice of the worthless Dudley. The virtuous scruples of
another young and amiable mind were to be overcome. As Edward had
been forced into persecution, Jane was to be seduced into
treason. No transaction in our annals is more unjustifiable than
this. If a hereditary title were to be respected, Mary possessed
it. If a parliamentary title were preferable, Mary possessed that
also. If the interest of the Protestant religion required a
departure from the ordinary rule of succession, that interest
would have been best served by raising Elizabeth to the throne.
If the foreign relations of the kingdom were considered, still
stronger reasons might be found for preferring Elizabeth to Jane.
There was great doubt whether Jane or the Queen of Scotland had
the better claim; and that doubt would, in all probability, have
produced a war both with Scotland and with France, if the project
of Northumberland had not been blasted in its infancy. That
Elizabeth had a better claim than the Queen of Scotland was
indisputable. To the part which Cranmer, and unfortunately some
better men than Cranmer, took in this most reprehensible scheme,
much of the severity with which the Protestants were afterwards
treated must in fairness be ascribed.

The plot failed; Popery triumphed; and Cranmer recanted. Most
people look on his recantation as a single blemish on an
honourable life, the frailty of an unguarded moment. But, in
fact, his recantation was in strict accordance with the system on
which he had constantly acted. It was part of a regular habit. It
was not the first recantation that he had made; and, in all
probability, if it had answered its purpose, it would not have
been the last. We do not blame him for not choosing to be burned
alive. It is no very severe reproach to any person that he does
not possess heroic fortitude. But surely a man who liked the fire
so little should have had some sympathy for others. A persecutor
who inflicts nothing which he is not ready to endure deserves
some respect. But when a man who loves his doctrines more than
the lives of his neighbours, loves his own little finger better
than his doctrines, a very simple argument a fortiori will enable
us to estimate the amount of his benevolence.

But his martyrdom, it is said, redeemed everything. It is
extraordinary that so much ignorance should exist on this subject.
The fact is that, if a martyr be a man who chooses to die rather
than to renounce his opinions, Cranmer was no more a martyr than
Dr. Dodd. He died solely because he could not help it. He never
retracted his recantation till he found he had made it in vain.
The Queen was fully resolved that, Catholic or Protestant, he
should burn. Then he spoke out, as people generally speak out
when they are at the point of death and have nothing to hope or
to fear on earth. If Mary had suffered him to live, we suspect
that he would have heard mass and received absolution, like a
good Catholic, till the accession of Elizabeth, and that he would
then have purchased, by another apostasy, the power of burning
men better and braver than himself.

We do not mean, however, to represent him as a monster of
wickedness. He was not wantonly cruel or treacherous. He was
merely a supple, timid, interested courtier, in times of frequent
and violent change. That which has always been represented as his
distinguishing virtue, the facility with which he forgave his
enemies, belongs to the character. Slaves of his class are never
vindictive, and never grateful. A present interest effaces past
services and past injuries from their minds together. Their only
object is self-preservation; and for this they conciliate those
who wrong them, just as they abandon those who serve them. Before
we extol a man for his forgiving temper, we should inquire
whether he is above revenge, or below it.

Somerset had as little principle as his coadjutor. Of Henry, an
orthodox Catholic, except that he chose to be his own Pope, and
of Elizabeth, who certainly had no objection to the theology of
Rome, we need say nothing. These four persons were the great
authors of the English Reformation. Three of them had a direct
interest in the extension of the royal prerogative. The fourth
was the ready tool of any who could frighten him. It is not
difficult to see from what motives, and on what plan, such
persons would be inclined to remodel the Church. The scheme was
merely to transfer the full cup of sorceries from the Babylonian
enchantress to other hands, spilling as little as possible by the
way. The Catholic doctrines and rites were to be retained in the
Church of England. But the King was to exercise the control which
had formerly belonged to the Roman Pontiff. In this Henry for a
time succeeded. The extraordinary force of his character, the
fortunate situation in which he stood with respect to foreign
powers, and the vast resources which the suppression of the
monasteries placed at his disposal, enabled him to oppress both
the religious factions equally. He punished with impartial
severity those who renounced the doctrines of Rome, and those who
acknowledged her jurisdiction. The basis, however, on which he
attempted to establish his power was too narrow to be durable. It
would have been impossible even for him long to persecute both
persuasions. Even under his reign there had been insurrections on
the part of the Catholics, and signs of a spirit which was likely
soon to produce insurrection on the part of the Protestants. It
was plainly necessary, therefore, that the Crown should form an
alliance with one or with the other side. To recognise the Papal
supremacy, would have been to abandon the whole design.
Reluctantly and sullenly the government at last joined the
Protestants. In forming this junction, its object was to procure
as much aid as possible for its selfish undertaking, and to make
the smallest possible concessions to the spirit of religious
innovation.

From this compromise the Church of England sprang. In many
respects, indeed, it has been well for her that, in an age of
exuberant zeal, her principal founders were mere politicians. To
this circumstance she owes her moderate articles, her decent
ceremonies, her noble and pathetic liturgy. Her worship is not
disfigured by mummery. Yet she has preserved, in a far greater
degree than any of her Protestant sisters, that art of striking
the senses and filling the imagination in which the Catholic
Church so eminently excels. But, on the other hand, she continued
to be, for more than a hundred and fifty years, the servile
handmaid of monarchy, the steady enemy of public liberty. The
divine right of kings, and the duty of passively obeying all
their commands, were her favourite tenets. She held those tenets
firmly through times of oppression, persecution, and
licentiousness; while law was trampled down; while judgment was
perverted; while the people were eaten as though they were bread.
Once, and but once, for a moment, and but for a moment, when her
own dignity and property were touched, she forgot to practise the
submission which she had taught.

Elizabeth clearly discerned the advantages which were to be
derived from a close connection between the monarchy and the
priesthood. At the time of her accession, indeed, she evidently
meditated a partial reconciliation with Rome; and, throughout her
whole life, she leaned strongly to some of the most obnoxious
parts of the Catholic system. But her imperious temper, her keen
sagacity, and her peculiar situation, soon led her to attach
herself completely to a church which was all her own. On the same
principle on which she joined it, she attempted to drive all her
people within its pale by persecution. She supported it by severe
penal laws, not because she thought conformity to its discipline
necessary to salvation; but because it was the fastness which
arbitrary power was making strong for itself, because she
expected a more profound obedience from those who saw in her both
their civil and their ecclesiastical chief than from those who,
like the Papists, ascribed spiritual authority to the Pope, or
from those who, like some of the Puritans, ascribed it only to
Heaven. To dissent from her establishment was to dissent from an
institution founded with an express view to the maintenance and
extension of the royal prerogative.

This great Queen and her successors, by considering conformity
and loyalty as identical at length made them so. With respect to
the Catholics, indeed, the rigour of persecution abated after her
death. James soon found that they were unable to injure him, and
that the animosity which the Puritan party felt towards them
drove them of necessity to take refuge under his throne. During
the subsequent conflict, their fault was anything but disloyalty.
On the other hand, James hated the Puritans with more than the
hatred of Elizabeth. Her aversion to them was political; his was
personal. The sect had plagued him in Scotland, where he was
weak; and he was determined to be even with them in England,
where he was powerful. Persecution gradually changed a sect into
a faction. That there was anything in the religious opinions of
the Puritans which rendered them hostile to monarchy has never
been proved to our satisfaction. After our civil contests, it
became the fashion to say that Presbyterianism was connected with
Republicanism; just as it has been the fashion to say, since the
time of the French Revolution, that Infidelity is connected with
Republicanism. It is perfectly true that a church constituted on
the Calvinistic model will not strengthen the hands of the
sovereign so much as a hierarchy which consists of several ranks,
differing in dignity and emolument, and of which all the members
are constantly looking to the Government for promotion. But
experience has clearly shown that a Calvinistic church, like
every other church, is disaffected when it is persecuted, quiet
when it is tolerated, and actively loyal when it is favoured and
cherished. Scotland has had a Presbyterian establishment during a
century and a half. Yet her General Assembly has not, during that
period, given half so much trouble to the government as the
Convocation of the Church of England gave during the thirty years
which followed the Revolution. That James and Charles should have
been mistaken in this point is not surprising. But we are
astonished, we must confess, that men of our own time, men who
have before them the proof of what toleration can effect, men who
may see with their own eyes that the Presbyterians are no such
monsters when government is wise enough to let them alone, should
defend the persecutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries as indispensable to the safety of the church and the
throne.

How persecution protects churches and thrones was soon made
manifest. A systematic political opposition, vehement, daring,
and inflexible, sprang from a schism about trifles, altogether
unconnected with the real interests of religion or of the state.
Before the close of the reign of Elizabeth this opposition began
to show itself. It broke forth on the question of the monopolies.
Even the imperial Lioness was compelled to abandon her prey, and
slowly and fiercely to recede before the assailants. The spirit
of liberty grew with the growing wealth and intelligence of the
people. The feeble struggles and insults of James irritated
instead of suppressing it; and the events which immediately
followed the accession of his son portended a contest of no
common severity, between a king resolved to be absolute, and a
people resolved to be free.

The famous proceedings of the third Parliament of Charles, and
the tyrannical measures which followed its dissolution, are
extremely well described by Mr. Hallam. No writer, we think, has
shown, in so clear and satisfactory a manner, that the Government
then entertained a fixed purpose of destroying the old
parliamentary constitution of England, or at least of reducing it
to a mere shadow. We hasten, however, to a part of his work
which, though it abounds in valuable information and in remarks
well deserving to be attentively considered, and though it is,
like the rest, evidently written in a spirit of perfect
impartiality, appears to us, in many points, objectionable.

We pass to the year 1640. The fate of the short Parliament held
in that year clearly indicated the views of the king. That a
Parliament so moderate in feeling should have met after so many
years of oppression is truly wonderful. Hyde extols its loyal and
conciliatory spirit. Its conduct, we are told, made the excellent
Falkland in love with the very name of Parliament. We think,
indeed, with Oliver St. John, that its moderation was carried too
far, and that the times required sharper and more decided
councils. It was fortunate, however, that the king had another
opportunity of showing that hatred of the liberties of his
subjects which was the ruling principle of all his conduct. The
sole crime of the Commons was that, meeting after a long
intermission of parliaments, and after a long series of cruelties
and illegal imposts, they seemed inclined to examine grievances
before they would vote supplies. For this insolence they were
dissolved almost as soon as they met.

Defeat, universal agitation, financial embarrassments,
disorganisation in every part of the government, compelled
Charles again to convene the Houses before the close of the same
year. Their meeting was one of the great eras in the history of
the civilised world. Whatever of political freedom exists either
in Europe or in America has sprung, directly or indirectly, from
those institutions which they secured and reformed. We never turn
to the annals of those times without feeling increased admiration
of the patriotism, the energy, the decision, the consummate
wisdom, which marked the measures of that great Parliament, from
the day on which it met to the commencement of civil hostilities.

The impeachment of Strafford was the first, and perhaps the
greatest blow. The whole conduct of that celebrated man proved
that he had formed a deliberate scheme to subvert the fundamental
laws of England. Those parts of his correspondence which have
been brought to light since his death, place the matter beyond a
doubt. One of his admirers has, indeed, offered to show "that the
passages which Mr. Hallam has invidiously extracted from the
correspondence between Laud and Strafford, as proving their
design to introduce a thorough tyranny, refer not to any such
design, but to a thorough reform in the affairs of state, and the
thorough maintenance of just authority." We will recommend two or
three of these passages to the especial notice of our readers.

All who know anything of those times, know that the conduct of
Hampden in the affair of the ship-money met with the warm
approbation of every respectable Royalist in England. It drew
forth the ardent eulogies of the champions of the prerogative and
even of the Crown lawyers themselves. Clarendon allows Hampden's
demeanour through the whole proceeding to have been such, that
even those who watched for an occasion against the defender of
the people, were compelled to acknowledge themselves unable to
find any fault in him. That he was right in the point of law is
now universally admitted. Even had it been otherwise, he had a
fair case. Five of the judges, servile as our Courts then were,
pronounced in his favour. The majority against him was the
smallest possible. In no country retaining the slightest vestige
of constitutional liberty can a modest and decent appeal to the
laws be treated as a crime. Strafford, however, recommends that,
for taking the sense of a legal tribunal on a legal question,
Hampden should be punished, and punished severely, "whipt," says
the insolent apostate, "whipt into his senses. If the rod," he
adds, "be so used that it smarts not, I am the more sorry." This
is the maintenance of just authority.

In civilised nations, the most arbitrary governments have
generally suffered justice to have a free course in private
suits. Stratford wished to make every cause in every court
subject to the royal prerogative. He complained that in Ireland
he was not permitted to meddle in cases between party and party.
"I know very well," says he, "that the common lawyers will be
passionately against it, who are wont to put such a prejudice
upon all other professions, as if none were to be trusted, or
capable to administer justice, but themselves: yet how well this
suits with monarchy, when they monopolise all to be governed by
their year-books, you in England have a costly example." We are
really curious to know by what arguments it is to be proved, that
the power of interfering in the law-suits of individuals is part
of the just authority of the executive government.

It is not strange that a man so careless of the common civil
rights, which even despots have generally respected, should treat
with scorn the limitations which the constitution imposes on the
royal prerogative. We might quote pages: but we will content
ourselves with a single specimen: "The debts of the Crown being
taken off, you may govern as you please: and most resolute I am
that may be done without borrowing any help forth of the King's
lodgings."

Such was the theory of that thorough reform in the state which
Strafford meditated. His whole practice, from the day on which he
sold himself to the court, was in strict conformity to his
theory. For his accomplices various excuses may be urged;
ignorance, imbecility, religious bigotry. But Wentworth had no
such plea. His intellect was capacious. His early prepossessions
were on the side of popular rights. He knew the whole beauty and
value of the system which he attempted to deface. He was the
first of the Rats, the first of those statesmen whose patriotism
has been only the coquetry of political prostitution, and whose
profligacy has taught governments to adopt the old maxim of the
slave-market, that it is cheaper to buy than to breed, to import
defenders from an Opposition than to rear them in a Ministry. He
was the first Englishman to whom a peerage was a sacrament of
infamy, a baptism into the communion of corruption. As he was the
earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest;
eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of invention,
immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys
nations pre-eminent, the lost Archangel, the Satan of the
apostasy. The title for which, at the time of his desertion, he
exchanged a name honourably distinguished in the cause of the
people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of
the first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning,

"Satan;--so call him now--His former name
Is heard no more in heaven."

The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed
mainly to draw on him the hatred of his contemporaries. It has
since made him an object of peculiar interest to those whose
lives have been spent, like his, in proving that there is no
malice like the malice of a renegade; Nothing can be more natural
or becoming than that one turncoat should eulogize another.

Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their
private virtues. But Strafford was the same throughout. As was
the statesman, such was the kinsman and such the lover. His
conduct towards Lord Mountmorris is recorded by Clarendon. For a
word which can scarcely be called rash, which could not have been
made the subject of an ordinary civil action, the Lord Lieutenant
dragged a man of high rank, married to a relative of that saint
about whom he whimpered to the peers, before a tribunal of
slaves. Sentence of death was passed. Everything but death was
inflicted. Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still
more scandalous. That nobleman was thrown into prison, in order
to compel him to settle his estate in a manner agreeable to his
daughter-in-law, whom, as there is every reason to believe,
Strafford had debauched. These stories do not rest on vague
report. The historians most partial to the minister admit their
truth, and censure them in terms which, though too lenient for
the occasion, axe still severe. These facts are alone sufficient
to justify the appellation with which Pym branded him "the wicked
Earl."

In spite of all Strafford's vices, in spite of all his dangerous
projects, he was certainly entitled to the benefit of the law;
but of the law in all its rigour; of the law according to the
utmost strictness of the letter, which killeth. He was not to be
torn in pieces by a mob, or stabbed in the back by an assassin.
He was not to have punishment meted out to him from his own
iniquitous measure. But if justice, in the whole range of its
wide armoury, contained one weapon which could pierce him, that
weapon his pursuers were bound, before God and man, to employ.

                               "If he may
Find mercy in the law, 'tis his: if none,
Let him not seek't of us."

Such was the language which the Commons might justly use.

Did then the articles against Strafford strictly amount to high
treason? Many people, who know neither what the articles were,
nor what high treason is, will answer in the negative, simply
because the accused person, speaking for his life, took that
ground of defence. The journals of the Lords show that the judges
were consulted. They answered, with one accord, that the articles
on which the earl was convicted amounted to high treason. This
judicial opinion, even if we suppose it to have been erroneous,
goes far to justify the Parliament. The judgment pronounced in
the Exchequer Chamber has always been urged by the apologists of
Charles in defence of his conduct respecting ship-money. Yet on
that occasion there was but a bare majority in favour of the
party at whose pleasure all the magistrates composing the
tribunal were removable. The decision in the case of Strafford
was unanimous; as far as we can judge, it was unbiassed; and,
though there may be room for hesitation, we think, on the whole,
that it was reasonable. "It may be remarked," says Mr. Hallam,
"that the fifteenth article of the impeachment, charging
Strafford with raising money by his own authority, and quartering
troops on the people of Ireland, in order to compel their
obedience to his unlawful requisitions, upon which, and upon one
other article, not upon the whole matter, the Peers voted him
guilty, does, at least, approach very nearly, if we may not say
more, to a substantive treason within the statute of Edward the
Third, as a levying of war against the King." This most sound and
just exposition has provoked a very ridiculous reply. "It should
seem to be an Irish construction this," says, an assailant of Mr.
Hallam, "which makes the raising money for the King's service,
with his knowledge, and by his approbation, to come under the
head of levying war on the King, and therefore to be high
treason." Now, people who undertake to write on points of
constitutional law should know, what every attorney's clerk and
every forward schoolboy on an upper form knows, that, by a
fundamental maxim of our polity, the King can do no wrong; that
every court is bound to suppose his conduct and his sentiments to
be, on every occasion, such as they ought to be; and that no
evidence can be received for the purpose of setting aside this
loyal and salutary presumption. The Lords therefore, were bound
to take it for granted that the King considered arms which were
unlawfully directed against his people as directed against his
own throne.

The remarks of Mr. Hallam on the bill of attainder, though, as
usual, weighty and acute, do not perfectly satisfy us. He defends
the principle, but objects to the severity of the punishment.
That, on great emergencies, the State may justifiably pass a
retrospective act against an offender, we have no doubt whatever.
We are acquainted with only one argument on the other side, which
has in it enough of reason to bear an answer. Warning, it is
said, is the end of punishment. But a punishment inflicted, not
by a general rule, but by an arbitrary discretion, cannot serve
the purpose of a warning. It is therefore useless; and useless
pain ought not to be inflicted. This sophism has found its way
into several books on penal legislation. It admits however of a
very simple refutation. In the first place, punishments ex post
facto are not altogether useless even as warnings. They are
warnings to a particular class which stand in great need of
warnings to favourites and ministers. They remind persons of this
description that there maybe a day of reckoning for those who
ruin and enslave their country in all forms of the law. But this
is not all. Warning is, in ordinary cases, the principal end of
punishment; but it is not the only end. To remove the offender,
to preserve society from those dangers which are to be
apprehended from his incorrigible depravity, is often one of the
ends. In the case of such a knave as Wild, or such a ruffian as
Thurtell, it is a very important end. In the case of a powerful
and wicked statesman, it is infinitely more important; so
important, as alone to justify the utmost severity, even though
it were certain that his fate would not deter others from
imitating his example. At present, indeed, we should think it
extremely pernicious to take such a course, even with a worse
minister than Strafford, if a worse could exist; for, at present,
Parliament has only to withhold its support from a Cabinet to
produce an immediate change of hands. The case was widely
different in the reign of Charles the First. That Prince had
governed during eleven years without any Parliament; and, even
when Parliament was sitting, had supported Buckingham against
its most violent remonstrances.

Mr. Hallam is of opinion that a bill of pains and penalties ought
to have been passed; but he draws a distinction less just, we
think, than his distinctions usually are. His opinion, so far as
we can collect it, is this, that there are almost insurmountable
objections to retrospective laws for capital punishment, but
that, where the punishment stops short of death, the objections
are comparatively trifling. Now the practice of taking the
severity of the penalty into consideration, when the question is
about the mode of procedure and the rules of evidence, is no
doubt sufficiently common. We often see a man convicted of a
simple larceny on evidence on which he would not be convicted of
a burglary. It sometimes happens that a jury, when there is
strong suspicion, but not absolute demonstration, that an act,
unquestionably amounting to murder, was committed by the prisoner
before them, will find him guilty of manslaughter. But this is
surely very irrational. The rules of evidence no more depend on
the magnitude of the interests at stake than the rules of
arithmetic. We might as well say that we have a greater chance
of throwing a size when we are playing for a penny than when we
are playing for a thousand pounds, as that a form of trial which
is sufficient for the purposes of justice, in a matter affecting
liberty and property, is insufficient in a matter affecting life.
Nay, if a mode of proceeding be too lax for capital cases, it is,
a fortiori, too lax for all others; for in capital cases, the
principles of human nature will always afford considerable
security. No judge is so cruel as he who indemnifies himself
for scrupulosity in cases of blood, by licence in affairs of
smaller importance. The difference in tale on the one side far
more than makes up for the difference in weight on the other.

If there be any universal objection to retrospective punishment,
there is no more to be said. But such is not the opinion of Mr.
Hallam. He approves of the mode of proceeding. He thinks that a
punishment, not previously affixed by law to the offences of
Strafford, should have been inflicted; that Strafford should have
been, by act of Parliament, degraded from his rank, and condemned
to perpetual banishment. Our difficulty would have been at the
first step, and there only. Indeed we can scarcely conceive that
any case which does not call for capital punishment can call for
punishment by a retrospective act. We can scarcely conceive a man
so wicked and so dangerous that the whole course of law must be
disturbed in order to reach him, yet not so wicked as to deserve
the severest sentence, nor so dangerous as to require the last
and surest custody, that of the grave. If we had thought that
Strafford might be safely suffered to live in France, we should
have thought it better that he should continue to live in
England, than that he should be exiled by a special act. As to
degradation, it was not the Earl, but the general and the
statesman, whom the people had to fear. Essex said, on that
occasion, with more truth than elegance, "Stone dead hath no
fellow." And often during the civil wars the Parliament had
reason to rejoice that an irreversible law and an impassable
barrier protected them from the valour and capacity of Wentworth.

It is remarkable that neither Hyde nor Falkland voted against the
bill of attainder. There is, indeed, reason to believe that
Falkland spoke in favour of it. In one respect, as Mr. Hallam has
observed, the proceeding was honourably distinguished from others
of the same kind. An act was passed to relieve the children of
Strafford from the forfeiture and corruption of blood which were
the legal consequences of the sentence. The Crown had never shown
equal generosity in a case of treason. The liberal conduct of the
Commons has been fully and most appropriately repaid. The House
of Wentworth has since that time been as much distinguished by
public spirit as by power and splendour, and may at the present
moment boast of members with whom Say and Hampden would have been
proud to act.

It is somewhat curious that the admirers of Strafford should also
be, without a single exception, the admirers of Charles; for,
whatever we may think of the conduct of the Parliament towards
the unhappy favourite, there can be no doubt that the treatment
which he received from his master was disgraceful. Faithless
alike to his people and to his tools, the King did not scruple to
play the part of the cowardly approver, who hangs his accomplice.
It is good that there should be such men as Charles in every
league of villainy. It is for such men that the offer of pardon
and reward which appears after a murder is intended. They are
indemnified, remunerated and despised. The very magistrate who
avails himself of their assistance looks on them as more
contemptible than the criminal whom they betray. Was Strafford
innocent? Was he a meritorious servant of the Crown? If so, what
shall we think of the Prince, who having solemnly promised him
that not a hair of his head should be hurt, and possessing an
unquestioned constitutional right to save him, gave him up to the
vengeance of his enemies? There were some points which we know
that Charles would not concede, and for which he was willing to
risk the chances of the civil war. Ought not a King, who will
make a stand for anything, to make a stand for the innocent
blood? Was Strafford guilty? Even on this supposition, it is
difficult not to feel disdain for the partner of his guilt, the
tempter turned punisher. If, indeed, from that time forth, the
conduct of Charles had been blameless, it might have been said
that his eyes were at last opened to the errors of his former
conduct, and that, in sacrificing to the wishes of his Parliament
a minister whose crime had been a devotion too zealous to the
interests of his prerogative, he gave a painful and deeply
humiliating proof of the sincerity of his repentance. We may
describe the King's behaviour on this occasion in terms
resembling those which Hume has employed when speaking of the
conduct of Churchill at the Revolution. It required ever after
the most rigid justice and sincerity in the dealings of Charles
with his people to vindicate his conduct towards his friend. His
subsequent dealings with his people, however, clearly showed,
that it was not from any respect for the Constitution, or from
any sense of the deep criminality of the plans in which Strafford
and himself had been engaged, that he gave up his minister to the
axe. It became evident that he had abandoned a servant who,
deeply guilty as to all others, was guiltless to him alone,
solely in order to gain time for maturing other schemes of
tyranny, and purchasing the aid of the other Wentworths. He, who
would not avail himself of the power which the laws gave him to
save an adherent to whom his honour was pledged, soon showed that
he did not scruple to break every law and forfeit every pledge,
in order to work the ruin of his opponents.

"Put not your trust in princes!" was the expression of the fallen
minister, when he heard that Charles had consented to his death.
The whole history of the times is a sermon on that bitter text.
The defence of the Long Parliament is comprised in the dying
words of its victim.

The early measures of that Parliament Mr. Hallam in general
approves. But he considers the proceedings which took place after
the recess in the summer of 1641 as mischievous and violent. He
thinks that, from that time, the demands of the Houses were not
warranted by any imminent danger to the Constitution and that in
the war which ensued they were clearly the aggressors. As this is
one of the most interesting questions in our history, we will
venture to state, at some length, the reasons which have led us
to form an opinion on it contrary to that of a writer whose
judgment we so highly respect.

We will premise that we think worse of King Charles the First
than even Mr. Hallam appears to do. The fixed hatred of liberty
which was the principle of the King's public conduct the
unscrupulousness with which he adopted any means which might
enable him to attain his ends, the readiness with which he gave
promises, the impudence with which he broke them, the cruel
indifference with which he threw away his useless or damaged
tools, made him, at least till his character was fully exposed,
and his power shaken to its foundations, a more dangerous enemy to
the Constitution than a man of far greater talents and resolution
might have been. Such princes may still be seen, the scandals of
the southern thrones of Europe, princes false alike to the
accomplices who have served them and to the opponents who have
spared them, princes who, in the hour of danger, concede
everything, swear everything, hold out their cheeks to every
smiter, give up to punishment every instrument of their tyranny,
and await with meek and smiling implacability the blessed day of
perjury and revenge.

We will pass by the instances of oppression and falsehood which
disgraced the early part of the reign of Charles. We will leave
out of the question the whole history of his third Parliament,
the price which he exacted for assenting to the Petition of
Right, the perfidy with which he violated his engagements, the
death of Eliot, the barbarous punishments inflicted by the Star-
Chamber, the ship-money, and all the measures now universally
condemned, which disgraced his administration from 1630 to 1640.
We will admit that it might be the duty of the Parliament after
punishing the most guilty of his creatures, after abolishing the
inquisitorial tribunals which had been the instruments of his
tyranny, after reversing the unjust sentences of his victims to
pause in its course. The concessions which had been made were
great, the evil of civil war obvious, the advantages even of
victory doubtful. The former errors of the King might be imputed
to youth, to the pressure of circumstances, to the influence of
evil counsel, to the undefined state of the law. We firmly
believe that if, even at this eleventh hour, Charles had acted
fairly towards his people, if he had even acted fairly towards
his own partisans, the House of Commons would have given him a
fair chance of retrieving the public confidence. Such was the
opinion of Clarendon. He distinctly states that the fury of
opposition had abated, that a reaction had begun to take place,
that the majority of those who had taken part against the King
were desirous of an honourable and complete reconciliation and
that the more violent or, as it soon appeared, the more judicious
members of the popular party were fast declining in credit. The
Remonstrance had been carried with great difficulty. The
uncompromising antagonists of the court such as Cromwell, had
begun to talk of selling their estates and leaving England. The
event soon showed that they were the only men who really
understood how much inhumanity and fraud lay hid under the
constitutional language and gracious demeanour of the King.

The attempt to seize the five members was undoubtedly the real
cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal confidence with
which most of the popular party were beginning to regard the King
was turned into hatred and incurable suspicion. From that moment,
the Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive
arms. From that moment, the city assumed the appearance of a
garrison. From that moment, in the phrase of Clarendon, the
carriage of Hampden became fiercer, that he drew the sword and
threw away the scabbard. For, from that moment, it must have been
evident to every impartial observer, that, in the midst of
professions, oaths, and smiles, the tyrant was constantly looking
forward to an absolute sway, and to a bloody revenge.

The advocates of Charles have very dexterously contrived to
conceal from their readers the real nature of this transaction.
By making concessions apparently candid and ample, they elude the
great accusation. They allow that the measure was weak and even
frantic, an absurd caprice of Lord Digby, absurdly adopted by the
King. And thus they save their client from the full penalty of
his transgression, by entering a plea of guilty to the minor
offence. To us his conduct appears at this day as at the time it
appeared to the Parliament and the city. We think it by no means
so foolish as it pleases his friends to represent it, and far
more wicked.

In the first place, the transaction was illegal from beginning to
end. The impeachment was illegal. The process was illegal. The
service was illegal. If Charles wished to prosecute the five
members for treason, a bill against them should have been sent to
a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for high treason by
the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very alphabet
of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is
equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence
even in the time of Edward the Fourth.  "A subject," said Chief
Justice Markham to that Prince, "may arrest for treason: the King
cannot; for, if the arrest be illegal, the party has no remedy
against the King."

The time at which Charles took his step also deserves
consideration. We have already said that the ardour which the
Parliament had displayed at the time of its first meeting had
considerably abated, that the leading opponents of the court were
desponding, and that their followers were in general inclined to
milder and more temperate measures than those which had hitherto
been pursued. In every country, and in none more than in England,
there is a disposition to take the part of those who are
unmercifully run down, and who seem destitute of all means of
defence. Every man who has observed the ebb and flow of public
feeling in our own time will easily recall examples to illustrate
this remark. An English statesman ought to pay assiduous worship
to Nemesis, to be most apprehensive of ruin when he is at the
height of power and popularity, and to dread his enemy most when
most completely prostrated. The fate of the Coalition Ministry in
1784 is perhaps the strongest instance in our history of the
operation of this principle. A few weeks turned the ablest and
most extended Ministry that ever existed into a feeble
Opposition, and raised a King who was talking of retiring to
Hanover to a height of power which none of his predecessors had
enjoyed since the Revolution. A crisis of this description was
evidently approaching in 1642. At such a crisis, a Prince of a
really honest and generous nature, who had erred, who had seen
his error, who had regretted the lost affections of his people,
who rejoiced in the dawning hope of regaining them, would be
peculiarly careful to take no step which could give occasion of
offence, even to the unreasonable. On the other hand, a tyrant,
whose whole life was a lie, who hated the Constitution the more
because he had been compelled to feign respect for it, and to
whom his own honour and the love of his people were as nothing,
would select such a crisis for some appalling violation of the
law, for some stroke which might remove the chiefs of an
Opposition, and intimidate the herd. This Charles attempted. He
missed his blow; but so narrowly, that it would have been mere
madness in those at whom it was aimed to trust him again.

It deserves to be remarked that the King had, a short time
before, promised the most respectable Royalists in the House of
Commons, Falkland, Colepepper, and Hyde, that he would take no
measure in which that House was concerned, without consulting
them. On this occasion he did not consult them. His conduct
astonished them more than any other members of the Assembly.
Clarendon says that they were deeply hurt by this want of
confidence, and the more hurt, because, if they had been
consulted, they would have done their utmost to dissuade Charles
from so improper a proceeding. Did it never occur to Clarendon,
will it not at least occur to men less partial, that there was
good reason for this? When the danger to the throne seemed
imminent, the King was ready to put himself for a time into the
hands of those who, though they disapproved of his past conduct,
thought that the remedies had now become worse than the
distempers. But we believe that in his heart he regarded both the
parties in the Parliament with feelings of aversion which
differed only in the degree of their intensity, and that the
awful warning which he proposed to give, by immolating the
principal supporters of the Remonstrance, was partly intended for
the instruction of those who had concurred in censuring the ship-
money and in abolishing the Star-Chamber.

The Commons informed the King that their members should be
forthcoming to answer any charge legally brought against them.
The Lords refused to assume the unconstitutional office with
which he attempted to invest them. And what was then his conduct?
He went, attended by hundreds of armed men, to seize the objects
of his hatred in the House itself. The party opposed to him more
than insinuated that his purpose was of the most atrocious kind.
We will not condemn him merely on their suspicions. We will not
hold him answerable for the sanguinary expressions of the loose
brawlers who composed his train. We will judge of his act by
itself alone. And we say, without hesitation, that it is
impossible to acquit him of having meditated violence, and
violence which might probably end in blood. He knew that the
legality of his proceedings was denied. He must have known that
some of the accused members were men not likely to submit
peaceably  to an illegal arrest. There was every reason to
expect that he would find them in their places, that they would
refuse to obey his summons, and that the House would support them
in their refusal. What course would then have been left to him?
Unless we suppose that he went on this expedition for the sole
purpose of making himself ridiculous, we must believe that he
would have had recourse to force. There would have been a
scuffle; and it might not, under such circumstances, have been in
his power, even if it had been in his inclination, to prevent a
scuffle from ending in a massacre. Fortunately for his fame,
unfortunately perhaps for what he prized far more, the interests
of his hatred and his ambition, the affair ended differently. The
birds, as he said, were flown, and his plan was disconcerted.
Posterity is not extreme to mark abortive crimes; and thus the
King's advocates have found it easy to represent a step, which,
but for a trivial accident, might have filled England with
mourning and dismay, as a mere error of judgment, wild and
foolish, but perfectly innocent. Such was not, however, at the
time, the opinion of any party. The most zealous Royalists were
so much disgusted and ashamed that they suspended their
opposition to the popular party, and, silently at least,
concurred in measures of precaution so strong as almost to amount
to resistance.

From that day, whatever of confidence and loyal attachment had
survived the misrule of seventeen years was, in the great body of
the people, extinguished, and extinguished for ever. As soon as
the outrage had failed, the hypocrisy recommenced. Down to the
very eve of this flagitious attempt Charles had been talking of
his respect for the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of
his people. He began again in the same style on the morrow; but
it was too late. To trust him now would have been, not
moderation, but insanity. What common security would suffice
against a Prince who was evidently watching his season with that
cold and patient hatred which, in the long-run, tires out every
other passion?

It is certainly from no admiration of Charles that Mr. Hallam
disapproves of the conduct of the Houses in resorting to arms.
But he thinks that any attempt on the part of that Prince to
establish a despotism would have been as strongly opposed by his
adherents as by his enemies, and that therefore the Constitution
might be considered as out of danger, or, at least that it had
more to apprehend from the war than from the King. On this
subject Mr. Hallam dilates at length, and with conspicuous
ability. We will offer a few considerations which lead us to
incline to a different opinion.

The Constitution of England was only one of a large family. In
all the monarchies of Western Europe, during the middle ages,
there existed restraints on the royal authority, fundamental
laws, and representative assemblies. In the fifteenth century,
the government of Castile seems to have been as free as that of
our own country. That of Arragon was beyond all question more so.
In France, the sovereign was more absolute. Yet even in France,
the States-General alone could constitutionally impose taxes;
and, at the very time when the authority of those assemblies was
beginning to languish, the Parliament of Paris received such an
accession of strength as enabled it, in some measure, to perform
the functions of a legislative assembly. Sweden and Denmark had
constitutions of a similar description.

Let us overleap two or three hundred years, and contemplate
Europe at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Every free
constitution, save one, had gone down. That of England had
weathered the danger, and was riding in full security. In Denmark
and Sweden, the kings had availed themselves of the disputes
which raged between the nobles and the commons, to unite all the
powers of government in their own hands. In France the
institution of the States was only mentioned by lawyers as a part
of the ancient theory of their government. It slept a deep sleep,
destined to be broken by a tremendous waking. No person
remembered the sittings of the three orders, or expected ever to
see them renewed. Louis the Fourteenth had imposed on his
parliament a patient silence of sixty years.  His grandson, after
the War of the Spanish Succession, assimilated the constitution
of Arragon to that of Castile, and extinguished the last feeble
remains of liberty in the Peninsula. In England, on the other
hand, the Parliament was infinitely more powerful than it had
ever been. Not only was its legislative authority fully
established; but its right to interfere, by advice almost
equivalent to command, in every department of the executive
government, was recognised. The appointment of ministers, the
relations with foreign powers, the conduct of a war or a
negotiation, depended less on the pleasure of the Prince than on
that of the two Houses.

What then made us to differ? Why was it that, in that epidemic
malady of constitutions, ours escaped the destroying influence;
or rather that, at the very crisis of the disease, a favourable
turn took place in England, and in England alone? It was not
surely without a cause that so many kindred systems of
government, having flourished together so long, languished and
expired at almost the same time.

It is the fashion to say that the progress of civilisation is
favourable to liberty. The maxim, though in some sense true, must
be limited by many qualifications and exceptions. Wherever a poor
and rude nation, in which the form of government is a limited
monarchy, receives a great accession of wealth and knowledge, it
is in imminent danger of falling under arbitrary power.

In such a state of society as that which existed all over Europe
during the middle ages, very slight checks sufficed to keep the
sovereign in order. His means of corruption and intimidation were
very scanty. He had little money, little patronage, no military
establishment. His armies resembled juries. They were drawn out
of the mass of the people: they soon returned to it again: and
the character which was habitual prevailed over that which was
occasional. A campaign of forty days was too short, the
discipline of a national militia too lax, to efface from their
minds the feelings of civil life. As they carried to the camp the
sentiments and interests of the farm and the shop, so they
carried back to the farm and the shop the military
accomplishments which they had acquired in the camp. At home the
soldier learned how to value his rights, abroad how to defend
them.

Such a military force as this was a far stronger restraint on the
regal power than any legislative assembly. The army, now the most
formidable instrument of the executive power, was then the most
formidable check on that power. Resistance to an established,
government, in modern times so difficult and perilous an
enterprise, was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the
simplest and easiest matter in the world. Indeed, it was far too
simple and easy. An insurrection was got up then almost as easily
as a petition is got up now. In a popular cause, or even in an
unpopular cause favoured by a few great nobles, a force of ten
thousand armed men was raised in a week. If the King were, like
our Edward the Second and Richard the Second, generally odious,
he could not procure a single bow or halbert. He fell at once and
without an effort. In such times a sovereign like Louis the
Fifteenth or the Emperor Paul would have been pulled down before
his misgovernment had lasted for a month. We find that all the
fame and influence of our Edward the Third could not save his
Madame de Pompadour from the effects of the public hatred.

Hume and many other writers have hastily concluded, that, in the
fifteenth century, the English Parliament was altogether servile,
because it recognised, without opposition, every successful
usurper. That it was not servile its conduct on many occasions of
inferior importance is sufficient to prove. But surely it was not
strange that the majority of the nobles, and of the deputies
chosen by the commons, should approve of revolutions which the
nobles and commons had effected. The Parliament did not blindly
follow the event of war, but participated in those changes of
public sentiment on which the event of war depended. The legal
check was secondary and auxiliary to that which the nation held
in its own hands.

There have always been monarchies in Asia, in which the royal
authority has been tempered by fundamental laws, though no
legislative body exists to watch over them. The guarantee is the
opinion of a community of which every individual is a soldier.
Thus, the king of Cabul, as Mr. Elphinstone informs us, cannot
augment the land revenue, or interfere with the jurisdiction of
the ordinary tribunals.

In the European kingdoms of this description there were
representative assemblies. But it was not necessary that those
assemblies should meet very frequently, that they should
interfere with all the operations of the executive government,
that they should watch with jealousy, and resent with prompt
indignation, every violation of the laws which the sovereign
might commit. They were so strong that they might safely be
careless. He was so feeble that he might safely be suffered to
encroach. If he ventured too far, chastisement and ruin were at
hand. In fact, the people generally suffered more from his
weakness than from his authority. The tyranny of wealthy and
powerful subjects was the characteristic evil of the times. The
royal prerogatives were not even sufficient for the defence of
property and the maintenance of police.

The progress of civilisation introduced a great change. War
became a science, and, as a necessary consequence, a trade. The
great body of the people grew every day more reluctant to undergo
the inconveniences of military service, and better able to pay
others for undergoing them. A new class of men, therefore,
dependent on the Crown alone, natural enemies of those popular
rights which are to them as the dew to the fleece of Gideon,
slaves among freemen, freemen among slaves, grew into importance.
That physical force which in the dark ages had belonged to the
nobles and the commons, and had, far more than any charter, or
any assembly, been the safeguard of their privileges, was
transferred entire to the King. Monarchy gained in two ways. The
sovereign was strengthened, the subjects weakened. The great mass
of the population, destitute of all military discipline and
organisation, ceased to exercise any influence by force on
political transactions. There have, indeed, during the last
hundred and fifty years, been many popular insurrections in
Europe: but all have failed except those in which the regular
army has been induced to join the disaffected.

Those legal checks which, while the sovereign remained dependent
on his subjects, had been adequate to the purpose for which they
were designed, were now found wanting. The dikes which had been
sufficient while the waters were low were not high enough to keep
out the springtide. The deluge passed over them and, according to
the exquisite illustration of Butler, the formal boundaries,
which had excluded it, now held it in. The old constitutions
fared like the old shields and coats of mail. They were the
defences of a rude age; and they did well enough against the
weapons of a rude age. But new and more formidable means of
destruction were invented. The ancient panoply became useless;
and it was thrown aside, to rust in lumber-rooms, or exhibited
only as part of an idle pageant.

Thus absolute monarchy was established on the Continent. England
escaped; but she escaped very narrowly. Happily our insular
situation, and the pacific policy of James, rendered standing
armies unnecessary here, till they had been for some time kept
up in the neighbouring kingdoms. Our public men, had therefore an
opportunity of watching the effects produced by this momentous
change on governments which bore a close analogy to that
established in England. Everywhere they saw the power of the
monarch increasing, the resistance of assemblies which were no
longer supported by a national force gradually becoming more and
more feeble, and at length altogether ceasing. The friends and
the enemies of liberty perceived with equal clearness the causes
of this general decay. It is the favourite theme of Strafford. He
advises the King to procure from the judges a recognition of his
right to raise an army at his pleasure.  "This place well
fortified," says he, "for ever vindicates the monarchy at home
from under the conditions and restraints of subjects." We firmly
believe that he was in the right. Nay; we believe that, even if
no deliberate scheme, of arbitrary government had been formed, by
the sovereign and his ministers, there was great reason to
apprehend a natural extinction of the Constitution. If, for
example, Charles had played the part of Gustavus Adolphus, if he
had carried on a popular war for the defence of the Protestant
cause in Germany, if he had gratified the national pride by a
series of victories, if he had formed an army of forty or fifty
thousand devoted soldiers, we do not see what chance the nation
would have had of escaping from despotism. The judges would have
given as strong a decision in favour of camp-money as they gave
in favour of ship-money. If they had been scrupulous, it would
have made little difference. An individual who resisted would
have been treated as Charles treated Eliot, and as Strafford
wished to treat Hampden. The Parliament might have been summoned
once in twenty years, to congratulate a King on his accession, or
to give solemnity to some great measure of state. Such had been
the fate of legislative assemblies as powerful, as much
respected, as high-spirited, as the English Lords and Commons.

The two Houses, surrounded by the ruins of so many free
constitutions overthrown or sapped by the new military system,
were required to intrust the command of an army and the conduct
of the Irish war to a King who had proposed to himself the
destruction of liberty as the great end of his policy. We are
decidedly of opinion that it would have been fatal to comply.
Many of those who took the side of the King on this question
would have cursed their own loyalty, if they had seen him return
from war; at the head of twenty thousand troops, accustomed to
carriage and free quarters in Ireland.

We think with Mr. Hallam that many of the Royalist nobility and
gentry were true friends to the Constitution, and that, but for
the solemn protestations by which the King bound himself to
govern according to the law for the future, they never would have
joined his standard. But surely they underrated the public
danger. Falkland is commonly selected as the most respectable
specimen of this class. He was indeed a man of great talents and
of great virtues but, we apprehend, infinitely too fastidious for
public life.  He did not perceive that, in such times as those on
which his lot had fallen, the duty of a statesman is to choose
the better cause and to stand by it, in spite of those excesses
by which every cause, however good in itself, will be disgraced.
The present evil always seemed to him the worst. He was always
going backward and forward; but it should be remembered to his
honour that it was always from the stronger to the weaker side
that he deserted. While Charles was oppressing the people,
Falkland was a resolute champion of liberty. He attacked
Strafford. He even concurred in strong measures against
Episcopacy. But the violence of his party annoyed him, and drove
him to the other party, to be equally annoyed there. Dreading the
success of the cause which he had espoused, disgusted by the
courtiers of Oxford, as he had been disgusted by the patriots of
Westminster, yet bound by honour not to abandon the cause, for
which he was in arms, he pined away, neglected his person, went
about moaning for peace, and at last rushed desperately on death,
as the best refuge in such miserable times. If he had lived
through the scenes that followed, we have little doubt that he
would have condemned himself to share the exile and beggary of
the royal family; that he would then have returned to oppose all
their measures; that he would have been sent to the Tower by the
Commons as a stifler of the Popish Plot, and by the King as an
accomplice in the Rye-House Plot; and that, if he had escaped
being hanged, first by Scroggs, and then by Jeffreys, he would,
after manfully opposing James the Second through years of
tyranny, have been seized with a fit of compassion, at the very
moment of the Revolution, have voted for a regency, and died a
non-juror.

We do not dispute that the royal party contained many excellent
men and excellent citizens. But this we say, that they did not
discern those times. The peculiar glory of the Houses of
Parliament is that, in the great plague and mortality of
constitutions, they took their stand between the living and the
dead. At the very crisis of our destiny, at the very moment when
the fate which had passed on every other nation was about to pass
on England, they arrested the danger.

Those who conceive that the parliamentary leaders were desirous
merely to maintain the old constitution, and those who represent
them as conspiring to subvert it, are equally in error. The old
constitution, as we have attempted to show, could not be
maintained. The progress of time, the increase of wealth, the
diffusion of knowledge, the great change in the European system
of war, rendered it impossible that any of the monarchies of the
middle ages should continue to exist on the old footing. The
prerogative of the crown was constantly advancing. If the
privileges of the people were to remain absolutely stationary,
they would relatively retrograde. The monarchical and
democratical parts of the government were placed in a situation
not unlike that of the two brothers in the Fairy Queen, one of
whom saw the soil of his inheritance daily, washed away by the
tide and joined to that of his rival. The portions had at first
been fairly meted out.  By a natural and constant transfer, the
one had been extended; the other had dwindled to nothing. A new
partition, or a compensation, was necessary to restore the
original equality.

It was now, therefore, absolutely necessary to violate the formal
part of the constitution, in order to preserve its spirit. This
might have been done, as it was done at the Revolution, by
expelling the reigning family, and calling to the throne princes
who, relying solely on an elective title, would find it necessary
to respect the privileges and follow the advice of the assemblies
to which they owed everything, to pass every bill which the
Legislature strongly pressed upon them, and to fill the offices
of state with men in whom the Legislature confided. But, as the
two Houses did not choose to change the dynasty, it was necessary
that they should do directly what at the Revolution was done
indirectly. Nothing is more usual than to hear it said that, if
the Houses had contented themselves with making such a reform in
the government under Charles as was afterwards made under
William, they would have had the highest claim to national
gratitude; and that in their violence they overshot the mark. But
how was it possible to make such a settlement under Charles?
Charles was not, like William and the princes of the Hanoverian
line, bound by community of interests and dangers to the
Parliament. It was therefore necessary that he should be bound by
treaty and statute.

Mr. Hallam reprobates, in language which has a little surprised
us, the nineteen propositions into which the Parliament digested
its scheme. Is it possible to doubt that, if James the Second had
remained in the island, and had been suffered, as he probably
would in that case have been suffered, to keep his crown,
conditions to the full as hard would have been imposed on him? On
the other hand, we fully admit that, if the Long Parliament had
pronounced the departure of Charles from London an abdication,
and had called Essex or Northumberland to the throne, the new
prince might have safely been suffered to reign without such
restrictions. His situation would have been a sufficient
guarantee.

In the nineteen propositions we see very little to blame except
the articles against the Catholics. These, however, were in the
spirit of that age; and to some sturdy churchmen in our own, they
may seem to palliate even the good which the Long Parliament
effected. The regulation with respect to new creations of Peers
is the only other article about which we entertain any doubt. One
of the propositions is that the judges shall hold their offices
during good behaviour. To this surely no exception will be taken.
The right of directing the education and marriage of the princes
was most properly claimed by the Parliament, on the same ground
on which, after the Revolution, it was enacted, that no king, on
pain of forfeiting, his throne, should espouse a Papist. Unless
we condemn the statesmen of the Revolution, who conceived that
England could not safely be governed by a sovereign married to a
Catholic queen, we can scarcely condemn the Long Parliament
because, having a sovereign so situated, they thought it
necessary to place him under strict restraints. The influence of
Henrietta Maria had already been deeply felt in political
affairs. In the regulation of her family, in the education and
marriage of her children, it was still more likely to be felt;
There might be another Catholic queen; possibly a Catholic king.
Little, as we are disposed to join in the vulgar clamour on this
subject, we think that such an event ought to be, if possible,
averted; and this could only be done, if Charles was to be left
on the throne, by placing his domestic arrangements under the
control of Parliament.

A veto on the appointment of ministers was demanded. But this
veto Parliament has virtually possessed ever since the
Revolution. It is no doubt very far better that this power of the
Legislature should be exercised as it is now exercised, when any
great occasion calls for interference, than that at every change
the Commons should have to signify their approbation or
disapprobation in form. But, unless a new family had been placed
on the throne, we do not see how this power could have been
exercised as it is now exercised. We again repeat that no
restraints which could be imposed on the princes who reigned
after the Revolution could have added to the security, which
their title afforded. They were compelled to court their
parliaments. But from Charles nothing was to be expected which
was not set down in the bond.

It was not stipulated that the King should give up his negative
on acts of Parliament. But the Commons, had certainly shown a
strong disposition to exact this security also. "Such a
doctrine," says Mr. Hallam, "was in this country as repugnant to
the whole history of our laws, as it was incompatible with the
subsistence of the monarchy in anything more than a nominal
preeminence." Now this article has been as completely carried
into elect by the Revolution as if it had been formally inserted
in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. We are
surprised, we confess, that Mr. Hallam should attach so much
importance to a prerogative which has not been exercised for a
hundred and thirty years, which probably will never be exercised
again, and which can scarcely, in any conceivable case, be
exercised for a salutary purpose.

But the great security, the security without which every other
would have been insufficient, was the power of the sword. This
both parties thoroughly understood. The Parliament insisted on
having the command of the militia and the direction of the Irish
war. "By God, not for an hour!" exclaimed the King. "Keep the
militia," said the Queen, after the defeat of the royal party.
"Keep the militia; that will bring back everything." That, by the
old constitution, no military authority was lodged in the
Parliament, Mr. Hallam has clearly shown. That it is a species of
authority which ought, not to be permanently lodged in large and
divided assemblies, must, we think in fairness be conceded.
Opposition, publicity, long discussion, frequent compromise;
these are the characteristics of the proceedings of such
assemblies. Unity, secrecy, decision, are the qualities which
military arrangements require. There were, therefore, serious
objections to the proposition of the Houses on this subject. But,
on the other hand, to trust such a King, at such a crisis, with
the very weapon which, in hands less dangerous, had destroyed so
many free constitutions, would have been the extreme of rashness.
The jealousy with which the oligarchy of Venice and the States of
Holland regarded their generals and armies induced them
perpetually to interfere in matters of which they were
incompetent to judge. This policy secured them against military
usurpation, but placed them, under great disadvantages in war.
The uncontrolled power which the King of France exercised over
his troops enabled him to conquer his enemies, but enabled him
also to oppress his people. Was there any intermediate course?
None, we confess altogether free from objection. But on the
whole, we conceive that the best measure would have been that
which the Parliament over and over proposed, namely, that for a
limited time the power of the sword should be left to the two
Houses, and that it should revert to the Crown when the
constitution should be firmly established, and when the new
securities of freedom should be so far strengthened by
prescription that it would be difficult to employ even a standing
army for the purpose of subverting them.

Mr. Hallam thinks that the dispute might easily have been
compromised, by enacting that, the King should have no power to
keep a standing army on foot without the consent of Parliament.
He reasons as if the question had been merely theoretical, and as
if at that time no army had been wanted. "The kingdom," he says,
"might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military
organisation" Now, we think that Mr. Hallam overlooks the most
important circumstance in the whole case. Ireland was actually in
rebellion; and a great expedition would obviously be necessary to
reduce that kingdom to obedience. The Houses had therefore to
consider, not at abstract question of law, but an urgent
practical question, directly involving the safety of the state.
They had to consider the expediency of immediately giving a great
army to a King who was, at least, as desirous to put down the
Parliament of England as to conquer the insurgents of Ireland.

Of course we do not mean to defend all the measures of the
Houses. Far from it.  There never was a perfect man. It would,
therefore, be the height of absurdity to expect a perfect party
or a perfect assembly. For large bodies are far more likely to
err than individuals. The passions are inflamed by sympathy; the
fear of punishment and the sense of shame are diminished by
partition.  Every day we see men do for their faction what they
would die rather than do for themselves.

Scarcely any private quarrel ever happens, in which the right and
wrong are so exquisitely divided that all the right lies on one
side, and all the wrong on the other. But here was a schism which
separated a great nation into two parties. Of these parties, each
was composed of many smaller parties. Each contained many
members, who differed far less from their moderate opponents than
from their violent allies. Each reckoned among its supporters
many who were determined in their choice by some accident of
birth, of connection, or of local situation. Each of them
attracted to itself in multitudes those fierce and turbid
spirits, to whom the clouds and whirlwinds of the political
hurricane are the atmosphere of life. A party, like a camp, has
its sutlers and camp-followers, as well as its soldiers. In its
progress it collects round it a vast retinue, composed of people
who thrive by its custom or are amused by its display, who may be
sometimes reckoned, in an ostentatious enumeration, as forming a
part of it, but who give no aid to its operations, and take but a
languid interest in its success, who relax its discipline and
dishonour its flag by their irregularities, and who, after a
disaster, are perfectly ready to cut the throats and rifle the
baggage of their companions.

Thus it is in every great division; and thus it was in our civil
war. On both sides there was, undoubtedly, enough of crime and
enough of error to disgust any man who did not reflect that the
whole history of the species is made up of little except crimes
and errors. Misanthropy is not the temper which qualifies a man
to act in great affairs, or to judge of them.

"Of the Parliament," says Mr. Hallam, "it may be said I think,
with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three
public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of
political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them, from their
quarrel with the King, to their expulsion by Cromwell." Those
who may agree with us in the opinion which we have expressed as
to the original demands of the Parliament will scarcely concur in
this strong censure.  The propositions which the Houses made at
Oxford, at Uxbridge, and at Newcastle, were in strict accordance
with these demands. In the darkest period of the war, they showed
no disposition to concede any vital principle. In the fulness of
their success, they showed no disposition to encroach beyond
these limits. In this respect we cannot but think that they
showed justice and generosity, as well as political wisdom and
courage.

The Parliament was certainly far from faultless. We fully agree
with Mr. Hallam in reprobating their treatment of Laud. For the
individual, indeed, we entertain a more unmitigated contempt
than, for any other character in our history. The fondness with
which a portion of the church regards his memory, can be compared
only to that perversity of affection which sometimes leads a
mother to select the monster or the idiot of the family as the
object of her especial favour, Mr. Hallam has incidentally
observed, that, in the correspondence of Laud with Strafford,
there are no indications of a sense of duty towards God or man.
The admirers of the Archbishop have, in consequence, inflicted
upon the public a crowd of extracts designed to prove the
contrary. Now, in all those passages, we see nothing, which a
prelate as wicked as Pope Alexander or Cardinal Dubois might not
have written. Those passages indicate no sense of duty to God or
man, but simply a strong interest in the prosperity and dignity
of the order to which the writer belonged; an interest which,
when kept within certain limits, does not deserve censure, but
which can never be considered as a virtue. Laud is anxious to
accommodate satisfactorily the disputes in the University of
Dublin. He regrets to hear that a church is used as a stable, and
that the benefices of Ireland are very poor. He is desirous that,
however small a congregation may be, service should be regularly
performed. He expresses a wish that the judges of the court
before which questions of tithe are generally brought should be
selected with a view to the interest of the clergy. All this may
be very proper; and it may be very proper that an alderman should
stand up for the tolls of his borough, and an East India director
for the charter of his Company. But it is ridiculous to say that
these things indicate piety and benevolence. No primate, though
he were the most abandoned of mankind, could wish to see the
body, with the influence of which his own influence was
identical, degraded in the public estimation by internal
dissensions, by the ruinous state of its edifices, and by the
slovenly performance of its rites. We willingly acknowledge that
the particular letters in question have very little harm in them;
a compliment which cannot often be paid either to the writings or
to the actions of Laud.

Bad as the Archbishop was, however, he was not a traitor within
the statute. Nor was he by any means so formidable as to be a
proper subject for a retrospective ordinance of the legislature.
His mind had not expansion enough to comprehend a great scheme,
good or bad. His oppressive acts were not, like those of the
Earl of Strafford, parts of an extensive system. They were the
luxuries in which a mean and irritable disposition indulges
itself from day to day, the excesses natural to a little mind in
a great place.  The severest punishment which the two Houses
could have inflicted on him would have been to set him at liberty
and send him to Oxford. There he might have stayed, tortured by
his own diabolical temper, hungering for Puritans to pillory and
mangle, plaguing the Cavaliers, for want of somebody else to
plague with his peevishness and absurdity, performing grimaces
and antics in the cathedral, continuing that incomparable diary,
which we never see without forgetting the vices of his heart In
the imbecility of his intellect minuting down his dreams,
counting the drops of blood which fell from his nose, watching
the direction of the salt, and listening for the note of the
screech-owls. Contemptuous mercy was the only vengeance which it
became the Parliament to take on such a ridiculous old bigot.

The Houses, it must be acknowledged, committed great errors in
the conduct of the war, or rather one great error, which brought
their affairs into a condition requiring the most perilous
expedients. The parliamentary leaders of what may be called the
first generation, Essex, Manchester, Northumberland, Hollis,
even Pym, all the most eminent men in short, Hampden excepted,
were inclined to half measures. They dreaded a decisive victory
almost as much as a decisive overthrow. They wished to bring the
King into a situation which might render it necessary for him to
grant their just and wise demands, but not to subvert the
constitution or to change the dynasty. They were afraid of
serving the purposes of those fierce and determined enemies of
monarchy, who now began to show themselves in the lower ranks of
the party.  The war was, therefore, conducted in a languid and
inefficient manner. A resolute leader might have brought it to a
close in a month. At the end of three campaigns, however, the
event was still dubious; and that it had not been decidedly
unfavourable to the cause of liberty was principally owing to the
skill and energy which the more violent roundheads had displayed
in subordinate situations. The conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell at
Marston had, exhibited a remarkable contrast to that of Essex at
Edgehill, and to that of Waller at Lansdowne.

If there be any truth established by the universal experience of
nations, it is this; that to carry the spirit of peace into war
is weak and cruel policy. The time for negotiation is the time
for deliberation and delay. But when an extreme case calls for
that remedy which is in its own nature most violent, and which,
in such cases, is a remedy only because it is violent, it is idle
to think of mitigating and diluting. Languid war can do nothing
which negotiation or submission will not do better: and to act on
any other principle is, not to save blood and money, but to
squander them.

This the parliamentary leaders found. The third year of
hostilities was drawing to a close; and they had not conquered
the King. They had not obtained even those advantages which they
had expected from a policy obviously erroneous in a military
point of view. They had wished to husband their resources.  They
now found that in enterprises like theirs, parsimony is the worst
profusion. They had hoped to effect a reconciliation. The event
taught them that the best way to conciliate is to bring the work
of destruction to a speedy termination. By their moderation many
lives and much property had been wasted. The angry passions
which, if the contest had been short, would have died away almost
as soon as they appeared, had fixed themselves in the form of
deep and lasting hatred. A military caste had grown up. Those who
had been induced to take up arms by the patriotic feelings of
citizens had begun to entertain the professional feelings of
soldiers. Above all, the leaders of the party had forfeited its
confidence, If they had, by their valour and abilities, gained a
complete victory, their influence might have been sufficient to
prevent their associates from abusing it. It was now necessary to
choose more resolute and uncompromising commanders.  Unhappily
the illustrious man who alone united in himself all the talents
and virtues which the crisis required, who alone could have saved
his country from the present dangers without plunging her into
others, who alone could have united all the friends of liberty in
obedience to his commanding genius and his venerable name, was no
more. Something might still be done. The Houses might still avert
that worst of all evils, the triumphant return of an imperious
and unprincipled master. They might still preserve London from
all the horrors of rapine, massacre, and lust. But their hopes of
a victory as spotless as their cause, of a reconciliation which
might knit together the hearts of all honest Englishmen for the
defence of the public good, of durable tranquillity, of temperate
freedom, were buried in the grave of Hampden.

The self-denying ordinance was passed, and the army was
remodelled. These measures were undoubtedly full of danger. But
all that was left to the Parliament was to take the less of two
dangers. And we think that, even if they could have accurately
foreseen all that followed, their decision ought to have been the
same. Under any circumstances, we should have preferred Cromwell
to Charles. But there could be no comparison between Cromwell and
Charles victorious, Charles restored, Charles enabled to feed fat
all the hungry grudges of his smiling rancour and his cringing
pride. The next visit of his Majesty to his faithful Commons
would have been more serious than that with which he last
honoured them; more serious than that which their own General
paid them some years after. The King would scarce have been
content with praying that the Lord would deliver him from Vane,
or with pulling Marten by the cloak. If, by fatal mismanagement,
nothing was left to England but a choice of tyrants, the last
tyrant whom she should have chosen was Charles.

From the apprehension of this worst evil the Houses were soon
delivered by their new leaders. The armies of Charles were
everywhere routed, his fastnesses stormed, his party humbled and
subjugated. The King himself fell into the hands of the
Parliament; and both the King and the Parliament soon fell into
the hands of the army. The fate of both the captives was the
same. Both were treated alternately with respect and with insult.
At length the natural life of one, and the political life of the
other, were terminated by violence; and the power for which both
had struggled was united in a single hand. Men naturally
sympathise with the calamities of individuals; but they are
inclined to look on a fallen party with contempt rather than with
pity. Thus misfortune turned the greatest of Parliaments into the
despised Rump, and the worst of Kings into the Blessed Martyr.

Mr. Hallam decidedly condemns the execution of Charles; and in
all that he says on that subject we heartily agree. We fully
concur with him in thinking that a great social schism, such as
the civil war, is not to be confounded with an ordinary treason,
and that the vanquished ought to be treated according to the
rules, not of municipal, but of international law. In this case
the distinction is of the less importance, because both
international and municipal law were in favour of Charles. He was
a prisoner of war by the former, a King by the latter. By neither
was he a traitor. If he had been successful, and had put his
leading opponents to death, he would have deserved severe
censure; and this without reference to the justice or injustice
of his cause. Yet the opponents of Charles, it must be admitted,
were technically guilty of treason. He might have sent them to
the scaffold without violating any established principle of
jurisprudence. He would not have been compelled to overturn the
whole constitution in order to reach them. Here his own case
differed widely from theirs. Not only was his condemnation in
itself a measure which only the strongest necessity could
vindicate; but it could not be procured without taking several
previous steps, every one of which would have required the
strongest necessity to vindicate it. It could not be procured
without dissolving the Government by military force, without
establishing precedents of the most dangerous description,
without creating difficulties which the next ten years were spent
in removing, without pulling down institutions which it soon
became necessary to reconstruct, and setting up others which
almost every man was soon impatient to destroy. It was necessary
to strike the House of Lords out of the constitution, to exclude
members of the House of Commons by force, to make a new crime, a
new tribunal, a new mode of procedure. The whole legislative and
judicial systems were trampled down for the purpose of taking a
single head. Not only those parts of the constitution which the
republicans were desirous to destroy, but those which they wished
to retain and exalt, were deeply injured by these transactions.
High Courts of justice began to usurp the functions of juries.
The remaining delegates of the people were soon driven from their
seats by the same military violence which had enabled them to
exclude their colleagues.

If Charles had been the last of his line, there would have been
an intelligible reason for putting him to death. But the blow
which terminated his life at once transferred the allegiance of
every Royalist to an heir, and an heir who was at liberty. To
kill the individual was, under such circumstances, not to
destroy, but to release the King.

We detest the character of Charles; but a man ought not to be
removed by a law ex post facto, even constitutionally procured,
merely because he is detestable. He must also be very dangerous.
We can scarcely conceive that any danger which a state can
apprehend from any individual could justify the violent, measures
which were necessary to procure a sentence against Charles. But
in fact the danger amounted to nothing. There was indeed, danger
from the attachment of a large party to his office. But this
danger his execution only increased. His personal influence was
little indeed. He had lost the confidence of every party.
Churchmen, Catholics, Presbyterians, Independents, his enemies,
his friends, his tools, English, Scotch, Irish, all divisions and
subdivisions of his people had been deceived by him. His most
attached councillors turned away with shame and anguish from his
false and hollow policy, plot intertwined with plot, mine sprung
beneath mine, agents disowned, promises evaded, one pledge given
in private, another in public. "Oh, Mr. Secretary," says
Clarendon, in a letter to Nicholas, "those stratagems have given
me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have
befallen the King, and look like the effects of God's anger
towards us."

The abilities of Charles were not formidable. His taste in the
fine arts was indeed exquisite; and few modern sovereigns have
written or spoken better. But he was not fit for active life. In
negotiation he was always trying to dupe others, and duping only
himself. As a soldier, he was feeble, dilatory, and miserably
wanting, not in personal courage, but in the presence of mind
which his station required. His delay at Gloucester saved the
parliamentary party from destruction. At Naseby, in the very
crisis of his fortune, his want of self-possession spread a
fatal panic through his army. The story which Clarendon tells of
that affair reminds us of the excuses by which Bessus and Bobadil
explain their cudgellings. A Scotch nobleman, it seems, begged
the King not to run upon his death, took hold of his bridle, and
turned his horse round. No man who had much value for his life
would have tried to perform the same friendly office on that day
for Oliver Cromwell.

One thing, and one alone, could make Charles dangerous--a
violent death. His tyranny could not break the high spirit of the
English people. His arms could not conquer, his arts could not
deceive them; but his humiliation and his execution melted them
into a generous compassion. Men who die on a scaffold for
political offences almost always die well. The eyes of thousands
are fixed upon them. Enemies and admirers are watching their
demeanour. Every tone of voice, every change of colour, is to go
down to posterity. Escape is impossible. Supplication is vain. In
such a situation pride and despair have often been known to
nerve the weakest minds with fortitude adequate to the occasion.
Charles died patiently and bravely; not more patiently or
bravely, indeed, than many other victims of political rage; not
more patiently or bravely than his own judges, who were not only
killed, but tortured; or than Vane, who had always been
considered as a timid man. However, the king's conduct during his
trial and at his execution made a prodigious impression. His
subjects began to love his memory as heartily as they had hated
his person; and posterity has estimated his character from his
death rather than from his life.

To represent Charles as a martyr in the cause of Episcopacy is
absurd. Those who put him to death cared as little for the
Assembly of Divines, as for the Convocation, and would, in all
probability, only have hated him the more if he had agreed to set
up the Presbyterian discipline. Indeed, in spite of the opinion
of Mr. Hallam, we are inclined to think that the attachment of
Charles to the Church of England was altogether political. Human
nature is, we admit, so capricious that there may be a single,
sensitive point, in a conscience which everywhere else is
callous. A man without truth or humanity may have some strange
scruples about a trifle. There was one devout warrior in the
royal camp whose piety bore a great resemblance to that which is
ascribed to the King. We mean Colonel Turner. That gallant
Cavalier was hanged, after the Restoration, for a flagitious
burglary. At the gallows he told the crowd that his mind received
great consolation from one reflection: he had always taken off
his hat when he went into a church. The character of Charles
would scarcely rise in our estimation, if we believed that he was
pricked in conscience after the manner of this worthy loyalist,
and that while violating all the first rules of Christian
morality, he was sincerely scrupulous about church-government.
But we acquit him of such weakness. In 1641 he deliberately
confirmed the Scotch Declaration which stated that the government
of the church by archbishops and bishops was contrary to the word
of God. In 1645, he appears to have offered to set up Popery in
Ireland. That a King who had established the Presbyterian religion
in one kingdom, and who was willing to establish the Catholic
religion in another, should have insurmountable scruples about
the ecclesiastical constitution of the third, is altogether
incredible. He himself says in his letters that he looks on
Episcopacy as a stronger support of monarchical power than even
the army. From causes which we have already considered, the
Established Church had been, since the Reformation, the great
bulwark of the prerogative. Charles wished, therefore, to
preserve it. He thought himself necessary both to the Parliament
and to the army. He did not foresee, till too late, that by
paltering with the Presbyterians, he should put both them and
himself into the power of a fiercer and more daring party. If he
had foreseen it, we suspect that the royal blood which still
cries to Heaven every thirtieth of January, for judgments only to
be averted by salt-fish and egg-sauce, would never have been
shed. One who had swallowed the Scotch Declaration would scarcely
strain at the Covenant.

The death of Charles and the strong measures which led to it
raised Cromwell to a height of power fatal to the infant
Commonwealth. No men occupy so splendid a place in history as
those who have founded monarchies on the ruins of republican
institutions. Their glory, if not of the purest, is assuredly of
the most seductive and dazzling kind. In nations broken to the
curb, in nations long accustomed to be transferred from one
tyrant to another, a man without eminent qualities may easily
gain supreme power. The defection of a troop of guards, a
conspiracy of eunuchs, a popular tumult, might place an indolent
senator or a brutal soldier on the throne of the Roman world.
Similar revolutions have often occurred in the despotic states of
Asia. But a community which has heard the voice of truth and
experienced the pleasures of liberty, in which the merits of
statesmen and of systems are freely canvassed, in which obedience
is paid, not to persons, but to laws, in which magistrates are
regarded, not as the lords, but as the servants of the public, in
which the excitement of a party is a necessary of life, in which
political warfare is reduced to a system of tactics; such a
community is not easily reduced to servitude. Beasts of burden
may easily be managed by a new master. But will the wild ass
submit to the bonds? Will the unicorn serve and abide by the
crib? Will leviathan hold out his nostrils to the book? The
mythological conqueror of the East, whose enchantments reduced
wild beasts to the tameness of domestic cattle, and who harnessed
lions and tigers to his chariot, is but an imperfect type of
those extraordinary minds which have thrown a spell on the fierce
spirits of nations unaccustomed to control, and have compelled
raging factions to obey their reins and swell their triumph. The
enterprise, be it good or bad, is one which requires a truly
great man. It demands courage, activity, energy, wisdom,
firmness, conspicuous virtues, or vices so splendid and alluring
as to resemble virtues.

Those who have succeeded in this arduous undertaking form a very
small and a very remarkable class. Parents of tyranny, heirs of
freedom, kings among citizens, citizens among kings, they unite
in themselves the characteristics of the system which springs
from them, and those of the system from which they have sprung.
Their reigns shine with a double light, the last and dearest rays
of departing freedom mingled with the first and brightest glories
of empire in its dawn. The high qualities of such a prince lend
to despotism itself a charm drawn from the liberty under which
they were formed, and which they have destroyed. He resembles an
European who settles within the Tropics, and carries thither the
strength and the energetic habits acquired in regions more
propitious to the constitution. He differs as widely from princes
nursed in the purple of imperial cradles, as the companions of
Gama from their dwarfish and imbecile progeny, which, born in a
climate unfavourable to its growth and beauty, degenerates more
and more, at every descent, from the qualities of the original
conquerors.

In this class three men stand pre-eminent, Caesar, Cromwell, and
Bonaparte. The highest place in this remarkable triumvirate
belongs undoubtedly to Caesar. He united the talents of Bonaparte
to those of Cromwell; and he possessed also, what neither
Cromwell nor Bonaparte possessed, learning, taste, wit,
eloquence, the sentiments and the manners of an accomplished
gentleman.

Between Cromwell and Napoleon Mr. Hallam has instituted a
parallel, scarcely less ingenious than that which Burke has drawn
between Richard Coeur de Lion and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.
In this parallel, however, and indeed throughout his work, we
think that he hardly gives Cromwell fair measure. "Cromwell,"
says he, "far unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a
legislative mind, or any desire to place his renown on that
noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions." The
difference in this respect, we conceive, was not in the character
of the men, but in the character of the revolutions by means of
which they rose to power. The civil war in England had been
undertaken to defend and restore; the republicans of France set
themselves to destroy. In England, the principles of the common
law had never been disturbed, and most even of its forms had been
held sacred. In France, the law and its ministers had been swept
away together.  In France, therefore, legislation necessarily
became the first business of the first settled government which
rose on the ruins of the old system. The admirers of Inigo Jones
have always maintained that his works are inferior to those of
Sir Christopher Wren, only because the great fire of London gave
Wren such a field for the display of his powers as no architect
in the history of the world ever possessed. Similar allowance
must be made for Cromwell. If he erected little that was new, it
was because there had been no general devastation to clear a
space for him. As it was, he reformed the representative system
in a most judicious manner. He rendered the administration of
justice uniform throughout the island. We will quote a passage
from his speech to the Parliament in September 1656, which
contains, we think, simple and rude as the diction is, stronger
indications of a legislative mind, than are to be found in the
whole range of orations delivered on such occasions before or
since.

"There is one general grievance in the nation. It is the law. I
think, I may say it, I have as eminent judges in this land as
have been had, or that the nation has had for these many years.
Truly, I could be particular as to the executive part, to the
administration; but that would trouble you. But the truth of it
is, there are wicked and abominable laws that will be in your
power to alter. To hang a man for sixpence, threepence, I know
not what,--to hang for a trifle, and pardon murder, is in the
ministration of the law through the ill framing of it. I have
known in my experience abominable murders quitted; and to see men
lose their lives for petty matters! This is a thing that God will
reckon for; and I wish it may not lie upon this nation a day
longer than you have an opportunity to give a remedy; and I hope
I shall cheerfully join with you in it."

Mr. Hallam truly says that, though it is impossible to rank
Cromwell with Napoleon as a general, "yet his exploits were as
much above the level of his contemporaries, and more the effects
of an original uneducated capacity." Bonaparte was trained in the
best military schools; the army which he led to Italy was one of
the finest that ever existed. Cromwell passed his youth and the
prime of his manhood in a civil situation. He never looked on war
till he was more than forty years old. He had first to form
himself, and then to form his troops. Out of raw levies he
created an army, the bravest and the best disciplined, the most
orderly in peace, and the most terrible in war, that Europe had
seen. He called this body into existence. He led it to conquest.
He never fought a battle without gaining it. He never gained a
battle without annihilating the force opposed to him. Yet his
victories were not the highest glory of his military system. The
respect which his troops paid to property, their attachment to
the laws and religion of their country, their submission to the
civil power, their temperance, their intelligence, their
industry, are without parallel. It was after the Restoration that
the spirit which their great leader had infused into them was
most signally displayed. At the command of the established
government, an established government which had no means of
enforcing obedience, fifty thousand soldiers whose backs no enemy
had ever seen, either in domestic or in continental war, laid
down their arms, and retired  into the mass of the people,
thenceforward to be distinguished only by superior diligence,
sobriety, and regularity in the pursuits, of peace, from the
other members of the community which they had saved.

In the general spirit and character of his administration, we
think Cromwell far superior to Napoleon. "In the civil
government," says Mr. Hallam, "there can be no adequate parallel
between one who had sucked only the dregs of a besotted
fanaticism, and one to whom the stores of reason and philosophy
were open." These expressions, it seems to us, convey the
highest eulogium on our great countryman. Reason and philosophy
did not teach the conqueror of Europe to command his passions, or
to pursue, as a first object, the happiness of his people. They
did not prevent him from risking his fame and his power in a
frantic contest against the principles of human nature and the
laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and
the liberty of the sea. They did not exempt him from the
influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a
presumptuous fatalism. They did not preserve hint from the
inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent
querulousness in adversity. On the other hand, the fanaticism of
Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or
confused his perception of the public good. Our countryman,
inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in
wisdom. The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is
among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was
frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as
those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and
dashes his playthings to pieces. Cromwell was emphatically a man.
He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown
robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual health,
which, if our national partiality does not mislead us, has
peculiarly characterised the great men of England. Never was any
ruler so conspicuously born for sovereignty. The cup which has
intoxicated almost all others, sobered him. His spirit, restless
from its own buoyancy in a lower sphere, reposed in majestic
placidity as soon as it had reached the level congenial to it. He
had nothing in common with that large class of men who
distinguish themselves in subordinate posts, and whose incapacity
becomes obvious as soon as the public voice summons them to take
the lead. Rapidly as his fortunes grew, his mind expanded more
rapidly still. Insignificant as a private citizen, he was a great
general; he was a still greater prince. Napoleon had a theatrical
manner, in which the coarseness of a revolutionary guard-room was
blended with the ceremony of the old Court of Versailles.
Cromwell, by the confession even of his enemies, exhibited in his
demeanour the simple and natural nobleness of a man neither
ashamed of his origin nor vain of his elevation, of a man who had
found his proper place in society, and who felt secure that he
was competent to fill it. Easy, even to familiarity, where his
own dignity was concerned, he was punctilious only for his
country. His own character he left to take care of itself; he
left it to be defended by his victories in war, and his reforms
in peace. But he was a jealous and implacable guardian of the
public honour. He suffered a crazy Quaker to insult him in the
gallery of Whitehall, and revenged himself only by liberating him
and giving him a dinner. But he was prepared to risk the chances
of war to avenge the blood of a private Englishman.

No sovereign ever carried to the throne so large a portion of the
best qualities of the middling orders, so strong a sympathy with
the feelings and interests of his people. He was sometimes driven
to arbitrary measures; but he had a high, stout, honest, English
heart. Hence it was that he loved to surround his throne with
such men as Hale and Blake. Hence it was that he allowed so large
a share of political liberty to his subjects, and that, even when
an opposition dangerous to his power and to his person almost
compelled him to govern by the sword, he was still anxious to
leave a germ from which, at a more favourable season, free
institutions might spring. We firmly believe that, if his first
Parliament had not commenced its debates by disputing his title,
his government would have been as mild at home as it was
energetic and able abroad. He was a soldier; he had risen by war.
Had his ambition been of an impure or selfish kind, it would have
been easy for him to plunge his country into continental
hostilities on a large scale, and to dazzle the restless factions
which he ruled, by the splendour of his victories. Some of his
enemies have sneeringly remarked, that in the successes obtained
under his administration he had no personal share; as if a man
who had raised himself from obscurity to empire solely by his
military talents could have any unworthy reason for shrinking
from military enterprise. This reproach is his highest glory. In
the success of the English navy he could have no selfish
interest. Its triumphs added nothing to his fame; its increase
added nothing to his means of overawing his enemies; its great
leader was not his friend. Yet he took a peculiar pleasure in
encouraging that noble service which, of all the instruments
employed by an English government, is the most impotent for
mischief, and the most powerful for good. His administration was
glorious, but with no vulgar glory. It was not one of those
periods of overstrained and convulsive exertion which necessarily
produce debility and languor. Its energy was natural, healthful,
temperate. He placed England at the head of the Protestant
interest, and in the first rank of Christian powers. He taught
every nation to value her friendship and to dread her enmity. But
he did not squander her resources in a vain attempt to invest her
with that supremacy which no power, in the modern system of
Europe, can safely affect, or can long retain.

This noble and sober wisdom had its reward. If he did not carry
the banners of the Commonwealth in triumph to distant capitals,
if he did not adorn Whitehall with the spoils of the Stadthouse
and the Louvre, if he did not portion out Flanders and Germany
into principalities for his kinsmen and his generals, he did not,
on the other hand, see his country overrun by the armies of
nations which his ambition had provoked. He did not drag out the
last years of his life an exile and a prisoner, in an unhealthy
climate and under an ungenerous gaoler, raging with the impotent
desire of vengeance, and brooding over visions of departed glory.
He went down to his grave in the fulness of power and fame; and
he left to his son an authority which any man of ordinary
firmness and prudence would have retained.

But for the weakness of that foolish Ishbosheth, the opinions
which we have been expressing would, we believe, now have formed
the orthodox creed of good Englishmen. We might now be writing
under the government of his Highness Oliver the Fifth or Richard
the Fourth, Protector, by the grace of God, of the Commonwealth
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto
belonging. The form of the great founder of the dynasty, on
horseback, as when he led the charge at Naseby or
on foot, as when he took the mace from the table of the Commons,
would adorn our squares and over look our public offices from
Charing Cross; and sermons in his praise would be duly preached
on his lucky day, the third of September, by court-chaplains,
guiltless of the abomination of the surplice.

But, though his memory has not been taken under the patronage of
any party, though every device has been used to blacken it,
though to praise him would long have been a punishable crime,
truth and merit at last prevail. Cowards who had trembled at the
very sound of his name, tools of office, who, like Downing, had
been proud of the honour of lacqueying his coach, might insult
him in loyal speeches and addresses. Venal poets might transfer
to the king the same eulogies little the worse for wear, which
they had bestowed on the Protector. A fickle multitude might
crowd to shout and scoff round the gibbeted remains of the
greatest Prince and Soldier of the age. But when the Dutch cannon
startled an effeminate tyrant in his own palace, when the
conquests which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold
to pamper the harlots of Charles, when Englishmen were sent to
fight under foreign banners, against the independence of Europe
and the Protestant religion, many honest hearts swelled in secret
at the thought of one who had never suffered his country to be
ill-used by any but himself. It must indeed have been difficult
for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the
most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his haram,
yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslobbering his
brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without
a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius
the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarine had
stood rebuked, who had humbled Spain on the land and Holland on
the sea, and whose imperial voice had arrested the sails of the
Libyan  pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome. Even to the
present day his character, though constantly attacked, and
scarcely ever defended, is popular with the great body of our
countrymen.

The most blameable act of his life was the execution of Charles.
We have already strongly condemned that proceeding; but we by no
means consider it as one which attaches any peculiar stigma of
infamy to the names of those who participated in it. It was an
unjust and injudicious display of violent party spirit; but it
was not a cruel or perfidious measure. It had all those features
which distinguish the errors of magnanimous and intrepid spirits
from base and malignant crimes.

From the moment that Cromwell is dead and buried, we go on in
almost perfect harmony with Mr. Hallam to the end of his book.
The times which followed the Restoration peculiarly require that
unsparing impartiality which is his most distinguishing virtue.
No part of our history, during the last three centuries, presents
a spectacle of such general dreariness. The whole breed of our
statesmen seems to have degenerated; and their moral and
intellectual littleness strikes us with the more disgust, because
we see it placed in immediate contrast with the high and majestic
qualities of the race which they succeeded. In the great civil
war, even the bad cause had been rendered respectable and amiable
by the purity and elevation of mind which many of its friends
displayed. Under Charles the Second, the best and noblest of ends
was disgraced by means the most cruel and sordid. The rage of
faction succeeded to the love of liberty. Loyalty died away into
servility. We look in vain among the leading politicians of
either side for steadiness of principle, or even for that vulgar
fidelity to party which, in our time, it is esteemed infamous to
violate. The inconsistency, perfidy, and baseness, which the
leaders constantly practised, which their followers defended, and
which the great body of the people regarded, as it seems, with
little disapprobation, appear in the present age almost
incredible. In the age of Charles the First, they would, we
believe, have excited as much astonishment.

Man, however, is always the same. And when so marked a difference
appears between two generations, it is certain that the solution
may be found in their respective circumstances. The principal
statesmen of the reign of Charles the Second were trained during
the civil war and the revolutions which followed it. Such a
period is eminently favourable to the growth of quick and active
talents. It forms a class of men, shrewd, vigilant, inventive; of
men whose dexterity triumphs over the most perplexing
combinations of circumstances, whose presaging instinct no sign
of the times can elude. But it is an unpropitious season for the
firm and masculine virtues. The statesman who enters on his
career at such a time, can form no permanent connections, can
make no accurate observations on the higher parts of political
science. Before he can attach himself to a party, it is
scattered. Before he can study the nature of a government, it is
overturned. The oath of abjuration comes close on the oath of
allegiance. The association which was subscribed yesterday
is burned by the hangman to-day. In the midst of the constant
eddy and change, self-preservation becomes the first object of
the adventurer. It is a task too hard for the strongest head to
keep itself from becoming giddy in the eternal whirl. Public
spirit is out of the question. A laxity of principle, without
which no public man can be eminent or even safe, becomes too
common to be scandalous; and the whole nation looks coolly
on instances of apostasy which would startle the foulest turncoat
of more settled times.

The history of France since the Revolution affords some striking
illustrations of these remarks. The same man was a servant of the
Republic, of Bonaparte, of Lewis the Eighteenth, of Bonaparte
again after his return from Elba, of Lewis again after his return
from Ghent. Yet all these manifold treasons by no means seemed to
destroy his influence, or even to fix any peculiar stain of
infamy on his character. We, to be sure, did not know what to
make of him; but his countrymen did not seem to be shocked; and
in truth they had little right to be shocked: for there was
scarcely one Frenchman distinguished in the state or in the army,
who had not, according to the best of his talents and
opportunities, emulated the example. It was natural, too, that
this should be the case. The rapidity and violence with which
change followed change in the affairs of France towards the close
of the last century had taken away the reproach of inconsistency,
unfixed the principles of public men, and produced in many minds
a general scepticism and indifference about principles of
government.

No Englishman who has studied attentively the reign of Charles
the Second, will think himself entitled to indulge in any
feelings of national superiority over the Dictionnaire des
Girouttes. Shaftesbury was surely a far less respectable man than
Talleyrand; and it would be injustice even to Fouche to compare
him with Lauderdale. Nothing, indeed, can more clearly show how
low the standard of political morality had fallen in this country
than the fortunes of the two British statesmen whom we have
named. The government wanted a ruffian to carry on the most
atrocious system of misgovernment with which any nation was ever
cursed, to extirpate Presbyterianism by fire and sword, by the
drowning of women, by the frightful torture of the boot. And they
found him among the chiefs of the rebellion and the subscribers
of the Covenant. The opposition looked for a chief to head them
in the most desperate attacks ever made, under the forms of the
Constitution, on any English administration; and they selected
the minister who had the deepest share in the worst acts of the
Court, the soul of the Cabal, the counsellor who had shut up the
Exchequer and urged on the Dutch war. The whole political drama
was of the same cast. No unity of plan, no decent propriety of
character and costume, could be found in that wild and monstrous
harlequinade. The whole was made up of extravagant
transformations and burlesque contrasts; Atheists turned
Puritans; Puritans turned Atheists; republicans defending the
divine right of kings; prostitute courtiers clamouring for the
liberties of the people; judges inflaming the rage of mobs;
patriots pocketing bribes from foreign powers; a Popish prince
torturing Presbyterians into Episcopacy in one part of the
island; Presbyterians cutting off the heads of Popish noblemen
and gentlemen in the other. Public opinion has its natural flux
and reflux. After a violent burst, there is commonly a reaction.
But vicissitudes so extraordinary as those which marked the reign
of Charles the Second can only be explained by supposing an utter
want of principle in the political world. On neither side was
there fidelity enough to face a reverse. Those honourable
retreats from power which, in later days, parties have often
made, with loss, but still in good order, in firm union, with
unbroken spirit and formidable means of annoyance, were utterly
unknown. As soon as a check took place a total rout followed:
arms and colours were thrown away. The vanquished troops, like
the Italian mercenaries of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, enlisted on the very field of battle, in the service
of the conquerors. In a nation proud of its sturdy justice and
plain good sense, no party could be found to take a firm middle
stand between the worst of oppositions and the worst of courts.
When on charges as wild as Mother Goose's tales, on the testimony
of wretches who proclaimed themselves to be spies and traitors,
and whom everybody now believes to have been also liars and
murderers, the offal of gaols and brothels, the leavings of the
hangman's whip and shears, Catholics guilty of nothing but their
religion were led like sheep to the Protestant shambles, where
were the loyal Tory gentry and the passively obedient clergy? And
where, when the time of retribution came, when laws were strained
and juries packed to destroy the leaders of the Whigs, when
charters were invaded, when Jeffreys and Kirke were making
Somersetshire what Lauderdale and Graham had made Scotland,
where were the ten thousand brisk boys of Shaftesbury, the
members of ignoramus juries, the wearers of the Polish medal?
All-powerful to destroy others, unable to save themselves,
the members of the two parties oppressed and were oppressed,
murdered and were murdered, in their turn. No lucid interval
occurred between the frantic paroxysms of two contradictory
illusions.

To the frequent changes of the government during the twenty years
which had preceded the Restoration, this unsteadiness is in a
great measure to be attributed. Other causes had also been at
work. Even if the country had been governed by the house of
Cromwell or by the remains of the Long Parliament, the extreme
austerity of the Puritans would necessarily have produced a
revulsion. Towards the close of the Protectorate many signs
indicated that a time of licence was at hand. But the restoration
of Charles the Second rendered the change wonderfully rapid and
violent. Profligacy became a test of orthodoxy, and loyalty a
qualification for rank and office. A deep and general taint
infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread
itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the
passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself,
inculcating an abject reverence for the Court, gave additional
effect to the licentious example of the Court. We look in vain
for those qualities which lend a charm to the errors of high and
ardent natures, for the generosity, the tenderness, the
chivalrous delicacy, which ennoble appetites into passions, and
impart to vice itself a portion of the majesty of virtue. The
excesses of that age remind us of the humours of a gang of
footpads, revelling with their favourite beauties at a flash-
house. In the fashionable libertinism there is a hard, cold
ferocity, an impudence, a lowness, a dirtiness, which can be
paralleled only among the heroes and heroines of that filthy and
heartless literature which encouraged it. One nobleman of great
abilities wanders about as a Merry-Andrew. Another harangues the
mob stark naked from a window. A third lays an ambush to cudgel a
man who has offended him. A knot of gentlemen of high rank and
influence combine to push their fortunes at Court by circulating
stories intended to ruin an innocent girl, stones which had no
foundation, and which, if they had been true, would never have
passed the lips of a man of honour. A dead child is found in the
palace, the offspring of some maid of honour by some courtier, or
perhaps by Charles himself. The whole flight of pandars and
buffoons pounce upon it, and carry it in triumph to the royal
laboratory, where his Majesty, after a brutal jest, dissects it
for the amusement of the assembly, and probably of its father
among the rest. The favourite Duchess stamps about Whitehall,
cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the
council-board in making mouths at each other and taking off each
other's gestures for the amusement of the King. The Peers at a
conference begin to pommel each other and to tear collars and
periwigs. A speaker in the House of Commons gives offence to the
Court. He is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose is cut to
the bone. This ignominious dissoluteness, or rather, if we may
venture to designate it by the only proper word, blackguardism of
feeling and manners, could not but spread from private to public
life. The cynical sneers, and epicurean sophistry, which had
driven honour and virtue from one part of the character, extended
their influence over every other. The second generation of the
statesmen of this reign were worthy pupils of the schools in
which they had been trained, of the gaming-table of Grammont, and
the tiring-room of Nell. In no other age could such a trifler as
Buckingham have exercised any political influence. In no other
age could the path to power and glory have been thrown open to
the manifold infamies of Churchill.

The history of Churchill shows, more clearly perhaps than that of
any other individual, the malignity and extent of the corruption
which had eaten into the heart of the public morality. An English
gentleman of good family attaches himself to a Prince who has
seduced his sister, and accepts rank and wealth as the price of
her shame and his own. He then repays by ingratitude the benefits
which he has purchased by ignominy, betrays his patron in a
manner which the best cause cannot excuse, and commits an act,
not only of private treachery, but of distinct military
desertion. To his conduct at the crisis of the fate of James, no
service in modern times has, as far as we remember, furnished any
parallel. The conduct of Ney, scandalous enough no doubt, is the
very fastidiousness of honour in comparison of it. The perfidy of
Arnold approaches it most nearly. In our age and country no
talents, no services, no party attachments, could bear any man up
under such mountains of infamy. Yet, even before Churchill had
performed those great actions which in some degree redeem his
character with posterity, the load lay very lightly on him. He
had others in abundance to keep him in countenance. Godolphin,
Orford, Danby, the trimmer Halifax, the renegade Sunderland, were
all men of the same class.

Where such was the political morality of the noble and the
wealthy, it may easily be conceived that those professions which,
even in the best times, are peculiarly liable to corruption, were
in a frightful state. Such a bench and such a bar England has
never seen. Jones, Scroggs, Jeffreys, North, Wright, Sawyer,
Williams, are to this day the spots and blemishes of our legal
chronicles. Differing in constitution and in situation, whether
blustering or cringing, whether persecuting Protestant or
Catholics, they were equally unprincipled and inhuman. The part
which the Church played was not equally atrocious; but it must
have been exquisitely diverting to a scoffer. Never were
principles so loudly professed, and so shamelessly abandoned. The
Royal prerogative had been magnified to the skies in theological
works. The doctrine of passive obedience had been preached from
innumerable pulpits. The University of Oxford had sentenced the
works of the most moderate constitutionalists to the flames. The
accession of a Catholic King, the frightful cruelties committed
in the west of England, never shook the steady loyalty of the
clergy. But did they serve the King for nought? He laid his hand
on them, and they cursed him to his face. He touched the revenue
of a college and the liberty of some prelates; and the whole
profession set up a yell worthy of Hugh Peters himself. Oxford
sent her plate to an invader with more alacrity than she had
shown when Charles the First requested it. Nothing was said about
the wickedness of resistance till resistance had done its work,
till the anointed vicegerent of Heaven had been driven away, and
till it had become plain that he would never be restored, or
would be restored at least under strict limitations. The clergy
went back, it must be owned, to their old theory, as soon as they
found that it would do them no harm.

It is principally to the general baseness and profligacy of the
times that Clarendon is indebted for his high reputation. He was,
in every respect, a man unfit for his age, at once too good for
it and too bad for it. He seemed to be one of the ministers of
Elizabeth, transplanted at once to a state of society widely
different from that in which the abilities of such ministers had
been serviceable. In the sixteenth century, the Royal prerogative
had scarcely been called in question. A Minister who held it high
was in no danger, so long as he used it well. That attachment to
the Crown, that extreme jealousy of popular encroachments, that
love, half religious half political, for the Church, which, from
the beginning of the second session of the Long Parliament,
showed itself in Clarendon, and which his sufferings, his long
residence in France, and his high station in the government,
served to strengthen, would a hundred years earlier, have secured
to him the favour of his sovereign without rendering him odious
to the people. His probity, his correctness in private life, his
decency of deportment, and his general ability, would not have
misbecome a colleague of Walsingham and Burleigh. But, in the
times on which he was cast, his errors and his virtues were alike
out of place. He imprisoned men without trial. He was accused of
raising unlawful contributions on the people for the support of
the army. The abolition of the act which ensured the frequent
holding of Parliaments was one of his favourite objects. He seems
to have meditated the revival of the Star-Chamber and the High
Commission Court. His zeal for the prerogative made him
unpopular; but it could not secure to him the favour of a master
far more desirous of ease and pleasure than of power. Charles
would rather have lived in exile and privacy, with abundance of
money, a crowd of mimics to amuse him, and a score of mistresses,
than have purchased the absolute dominion of the world by the
privations and exertions to which Clarendon was constantly urging
him. A councillor who was always bringing him papers and giving
him advice, and who stoutly refused to compliment Lady
Castlemaine and to carry messages to Mistress Stewart, soon
became more hateful to him than ever Cromwell had been. Thus,
considered by the people as an oppressor, by the Court as a
censor, the Minister fell from his high office with a ruin more
violent and destructive than could ever have been his fate, if he
had either respected the principles of the Constitution or
flattered the vices of the King.

Mr. Hallam has formed, we think, a most correct estimate of the
character and administration of Clarendon. But he scarcely makes
a sufficient allowance for the wear and tear which honesty almost
necessarily sustains in the friction of political life, and
which, in times so rough as those through which Clarendon passed,
must be very considerable. When these are fairly estimated, we
think that his integrity may be allowed to pass muster. A high-
minded man he certainly was not, either in public or in private
affairs. His own account of his conduct in the affair of his
daughter is the most extraordinary passage in autobiography. We
except nothing even in the Confessions of Rousseau. Several
writers have taken a perverted and absurd pride in representing
themselves as detestable; but no other ever laboured hard to make
himself despicable and ridiculous. In one important particular
Clarendon showed as little regard to the honour of his country as
he had shown to that of his family. He accepted a subsidy from
France for the relief of Portugal. But this method of obtaining
money was afterwards practised to a much greater extent and for
objects much less respectable, both by the Court and by the
Opposition.

These pecuniary transactions are commonly considered as the most
disgraceful part of the history of those times: and they were no
doubt highly reprehensible. Yet, in justice to the Whigs and to
Charles himself, we must admit that they were not so shameful or
atrocious as at the present day they appear. The effect of
violent animosities between parties has always been an
indifference to the general welfare and honour of the State. A
politician, where factions run high, is interested not for the
whole people, but for his own section of it. The rest are, in his
view, strangers, enemies, or rather pirates. The strongest
aversion which he can feel to any foreign power is the ardour of
friendship, when compared with the loathing which he entertains
towards those domestic foes with whom he is cooped up in a narrow
space, with whom he lives in a constant interchange of petty
injuries and insults, and from whom, in the day of their success,
he has to expect severities far beyond any that a conqueror from
a distant country would inflict. Thus, in Greece, it was a point
of honour for a man to cleave to his party against his country.
No aristocratical citizen of Samos or Corcyra would have
hesitated to call in the aid of Lacedaemon. The multitude, on the
contrary, looked everywhere to Athens. In the Italian states of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, from the same cause, no
man was so much a Pisan or a Florentine as a Ghibeline or a
Guelf. It may be doubted whether there was a single individual
who would have scrupled to raise his party from a state of
depression, by opening the gates of his native city to a French
or an Arragonese force. The Reformation, dividing almost every
European country into two parts, produced similar effects. The
Catholic was too strong for the Englishman, the Huguenot for the
Frenchman. The Protestant statesmen of Scotland and France called
in the aid of Elizabeth; and the Papists of the League brought a
Spanish army into the very heart of France. The commotions to
which the French Revolution gave rise were followed by the same
consequences. The Republicans in every part of Europe were eager
to see the armies of the National Convention and the Directory
appear among them, and exalted in defeats which distressed and
humbled those whom they considered as their worst enemies, their
own rulers. The princes and nobles of France, on the other hand,
did their utmost to bring foreign invaders to Paris. A very short
time has elapsed since the Apostolical party in Spain invoked,
too successfully, the support of strangers.

The great contest which raged in England during the seventeenth
century extinguished, not indeed in the body of the people, but
in those classes which were most actively engaged in politics,
almost all national feelings. Charles the Second and many of his
courtiers had passed a large part of their lives in banishment,
living on the bounty of foreign treasuries, soliciting foreign
aid to re-establish monarchy in their native country. The King's
own brother had fought in Flanders, under the banners of Spain,
against the English armies. The oppressed Cavaliers in England
constantly looked to the Louvre and the Escurial for deliverance
and revenge. Clarendon censures the continental governments with
great bitterness for not interfering in our internal dissensions.
It is not strange, therefore, that, amidst the furious contests
which followed the Restoration, the violence of party feeling
should produce effects which would probably have attended it even
in an age less distinguished by laxity of principle and
indelicacy of sentiment. It was not till a natural death had
terminated the paralytic old age of the Jacobite party that the
evil was completely at an end. The Whigs long looked to Holland,
the High Tories to France. The former concluded the Barrier
Treaty; the latter entreated the Court of Versailles to send an
expedition to England. Many men, who, however erroneous their
political notions might be, were unquestionably honourable in
private life, accepted money without scruple from the foreign
powers favourable to the Pretender.

Never was there less of national feeling among the higher orders
than during the reign of Charles the Second. That Prince, on the
one side, thought it better to be the deputy of an absolute king
than the King of a free people. Algernon Sydney, on the other
hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious
schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a
province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him
to establish his darling republic. The King took the money of
France to assist him in the enterprise which he meditated against
the liberty of his subjects, with as little scruple as Frederic
of Prussia or Alexander of Russia accepted our subsidies in time
of war. The leaders of the Opposition no more thought themselves
disgraced by the presents of Lewis, than a gentleman of our own
time thinks himself disgraced by the liberality of powerful and
wealthy members of his party who pay his election bill. The money
which the King received from France had been largely employed to
corrupt members of Parliament. The enemies of the court might
think it fair, or even absolutely necessary, to encounter bribery
with bribery. Thus they took the French gratuities, the needy
among them for their own use, the rich probably for the general
purposes of the party, without any scruple. If we compare their
conduct not with that of English statesmen in our own time, but
with that of persons in those foreign countries which are now
situated as England then was, we shall probably see reason to
abate something of the severity of censure with which it has been
the fashion to visit those proceedings. Yet when every allowance
is made, the transaction is sufficiently offensive. It is
satisfactory to find that Lord Russell stands free from any
imputation of personal participation in the spoil. An age so
miserably poor in all the moral qualities which render public
characters respectable can ill spare the credit which it derives
from a man, not indeed conspicuous for talents or knowledge, but
honest even in his errors, respectable in every relation of life,
rationally pious, steadily and placidly brave.

The great improvement which took place in our breed of public men
is principally to be ascribed to the Revolution. Yet that
memorable event, in a great measure, took its character from the
very vices which it was the means of reforming. It was assuredly
a happy revolution, and a useful revolution; but it was not, what
it has often been called, a glorious revolution. William, and
William alone, derived glory from it. The transaction was, in
almost every part, discreditable to England. That a tyrant who
had violated the fundamental laws of the country, who had
attacked the rights of its greatest corporations, who had begun
to persecute the established religion of the state, who had never
respected the law either in his superstition or in his revenge,
could not be pulled down without the aid of a foreign army, is a
circumstance not very grateful to our national pride. Yet this is
the least degrading part of the story. The shameless insincerity
of the great and noble, the warm assurances of general support
which James received, down to the moment of general desertion,
indicate a meanness of spirit and a looseness of morality most
disgraceful to the age. That the enterprise succeeded, at least
that it succeeded without bloodshed or commotion, was principally
owing to an act of ungrateful perfidy, such as no soldier had
ever before committed, and to those monstrous fictions respecting
the birth of the Prince of Wales which persons of the highest
rank were not ashamed to circulate. In all the proceedings of the
convention, in the conference particularly, we see that
littleness of mind which is the chief characteristic of the
times. The resolutions on which the two Houses at last agreed
were as bad as any resolutions for so excellent a purpose could
be. Their feeble and contradictory language was evidently
intended to save the credit of the Tories, who were ashamed to
name what they were not ashamed to do. Through the whole
transaction no commanding talents were displayed by any
Englishman; no extraordinary risks were run; no sacrifices were
made for the deliverance of the nation, except the sacrifice
which Churchill made of honour, and Anne of natural affection.

It was in some sense fortunate, as we have already said, for the
Church of England, that the Reformation in this country was
effected by men who cared little about religion. And, in the same
manner, it was fortunate for our civil government that the
Revolution was in a great measure effected by men who cared
little about their political principles. At such a crisis,
splendid talents and strong passions might have done more harm
than good. There was far greater reason to fear that too much
would be attempted, and that violent movements would produce an
equally violent reaction, than that too little would be done in
the way of change. But narrowness of intellect, and flexibility
of principle, though they may be serviceable, can never be
respectable.

If in the Revolution itself, there was little that can properly
be called glorious, there was still less in the events which
followed. In a church which had as one man declared the doctrine
of resistance unchristian, only four hundred persons refused to
take the oath of allegiance to a government founded on
resistance. In the preceding generation, both the Episcopal and
the Presbyterian clergy, rather than concede points of conscience
not more important, had resigned their livings by thousands.

The churchmen, at the time of the Revolution, justified
their conduct by all those profligate sophisms which are called
Jesuitical, and which are commonly reckoned among the peculiar
sins of Popery, but which, in fact, are everywhere the anodynes
employed by minds rather subtle than strong, to quiet those
internal twinges which they cannot but feel and which they will
not obey. As the oath taken by the clergy was in the teeth of
their principles, so was their conduct in the teeth of their
oath. Their constant machinations against the Government to which
they had sworn fidelity brought a reproach on their order and on
Christianity itself. A distinguished prelate has not scrupled to
say that the rapid increase of infidelity at that time was
principally produced by the disgust which the faithless conduct
of his brethren excited in men not sufficiently candid or
judicious to discern the beauties of the system amidst the vices
of its ministers.

But the reproach was not confined to the Church. In every
political party in the Cabinet itself, duplicity and perfidy
abounded. The very men whom William loaded with benefits and in
whom he reposed most confidence, with his seals of office in
their hands, kept up a correspondence with the exiled family.
Orford, Leeds, and Shrewsbury were guilty of this odious
treachery. Even Devonshire is not altogether free from suspicion.
It may well be conceived that, at such a time, such a nature as
that of Marlborough would riot in the very luxury of baseness.
His former treason, thoroughly furnished with all that makes
infamy exquisite, placed him under the disadvantage which attends
every artist from the time that he produces a masterpiece. Yet
his second great stroke may excite wonder, even in those who
appreciate all the merit of the first. Lest his admirers should
be able to say that at the time of the Revolution he had betrayed
his King from any other than selfish motives, he proceeded to
betray his country. He sent intelligence to the French Court of a
secret expedition intended to attack Brest. The consequence was
that the expedition failed, and that eight hundred British
soldiers lost their lives from the abandoned villainy of a
British general. Yet this man has been canonized by so many
eminent writers that to speak of him as he deserves may seem
scarcely decent.

The reign of William the Third, as Mr. Hallam happily says, was
the Nadir of the national prosperity. It was also the Nadir of
the national character. It was the time when the rank harvest of
vices sown during thirty years of licentiousness and confusion
was gathered in; but it was also the seed-time of great virtues.

The press was emancipated from the censorship soon after the
Revolution; and the Government immediately fell under the
censorship of the press. Statesmen had a scrutiny to endure which
was every day becoming more and more severe. The extreme violence
of opinions abated. The Whigs learned moderation in office; the
Tories learned the principles of liberty in opposition. The
parties almost constantly approximated, often met, sometimes,
crossed each other. There were occasional bursts of violence;
but, from the time of the Revolution, those bursts were
constantly becoming less and less terrible. The severity with
which the Tories, at the close of the reign of Anne, treated some
of those who had directed the public affairs during the war of
the Grand Alliance, and the retaliatory measures of the Whigs,
after the accession of the House of Hanover, cannot be justified;
but they were by no means in the style of the infuriated parties,
whose alternate murders had disgraced our history towards the
close of the reign of Charles the Second. At the fall of Walpole
far greater moderation was displayed. And from that time it has
been the practice, a practice not strictly according to the
theory of our Constitution, but still most salutary, to consider
the loss of office, and the public disapprobation, as punishments
sufficient for errors in the administration not imputable to
personal corruption. Nothing, we believe, has contributed more
than this lenity to raise the character of public men. Ambition
is of itself a game sufficiently hazardous and sufficiently deep
to inflame the passions without adding property, life, and
liberty to the stake. Where the play runs so desperately high as
in the seventeenth century, honour is at an end. Statesmen
instead of being, as they should be, at once mild and steady, are
at once ferocious and inconsistent. The axe is for ever before
their eyes. A popular outcry sometimes unnerves them, and
sometimes makes them desperate; it drives them to unworthy
compliances, or to measures of vengeance as cruel as those which
they have reason to expect. A Minister in our times need not fear
either to be firm or to be merciful. Our old policy in this
respect was as absurd as that of the king in the Eastern tale who
proclaimed that any physician who pleased might come to court and
prescribe for his diseases, but that if the remedies failed the
adventurer should lose his head. It is easy to conceive how many
able men would refuse to undertake the cure on such conditions;
how much the sense of extreme danger would confuse the
perceptions, and cloud the intellect of the practitioner, at the
very crisis which most called for self-possession, and how
strong his temptation would be, if he found that he had committed
a blunder, to escape the consequences of it by poisoning his
patient.

But in fact it would have been impossible, since the Revolution,
to punish any Minister for the general course of his policy, with
the slightest semblance of justice; for since that time no
Minister has been able to pursue any general course of policy
without the approbation of the Parliament. The most important
effects of that great change were, as Mr. Hallam has most truly
said, and most ably shown, those which it indirectly produced.
Thenceforward it became the interest of the executive government
to protect those very doctrines which an executive government is
in general inclined to persecute. The sovereign, the ministers,
the courtiers, at last even the universities and the clergy, were
changed into advocates of the right of resistance. In the theory
of the Whigs, in the situation of the Tories, in the common
interest of all public men, the Parliamentary constitution of the
country found perfect security. The power of the House of
Commons, in particular, has been steadily on the increase. Since
supplies have been granted for short terms and appropriated to
particular services, the approbation of that House has been as
necessary in practice to the executive administration as it has
always been in theory to taxes and to laws.

Mr. Hallam appears to have begun with the reign of Henry the
Seventh, as the period at which what is called modern history, in
contradistinction to the history of the middle ages, is generally
supposed to commence. He has stopped at the accession of George
the Third, "from unwillingness" as he says, "to excite the
prejudices of modern politics, especially those connected with
personal character." These two eras, we think, deserved the
distinction on other grounds. Our remote posterity, when looking
back on our history in that comprehensive manner in which remote
posterity alone can, without much danger of error, look back on
it, will probably observe those points with peculiar interest.
They are, if we mistake not, the beginning and the end of an
entire and separate chapter in our annals. The period which lies
between them is a perfect cycle, a great year of the public mind.

In the reign of Henry the Seventh, all the political differences
which had agitated England since the Norman conquest seemed to be
set at rest. The long and fierce struggle between the Crown and
the Barons had terminated. The grievances which had produced the
rebellions of Tyler and Cade had disappeared. Villanage was
scarcely known. The two royal houses, whose conflicting claims
had long convulsed the kingdom, were at length united. The
claimants whose pretensions, just or unjust, had disturbed the
new settlement, were overthrown. In religion there was no open
dissent, and probably very little secret heresy. The old subjects
of contention, in short, had vanished; those which were to
succeed had not yet appeared.

Soon, however, new principles were announced; principles which
were destined to keep England during two centuries and a half in
a state of commotion. The Reformation divided the people into two
great parties. The Protestants were victorious. They again
subdivided themselves. Political factions were engrafted on
theological sects. The mutual animosities of the two parties
gradually emerged into the light of public life. First came
conflicts in Parliament; then civil war; then revolutions upon
revolutions, each attended by its appurtenance of proscriptions,
and persecutions, and tests; each followed by severe measures on
the part of the conquerors; each exciting a deadly and festering
hatred in the conquered. During the reign of George the Second,
things were evidently tending to repose. At the close of that
reign, the nation had completed the great revolution which
commenced in the early part of the sixteenth century, and was
again at rest, The fury of sects had died away. The Catholics
themselves practically enjoyed toleration; and more than
toleration they did not yet venture even to desire. Jacobitism
was a mere name. Nobody was left to fight for that wretched
cause, and very few to drink for it. The Constitution, purchased
so dearly, was on every side extolled and worshipped. Even those
distinctions of party which must almost always be found in a free
state could scarcely be traced. The two great bodies which, from
the time of the Revolution, had been gradually tending to
approximation, were now united in emulous support of that
splendid Administration which smote to the dust both the branches
of the House of Bourbon. The great battle for our ecclesiastical
and civil polity had been fought and won. The wounds had been
healed. The victors and the vanquished were rejoicing together.
Every person acquainted with the political writers of the last
generation will recollect the terms in which they generally speak
of that time. It was a glimpse of a golden age of union and
glory, a short interval of rest, which had been preceded by
centuries of agitation, and which centuries of agitation were
destined to follow.

How soon faction again began to ferment is well known. The
Letters of Junius, in Burke's Thoughts on the Cause of the
Discontents, and in many other writings of less merit, the
violent dissensions which speedily convulsed the country are
imputed to the system of favouritism which George the Third
introduced, to the influence of Bute, or to the profligacy of
those who called themselves the King's friends. With all
deference to the eminent writers to whom we have referred, we way
venture to say that they lived too near the events of which they
treated to judge correctly. The schism which was then appearing
in the nation, and which has been from that time almost
constantly widening, had little in common with those schisms
which had divided it during the reigns of the Tudors and the
Stuarts. The symptoms of popular feeling, indeed, will always be
in a great measure the same; but the principle which excited that
feeling was here new. The support which was given to Wilkes, the
clamour for reform during the American war, the disaffected
conduct of large classes of people at the time of the French
Revolution, no more resembled the opposition which had been
offered to the government of Charles the Second, than that
opposition resembled the contest between the Roses.

In the political as in the natural body, a sensation is often
referred to a part widely different from that in which it really
resides. A man whose leg is cut off fancies that he feels a pain
in his toe. And in the same manner the people, in the earlier part
of the late reign, sincerely attributed their discontent to
grievances which had been effectually lopped off. They imagined
that the prerogative was too strong for the Constitution, that
the principles of the Revolution were abandoned, that the system
of the Stuarts was restored. Every impartial man must now
acknowledge that these charges were groundless. The conduct of
the Government with respect to the Middlesex election would have
been contemplated with delight by the first generation of Whigs.
They would have thought it a splendid triumph of the cause of
liberty that the King and the Lords should resign to the lower
House a portion of the legislative power, and allow it to
incapacitate without their consent. This, indeed, Mr. Burke
clearly perceived. "When the House of Commons," says he, "in an
endeavour to obtain new advantages at the expense of the other
orders of the state, for the benefit of the commons at large,
have pursued strong measures, if it were not just, it was at
least natural, that the constituents should connive at all their
proceedings; because we ourselves were ultimately to profit. But
when this submission is urged to us in a contest between the
representatives and ourselves, and where nothing can be put into
their scale which is not taken from ours, they fancy us to be
children when they tell us that they are our representatives, our
own flesh and blood, and that all the stripes they give us are
for our good." These sentences contain, in fact, the whole
explanation of the mystery. The conflict of the seventeenth
century was maintained by the Parliament against the Crown. The
conflict which commenced in the middle of the eighteenth century,
which still remains undecided, and in which our children and
grandchildren will probably be called to act or to suffer, is
between a large portion of the people on the one side, and the
Crown and the Parliament united on the other.

The privileges of the House of Commons, those privileges which,
in 1642, all London rose in arms to defend, which the people
considered as synonymous with their own liberties, and in
comparison of which they took no account of the most precious and
sacred principles of English jurisprudence, have now become
nearly as odious as the rigours of martial law. That power of
committing which the people anciently loved to see the House of
Commons exercise, is now, at least when employed against
libellers, the most unpopular power in the Constitution. If the
Commons were to suffer the Lords to amend money-bills, we do not
believe that the people would care one straw about the matter. If
they were to suffer the Lords even to originate money-bills, we
doubt whether such a surrender of their constitutional rights
would excite half so much dissatisfaction as the exclusion of
strangers from a single important discussion. The gallery in
which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
The publication of the debates, a practice which seemed to the
most liberal statesmen of the old school full of danger to the
great safeguards of public liberty, is now regarded by many
persons as a safeguard tantamount, and more than tantamount, to
all the rest together.

Burke, in a speech on parliamentary reform which is the more
remarkable because it was delivered long before the French
Revolution, has described, in striking language, the change in
public feeling of which we speak. "It suggests melancholy
reflections," says he, "in consequence of the strange
course we have long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling
about the character, or about the conduct of men, or the tenor of
measures; but we are grown out of humour with the English
Constitution itself; this is become the object of the animosity
of Englishmen. This constitution in former days used to be the
envy of the world; it was the pattern for politicians; the theme
of the eloquent; the meditation of the philosopher in every part
of the world. As to Englishmen, it was their pride, their
consolation. By it they lived, and for it they were ready to die.
Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by partiality,
and partly borne by prudence. Now all its excellencies are
forgot, its faults are forcibly dragged into day, exaggerated by
every artifice of misrepresentation. It is despised and rejected
of men; and every device and invention of ingenuity or idleness
is set up in opposition, or in preference to it." We neither
adopt nor condemn the language of reprobation which the great
orator here employs. We call him only as a witness to the fact.
That the revolution of public feeling which he described was then
in progress is indisputable; and it is equally indisputable, we
think, that it is in progress still.

To investigate and classify the causes of so great a change would
require far more thought, and far more space, than we at present
have to bestow. But some of them are obvious. During the contest
which the Parliament carried on against the Stuarts, it had only
to cheek and complain. It has since had to govern. As an
attacking body, it could select its points of attack, and it
naturally chose those on which it was likely to receive public
support. As a ruling body, it has neither the same liberty of
choice, nor the same motives to gratify the people. With the
power of an executive government, it has drawn to itself some of
the vices, and all the unpopularity of an executive government.
On the House of Commons above all, possessed as it is of the
public purse, and consequently of the public sword, the nation
throws all the blame of an ill-conducted war, of a blundering
negotiation, of a disgraceful treaty, of an embarrassing
commercial crisis. The delays of the Court of Chancery, the
misconduct of a judge at Van Diemen's Land, any thing, in short,
which in any part of the administration any person feels as a
grievance, is attributed to the tyranny, or at least to the
negligence, of that all-powerful body. Private individuals pester
it with their wrongs and claims. A merchant appeals to it from
the Courts of Rio Janeiro or St. Petersburg. A historical painter
complains to it that his department of art finds no
encouragement. Anciently the Parliament resembled a member of
opposition, from whom no places are expected, who is not expected
to confer favours and propose measures, but merely to watch and
censure, and who may, therefore, unless he is grossly
injudicious, be popular with the great body of the community. The
Parliament now resembles the same person put into office,
surrounded by petitioners whom twenty times his patronage would
not satisfy, stunned with complaints, buried in memorials,
compelled by the duties of his station to bring forward measures
similar to those which he was formerly accustomed to observe and
to check, and perpetually encountered by objections similar to
those which it was formerly his business to raise.

Perhaps it may be laid down as a general rule that a legislative
assembly, not constituted on democratical principles, cannot be
popular long after it ceases to be weak. Its zeal for what the
people, rightly or wrongly, conceive to be their interests, its
sympathy with their mutable and violent passions, are merely the
effects of the particular circumstances in which it is placed. As
long as it depends for existence on the public favour, it will
employ all the means in its power to conciliate that favour.
While this is the case, defects in its constitution are of little
consequence. But, as the close union of such a body with the
nation is the effect of an identity of interests not essential
but accidental, it is in some measure dissolved from the time at
which the danger which produced it ceases to exist.

Hence, before the Revolution, the question of Parliamentary
reform was of very little importance. The friends of liberty had
no very ardent wish for reform. The strongest Tories saw no
objections to it. It is remarkable that Clarendon loudly applauds
the changes which Cromwell introduced, changes far stronger than
the Whigs of the present day would in general approve. There is
no reason to think, however, that the reform effected by
Cromwell made any great difference in the conduct of the
Parliament. Indeed, if the House of Commons had, during the reign
of Charles the Second, been elected by universal suffrage, or if
all the seats had been put up to sale, as in the French
Parliaments, it would, we suspect, have acted very much as it
did. We know how strongly the Parliament of Paris exerted itself
in favour of the people on many important occasions; and the
reason is evident. Though it did not emanate from the people, its
whole consequence depended on the support of the people.

From the time of the Revolution the House of Commons has been
gradually becoming what it now is, a great council of state,
containing many members chosen freely by the people, and many
others anxious to acquire the favour of the people; but, on the
whole, aristocratical in its temper and interest. It is very far
from being an illiberal and stupid oligarchy; but it is equally
far from being an express image of the general feeling. It is
influenced by the opinion of the people, and influenced
powerfully, but slowly and circuitously. Instead of outrunning
the public mind, as before the Revolution it frequently did, it
now follows with slow steps and at a wide distance. It is
therefore necessarily unpopular; and the more so because the good
which it produces is much less evident to common perception than
the evil which it inflicts. It bears the blame of all the
mischief which is done, or supposed to be done, by its authority
or by its connivance. It doe not get the credit, on the other
hand, of having prevented those innumerable abuses which do not
exist solely because the House of Commons exists.

A large part of the nation is certainly desirous of a reform in
the representative system. How large that part may be, and how
strong its desires on the subject may be, it is difficult to say.
It is only at intervals that the clamour on the subject is loud
and vehement. But it seems to us that, during the remissions, the
feeling gathers strength, and that every successive burst is more
violent than that which preceded it. The public attention may be
for a time diverted to the Catholic claims or the Mercantile code
but it is probable that at no very distant period, perhaps in the
lifetime of the present generation, all other questions will
merge in that which is, in a certain degree, connected with them
all.

Already we seem to ourselves to perceive the signs of unquiet
times the vague presentiment of something great and strange which
pervades the community, the restless and turbid hopes of those
who have everything to gain, the dimly hinted forebodings of
those who have everything to lose. Many indications might be
mentioned, in themselves indeed as insignificant as straws; but
even the direction of a straw, to borrow the illustration of
Bacon, will show from what quarter the storm in setting in.

A great statesman might, by judicious and timely reformations by
reconciling the two great branches of the natural aristocracy,
the capitalists and the landowners, and by so widening the base
of the government as to interest in its defence the whole of the
middle class that brave, honest, and  sound-hearted class, which
is as anxious for the maintenance of order and the security of
property, as it is hostile to corruption and oppression,
succeed in averting a struggle to which no rational friend
of liberty or of law can look forward without great apprehensions.
There are those who will be contented with nothing but demolition;
and there are those who shrink from all repair. There are
innovators who long for a President and a National Convention;
and there are bigots who, while cities larger and richer
than the capitals of many great kingdoms are calling out for
representatives to watch over their interests, select some
hackneyed jobber in boroughs, some peer of the narrowest
and smallest mind, as the fittest depository of a forfeited
franchise. Between these extremes there lies a more excellent
way. Time is bringing round another crisis analogous to that
which occurred in the seventeenth century. We stand in a
situation similar to that in which our ancestors stood under the
reign of James the First. It will soon again be necessary to
reform that we may preserve, to save the fundamental principles
of the Constitution by alterations in the subordinate parts. It
will then be possible, as it was possible two hundred years ago,
to protect vested rights, to secure every useful institution,
every institution endeared by antiquity and noble associations,
and, at the same time, to introduce into the system improvements
harmonizing with the original plan. It remains to be seen whether
two hundred years have made us wiser.

We know of no great revolution which might not have been
prevented by compromise early and graciously made. Firmness is a
great virtue in public affairs; but it has its proper sphere.
Conspiracies and insurrections in which small minorities are
engaged, the outbreakings of popular violence unconnected with
any extensive project or any durable principle, are best
repressed by vigour and decision. To shrink from them is to make
them formidable. But no wise ruler will confound the pervading
taint with the slight local irritation. No wise ruler will treat
the deeply seated discontents of a great party, as he treats the
fury of a mob which destroys mills and power-looms. The neglect
of this distinction has been fatal even to governments strong in
the power of the sword. The present time is indeed a time of
peace and order. But it is at such a time that fools are most
thoughtless and wise men most thoughtful. That the discontents
which have agitated the country during the late and the present
reign, and which, though not always noisy, are never wholly
dormant, will again break forth with aggravated symptoms, is
almost as certain as that the tides and seasons will follow their
appointed course. But in all movements of the human mind which
tend to great revolutions there is a crisis at which moderate
concession may amend, conciliate, and preserve. Happy will it be
for England if, at that crisis her interests be confided to men
for whom history has not recorded the long series of human crimes
and follies in vain.



BURLEIGH AND HIS TIMES
(April 1832)

Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Honourable
William Cecil Lord Burghley, Secretary of State in the Reign of
King Edward the Sixth, and Lord High Treasurer, of England in the
Reign of Queen Elizabeth. Containing an historical View of the
Times in which he lived, and of the many eminent and illustrious
Persons with whom he was connected; with  Extracts from his
Private and Official Correspondence and other Papers, now first
published from the Originals. By the Reverend EDWARD NARES, D.D.,
Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. 3
vols. 4to. London: 1828, 1832.

THE work of Dr. Nares has filled us with astonishment similar to
that which Captain Lemuel Gulliver felt when first he landed in
Brobdingnag, and saw corn as high as the oaks in the New Forest,
thimbles as large as buckets, and wrens of the bulk of turkeys.
The whole book, and every component part of it, is on a gigantic
scale. The title is as long as an ordinary preface: the prefatory
matter would furnish out an ordinary book; and the book contains
as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the
merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us
better than by saying that it consists of about two thousand
closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies fifteen hundred
inches cubic measure, and that it weighs sixty pounds
avoirdupois. Such a book might, before the deluge, have been
considered as light reading by Hilpa and Shallum. But unhappily
the life of man is now three-score years and ten; and we cannot
but think it somewhat unfair in Dr. Nares to demand from us so
large a portion of so short an existence.

Compared with the labour of reading through these volumes, all
other labour, the labour of thieves on the treadmill, of children
in factories, of negroes in sugar plantations, is an agreeable
recreation. There was, it is said, a criminal in Italy, who was
suffered to make his choice between Guicciardini and the galleys.
He chose the history. But the war of Pisa was too much for him.
He changed his mind, and went to the oar. Guicciardini, though
certainly not the most amusing of writers, is a Herodotus or a
Froissart, when compared with Dr. Nares, It is not merely in
bulk, but in specific gravity also, that these memoirs exceed all
other human compositions. On every subject which the Professor
discusses, he produces three times as many pages as another man;
and one of his pages is as tedious as another man's three. His
book is swelled to its vast dimensions by endless repetitions, by
episodes which have nothing to do with the main action, by
quotations from books which are in every circulating library, and
by reflections which, when they happen to be just, are so obvious
that they must necessarily occur to the mind of every reader. He
employs more words in expounding and defending a truism than any
other writer would employ in supporting a paradox. Of the rules
of historical perspective, he has not the faintest notion. There
is neither foreground nor background in his delineation. The wars
of Charles the Fifth in Germany are detailed at almost as much
length as in Robertson's life of that prince. The troubles of
Scotland are related as fully as in M'Crie's Life of John Knox.
It would be most unjust to deny that Dr. Nares is a man of great
industry and research; but he is so utterly incompetent to,
arrange the materials which he has collected that he might as
well have left them in their original repositories.

Neither the facts which Dr. Nares has discovered, nor the
arguments which he urges, will, we apprehend,  materially alter
the opinion generally entertained by judicious readers of history
concerning his hero. Lord Burleigh can hardly be called a great
man. He was not one of those whose genius and energy change the
fate of empires. He was by nature and habit one of those who
follow, not one of those who lead. Nothing that is recorded,
either of his words or of his actions, indicates intellectual or
moral elevation. But his talents, though not brilliant, were of
an eminently useful kind; and his principles, though not
inflexible, were not more relaxed than those of his associates
and competitors. He had a cool temper, a sound judgement, great
powers of application, and a constant eye to the main chance. In
his youth he was, it seems, fond of practical jokes. Yet even out
of these he contrived to extract some pecuniary profit. When he
was studying the law at Gray's Inn, he lost all his furniture and
books at the gaming table to one of his friends. He accordingly
bored a hole in the wall which separated his chambers from those
of his associate, and at midnight bellowed through this passage
threats of damnation and calls to repentance in the ears of the
victorious gambler, who lay sweating with fear all night, and
refunded his winnings on his knees next day. "Many other the like
merry jest," says his old biographer, "I have heard him tell, too
long to be here noted." To the last, Burleigh was somewhat
jocose; and some of his sportive sayings have been recorded by
Bacon. They show much more shrewdness than generosity, and are,
indeed, neatly expressed reasons for exacting money rigorously,
and for keeping it carefully. It must, however, be acknowledged
that he was rigorous and careful for the public advantage as well
as for his own. To extol his moral character as Dr. Nares has
extolled it is absurd. It would be equally absurd to represent
him as a corrupt, rapacious, and bad-hearted man. He paid great
attention to the interests of the state, and great attention also
to the interest of his own family. He never deserted his friends
till it was very inconvenient to stand by them, was an excellent
Protestant, when it was not very advantageous to be a Papist,
recommended a tolerant policy to his mistress as strongly as he
could recommend it without hazarding her favour, never put to the
rack any person from whom it did not seem probable that useful
information might be derived, and was so moderate in his desires
that he left only three hundred distinct landed estates, though
he might, as his honest servant assures us, have left much more,
"if he would have taken money out of the Exchequer for his own
use, as many Treasurers have done."

Burleigh, like the old Marquess of Winchester, who preceded him
in the custody of the White Staff, was of the willow, and not of
the oak. He first rose into notice by defending the supremacy of
Henry the Eighth. He was subsequently favoured and promoted by
the Duke of Somerset. He not only contrived to escape unhurt when
his patron fell, but became an important member of the
administration of Northumberland. Dr. Nares assures us over and
over again that there could have been nothing base in Cecil's
conduct on this occasion; for, says he, Cecil continued to stand
well with Cranmer. This, we confess, hardly satisfies us. We are
much of the mind of Falstaff's tailor. We must have better
assurance for Sir John than Bardolph's. We like not the security.

Through the whole course of that miserable intrigue which was
carried on round the dying bed of Edward the Sixth, Cecil so
bemeaned himself as to avoid, first, the displeasure of
Northumberland, and afterwards the displeasure of Mary. He was
prudently unwilling to put his hand to the instrument which
changed the course of the succession. But the furious Dudley was
master of the palace. Cecil, therefore, according to his own
account, excused himself from signing as a party, but consented
to sign as a witness. It is not easy to describe his
dexterous conduct at this most perplexing crisis in language
more appropriate than that which is employed by old Fuller. "His
hand wrote it as secretary of state," says that quaint writer;
"but his heart consented not thereto. Yea, he openly opposed it;
though at last yielding to the greatness of Northumberland, in an
age when it was present drowning not to swim with the stream. But
as the philosopher tells us, that though the planets be whirled
about daily from east to west, by the motion of the primum
mobile, yet have they also a contrary proper motion of their own
from west to east, which they slowly, though surely, move, at
their leisure; so Cecil had secret counter-endeavours against the
strain of the court herein, and privately advanced his rightful
intentions, against the foresaid duke's ambition."

This was undoubtedly the most perilous conjuncture of Cecil's
life. Wherever there was a safe course, he was safe. But here
every course was full of danger. His situation rendered it
impossible for him to be neutral. If he acted on either side, if
he refused to act at all, he ran a fearful risk. He saw all the
difficulties of his position. He sent his money and plate out of
London, made over his estates to his son, and carried arms about
his person. His best arms, however, were his sagacity and his
self-command. The plot in which he had been an unwilling
accomplice ended, as it was natural that so odious and absurd a
plot should end, in the ruin of its contrivers. In the meantime,
Cecil quietly extricated himself and, having been successively
patronised by Henry, by Somerset, and by Northumberland,
continued to flourish under the protection of Mary.

He had no aspirations after the crown of martyrdom. He confessed
himself, therefore, with great decorum, heard mass in Wimbledon
Church at Easter, and, for the better ordering of his spiritual
concerns, took a priest into his house. Dr. Nares, whose
simplicity passes that of any casuist with whom we are
acquainted, vindicates his hero by assuring us that this was not
superstition, but pure unmixed hypocrisy. "That he did in some
manner conform, we shall not be able, in the face of existing
documents, to deny; while we feel in our own minds abundantly
satisfied, that, during this very trying reign, he never
abandoned the prospect of another revolution in favour of
Protestantism." In another place, the Doctor tells us, that Cecil
went to mass "with no idolatrous intention." Nobody, we believe,
ever accused him of idolatrous intentions. The very ground of the
charge against him is that he had no idolatrous intentions. We
never should have blamed him if he had really gone to Wimbledon
Church, with the feelings of a good Catholic, to worship the
host. Dr. Nares speaks in several places with just severity of
the sophistry of the Jesuits, and with just admiration of the
incomparable letters of Pascal. It is somewhat strange,
therefore, that he should adopt, to the full extent, the
jesuitical doctrine of the direction of intentions.

We do not blame Cecil for not choosing to be burned. The deep
stain upon his memory is that, for differences of opinion for
which he would risk nothing himself, he, in the day of his power,
took away without scruple the lives of others. One of the excuses
suggested in these Memoirs for his conforming, during the reign
of Mary to the Church of Rome, is that he may have been of the
same mind with those German Protestants who were called
Adiaphorists, and who considered the popish rites as matters
indifferent. Melanchthon was one of these moderate persons, and
"appears," says Dr. Nares, "to have gone greater lengths than
any imputed to Lord Burleigh." We should have thought this not
only an excuse, but a complete vindication, if Cecil had been an
Adiaphorist for the benefit of others as well as for his own. If
the popish rites were matters of so little moment that a good
Protestant might lawfully practise them for his safety, how could
it be just or humane that a Papist should be hanged, drawn, and
quartered, for practising them from a sense of duty? Unhappily
these non-essentials soon became matters of life and death just
at the very time at which Cecil attained the highest point of
power and favour, an Act of Parliament was passed by which the
penalties of high treason were denounced against persons who
should do in sincerity what he had done from cowardice.

Early in the reign of Mary, Cecil was employed in a mission
scarcely consistent with the character of a zealous Protestant.
He was sent to escort the Papal Legate, Cardinal Pole, from
Brussels to London. That great body of moderate persons who cared
more for the quiet of the realm than for the controverted points
which were in issue between the Churches seem to have placed
their chief hope in the wisdom and humanity of the gentle
Cardinal. Cecil, it is clear, cultivated the friendship of Pole
with great assiduity, and received great advantage from the
Legate's protection.

But the best protection of Cecil, during the gloomy and
disastrous reign of Mary, was that which he derived from his own
prudence and from his own temper, a prudence which could never be
lulled into carelessness, a temper which could never be irritated
into rashness. The Papists could find no occasion against him.
Yet he did not lose the esteem even of those sterner Protestants
who had preferred exile to recantation. He attached himself to
the persecuted heiress of the throne, and entitled himself to her
gratitude and confidence. Yet he continued to receive marks of
favour from the Queen. In the House of Commons, he put himself at
the head of the party opposed to the Court.  Yet, so guarded was
his language that, even when some of those who acted with him
were imprisoned by the Privy Council, he escaped with impunity.

At length Mary died: Elizabeth succeeded; and Cecil rose at once
to greatness. He was sworn in Privy-councillor and Secretary of
State to the new sovereign before he left her prison of Hatfield;
and he continued to serve her during forty years, without
intermission, in the highest employments. His abilities were
precisely those which keep men long in power. He belonged to the
class of the  Walpoles, the Pelhams, and the Liverpools, not to
that of the St. Johns, the Carterets, the Chathams, and the
Cannings. If he had been a man of original genius and of an
enterprising spirit, it would have been scarcely possible for him
to keep his power or even his head. There was not room in one
government for an Elizabeth and a Richelieu.  What the haughty
daughter of Henry needed, was a moderate, cautious, flexible
minister, skilled in the details of business, competent to
advise, but not aspiring to command. And such a minister she
found in Burleigh. No arts could shake the confidence which she
reposed in her old and trusty servant. The courtly graces of
Leicester, the brilliant talents and accomplishments of Essex,
touched the fancy, perhaps the heart, of the woman; but no rival
could deprive the Treasurer of the place which he possessed in
the favour of the Queen. She sometimes chid him sharply; but he
was the man whom she delighted to honour. For Burleigh, she
forgot her usual parsimony both of wealth and of dignities. For
Burleigh, she relaxed that severe etiquette to which she was
unreasonably attached. Every other person to whom she addressed
her speech, or on whom the glance of her eagle eye fell,
instantly sank on his knee.  For Burleigh alone, a chair was set
in her presence; and there the old minister, by birth only a
plain Lincolnshire esquire, took his ease, while the haughty
heirs of the Fitzalans and the De Veres humbled themselves to the
dust around him. At length, having, survived all his early
coadjutors and rivals, he died full of years and honours. His
royal mistress visited him on his deathbed, and cheered him with
assurances of her affection and esteem; and his power passed,
with little diminution, to a son who inherited his abilities, and
whose mind had been formed by his counsels.

The life of Burleigh was commensurate with one of the most
important periods in the history of the world. It exactly
measures the time during which the House of Austria held decided
superiority and aspired to universal dominion. In the year in
which Burleigh was born, Charles the Fifth obtained the imperial
crown. In the year in which Burleigh died, the vast designs which
had, during near a century, kept Europe in constant agitation,
were buried in the same grave with the proud and sullen Philip.

The life of Burleigh was commensurate also with the period during
which a great moral revolution was effected, a revolution the
consequences of which were felt, not only in the cabinets of
princes, but at half the firesides in Christendom. He was born
when the great religious schism was just commencing. He lived to
see that schism complete, and to see a line of demarcation,
which, since his death, has been very little altered, strongly
drawn between Protestant and Catholic Europe.

The only event of modern times which can be properly compared
with the Reformation is the French Revolution, or, to speak more
accurately, that great revolution of political feeling which took
place in almost every part of the civilised world during the
eighteenth century, and which obtained in France its most
terrible and signal triumph. Each of these memorable events may
be described as a rising up of the human reason against a Caste.
The one was a struggle of the laity against the clergy for
intellectual liberty; the other was a struggle of the people
against princes and nobles for political liberty. In both cases,
the spirit of innovation was at first encouraged by the class to
which it was likely to be most prejudicial. It was under the
patronage of Frederic, of Catherine, of Joseph, and of the
grandees of France, that the philosophy which afterwards
threatened all the thrones and aristocracies of Europe with
destruction first became formidable. The ardour with which men
betook themselves to liberal studies, at the close of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, was
zealously encouraged by the heads of that very church to which
liberal studies were destined to be fatal. In both cases, when
the explosion came, it came with a violence which appalled and
disgusted many of those who had previously been distinguished by
the freedom of their opinions. The violence of the democratic
party in France made Burke a Tory and Alfieri a courtier. The
violence of the chiefs of the German schism made Erasmus a
defender of abuses, and turned the author of Utopia into a
persecutor. In both cases, the convulsion which had overthrown
deeply seated errors, shook all the principles on which society
rests to their very foundations. The minds of men were unsettled.
It seemed for a time that all order and morality were about to
perish with the prejudices with which they had been long and
intimately associated. Frightful cruelties were committed.
Immense masses of property were confiscated. Every part of Europe
swarmed with exiles. In moody and turbulent spirits zeal soured
into malignity, or foamed into madness. From the political
agitation of the eighteenth century sprang the Jacobins. From the
religious agitation of the sixteenth century sprang the
Anabaptists. The partisans of Robespierre robbed and murdered in
the name of fraternity and equality. The followers of
Kniperdoling robbed and murdered in the name of Christian
liberty.  The feeling of patriotism was in many parts of Europe,
almost wholly extinguished. All the old maxims of foreign policy
were changed. Physical boundaries were superseded by moral
boundaries. Nations made war on each other with new arms, with
arms which no fortifications, however strong by nature or, by
art, could resist, with arms before which rivers parted like the
Jordan, and ramparts fell down like the walls of Jericho. The
great masters of fleets and armies were often reduced to confess,
like Milton's warlike angel, how hard they found it

                        "--To exclude
Spiritual substance with corporeal bar."

Europe was divided, as Greece had been divided during the period
concerning which Thucydides wrote. The conflict was not, as it is
in ordinary times, between state and state, but between two
omnipresent factions, each of which was in some places dominant
and in other places oppressed, but which, openly or covertly,
carried on their strife in the bosom of every society. No man
asked whether another belonged to the same country with himself,
but whether he belonged to the same sect. Party-spirit seemed to
justify and consecrate acts which, in any other times, would have
been considered as the foulest of treasons. The French emigrant
saw nothing disgraceful in bringing Austrian and Prussian hussars
to Paris. The Irish or Italian democrat saw no impropriety in
serving the French Directory against his own native government.
So, in the sixteenth century, the fury of theological factions
suspended all national animosities and jealousies. The Spaniards
were invited into France by the League; the English were invited
into France by the Huguenots.

We by no means intend to underrate or to palliate the crimes and
excesses which, during the last generation, were produced by the
spirit of democracy. But, when we hear men zealous for the
Protestant religion, constantly represent the French Revolution
as radically and essentially evil on account of those crimes and
excesses, we cannot but remember that the deliverance of our
ancestors from the house of their spiritual bondage was effected
"by plagues and by signs, by wonders and by war." We cannot but
remember that, as in the case of the French Revolution, so also
in the case of the Reformation, those who rose up against tyranny
were themselves deeply tainted with the vices which tyranny
engenders. We cannot but remember that libels scarcely less
scandalous than those of Hebert, mummeries scarcely less absurd
than those of Clootz, and crimes scarcely less atrocious than
those of Marat, disgrace the early history of Protestantism. The
Reformation is an event long past. That volcano has spent its
rage. The wide waste produced by its outbreak is forgotten. The
landmarks which were swept away have been replaced. The ruined
edifices have been repaired. The lava has covered with a rich
incrustation the fields which it once devastated, and, after
having turned a beautiful and fruitful garden into a desert, has
again turned the desert into a still more beautiful and fruitful
garden. The second great eruption is not yet over. The marks of
its ravages are still all around us. The ashes are still hot
beneath our feet. In some directions the deluge of fire still
continues to spread. Yet experience surely entitles us to believe
that this explosion, like that which preceded it, will fertilise
the soil which it has devastated. Already, in those parts which
have suffered most severely, rich cultivation and secure
dwellings have begun to appear amidst the waste. The more we
read of the history of past ages, the more we observe the signs
of our own times, the more do we feel our hearts filled and
swelled up by a good hope for the future destinies of the human
race.

The history of the Reformation in England is full of strange
problems. The most prominent and extraordinary phaenomenon
which it presents to us is the gigantic strength of the
government contrasted with the feebleness of the religious
parties. During the twelve or thirteen years which followed the
death of Henry the Eighth, the religion of the state was thrice
changed. Protestantism was established by Edward; the Catholic
Church was restored by Mary; Protestantism was again established
by Elizabeth. The faith of the nation seemed to depend on the
personal inclinations of the sovereign.  Nor was this all. An
established church was then, as a matter of course, a persecuting
church. Edward persecuted Catholics. Mary persecuted Protestants.
Elizabeth persecuted Catholics again. The father of those three
sovereigns had enjoyed the pleasure of persecuting both sects at
once, and had sent to death, on the same hurdle, the heretic who
denied the real presence, and the traitor who denied the royal
supremacy. There was nothing in England like that fierce and
bloody opposition which, in France, each of the religious
factions in its turn offered to the government. We had neither a
Coligny nor a Mayenne, neither a Moncontour nor an Ivry. No
English city braved sword and famine for the reformed doctrines
with the spirit of Rochelle, or for the Catholic doctrines with
the spirit of Paris. Neither sect in England formed a League.
Neither sect extorted a recantation from the sovereign. Neither
sect could obtain from an adverse sovereign even a toleration.
The English Protestants, after several years of domination, sank
down with scarcely a struggle under the tyranny of Mary. The
Catholics, after having regained and abused their old ascendency
submitted patiently to the severe rule of Elizabeth. Neither
Protestants nor Catholics engaged in any great and well-organized
scheme of resistance. A few wild and tumultuous risings,
suppressed as soon as they appeared, a few dark conspiracies in
which only a small number of desperate men engaged, such were the
utmost efforts made by these two parties to assert the most
sacred of human rights, attacked by the most odious tyranny.

The explanation of these circumstances which has generally been
given is very simple but by no means satisfactory. The power of
the crown, it is said, was then at its height, and was in fact
despotic. This solution, we own, seems to us to be no solution at
all. It has long been the fashion, a fashion introduced by Mr.
Hume, to describe the English monarchy in the sixteenth century
as an absolute monarchy. And such undoubtedly it appears to a
superficial observer. Elizabeth, it is true, often spoke to her
parliaments in language as haughty and imperious as that which
the Great Turk would use to his divan. She punished with great
severity members of the House of Commons who, in her opinion,
carried the freedom of debate too far. She assumed the power of
legislating by means of proclamations. She imprisoned her
subjects without bringing them to a legal trial. Torture was
often employed, in defiance of the laws of England, for the
purpose of extorting confessions from those who were shut up in
her dungeons. The authority of the Star-Chamber and of the
Ecclesiastical Commission was at its highest point. Severe
restraints were imposed on political and religious discussion.
The number of presses was at one time limited. No man could print
without a licence; and every work had to undergo the scrutiny of
the Primate, or the Bishop of London. Persons whose writings were
displeasing to the Court, were cruelly mutilated, like Stubbs, or
put to death, like Penry. Nonconformity was severely punished.
The Queen prescribed the exact rule of religious faith and
discipline; and whoever departed from that rule, either to the
right or to the left, was in danger of severe penalties.

Such was this government. Yet we know that it was loved by the
great body of those who lived under it. We know that, during the
fierce contests of the seventeenth century, both the hostile
parties spoke of the time of Elizabeth as of a golden age. That
great Queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in
Henry the Seventh's chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the
hearts of a free people.

The truth seems to be that the government of the Tudors was, with
a few occasional deviations, a popular government, under the
forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the
prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Lewis
the Fourteenth, and her parliaments were as obsequious as his
parliaments, that her warrant had as much authority as his
lettre de cachet. The extravagance with which her courtiers
eulogized her personal and mental charms went beyond the
adulation of Boileau and Moliere. Lewis would have blushed to
receive from those who composed the gorgeous circles of Marli and
Versailles such outward marks of servitude as the haughty
Britoness exacted of all who approached her. But the authority of
Lewis rested on the support of his army. The authority of
Elizabeth rested solely on the support of her people. Those who
say that her power was absolute do not sufficiently consider in
what her power consisted. Her power consisted in the willing
obedience of her subjects, in their attachment to her person and
to her office, in their respect for the old line from which she
sprang, in their sense of the general security which they enjoyed
under her government. These were the means, and the only means,
which she had at her command for carrying her decrees into
execution, for resisting foreign enemies, and for crushing
domestic treason. There was not a ward in the city, there was not
a hundred in any shire in England, which could not have
overpowered the handful of armed men who composed her household.
If a hostile sovereign threatened invasion, if an ambitious noble
raised the standard of revolt, she could have recourse only to
the trainbands of her capital and the array of her counties, to
the citizens and yeomen of England, commanded by the merchants
and esquires of England.

Thus, when intelligence arrived of the vast preparations which
Philip was making for the subjugation of the realm, the first
person to whom the government thought of applying for assistance
was the Lord Mayor of London. They sent to ask him what force the
city would engage to furnish for the defence of the kingdom
against the Spaniards. The Mayor and Common Council, in return
desired to know what force the Queen's Highness wished them to
furnish. The answer was, fifteen ships, and five thousand men.
The Londoners deliberated on the matter, and, two days after,
"humbly intreated the council, in sign of their perfect love and
loyalty to prince and country, to accept ten thousand men, and
thirty ships amply furnished."

People who could give such signs as these of their loyalty were
by no means to be misgoverned with impunity. The English in the
sixteenth century were, beyond all doubt, a free people. They had
not, indeed, the outward show of freedom; but they had the
reality. They had not as good a constitution as we have; but they
had that without which the best constitution is as useless as the
king's proclamation against vice and immorality, that which,
without any constitution, keeps rulers in awe, force, and the
spirit to use it. Parliaments, it is true, were rarely held, and
were not very respectfully treated. The great charter was often
violated. But the people had a security against gross and
systematic misgovernment, far stronger than all the parchment
that was ever marked with the sign-manual, and than all the wax
that was ever pressed by the great seal.

It is a common error in politics to confound means with ends.
Constitutions, charters, petitions of right, declarations of
right, representative assemblies, electoral colleges, are not
good government; nor do they, even when most elaborately
constructed, necessarily produce good government. Laws exist in
vain for those who have not the courage and the means to defend
them. Electors meet in vain where want makes them the slaves of
the landlord, or where superstition makes them the slaves of the
priest. Representative assemblies sit in vain unless they have at
their command, in the last resort the physical power which is
necessary to make their deliberations free, and their votes
effectual.

The Irish are better represented in parliament than the Scotch,
who indeed are not represented at all.  But are the Irish better
governed than the Scotch? Surely not. This circumstance has of
late been used as an argument against reform. It proves nothing
against reform. It proves only this, that laws have no magical,
no supernatural, virtue; that laws do not act like Aladdin's lamp
or Prince Ahmed's apple; that priestcraft, that ignorance, that
the rage of contending factions, may make good institutions
useless; that intelligence, sobriety, industry, moral freedom,
firm union, may supply in a great measure the defects of the
worst representative system. A people whose education and habits
are such that, in every quarter of the world they rise above the
mass of those with whom they mix, as surely as oil rises to the
top of water, a people of such temper and self-government that
the wildest popular excesses recorded in their history partake of
the gravity of judicial proceedings, and of the solemnity of
religious rites, a people whose national pride and mutual
attachment have passed into a proverb, a people whose high and
fierce spirit, so forcibly described in the haughty motto which
encircles their thistle, preserved their independence, during a
struggle of centuries, from the encroachments of wealthier and
more powerful neighbours, such a people cannot be long oppressed.
Any government, however constituted, must respect their wishes
and tremble at their discontents. It is indeed most desirable
that such a people should exercise a direct influence on the
conduct of affairs, and should make their wishes known through
constitutional organs. But some influence, direct or indirect,
they will assuredly possess. Some organ, constitutional or
unconstitutional, they will assuredly find. They will be better
governed under a good constitution than under a bad constitution.
But they will be better governed under the worst constitution
than some other nations under the best. In any general
classification of constitutions, the constitution of Scotland
must be reckoned as one of the worst, perhaps as the worst, in
Christian Europe. Yet the Scotch are not ill governed. And the
reason is simply that they will not bear to be ill governed.

In some of the Oriental monarchies, in Afghanistan for example,
though there exists nothing which an European publicist would
call a Constitution, the sovereign generally governs in
conformity with certain rules established for the public benefit;
and the sanction of those rules is, that every Afghan approves
them, and that every Afghan is a soldier.

The monarchy of England in the sixteenth century was a monarchy
of this kind. It is called an absolute monarchy, because little
respect was paid by the Tudors to those institutions which we
have been accustomed to consider as the sole checks on the power
of the sovereign. A modern Englishman can hardly understand how
the people can have had any real security for good government
under kings who levied benevolences, and chid the House of
Commons as they would have chid a pack of dogs. People do not
sufficiently consider that, though the legal cheeks were feeble,
the natural checks were strong. There was one great and effectual
limitation on the royal authority, the knowledge that, if the
patience of the nation were severely tried, the nation would put
forth its strength, and that its strength would be found
irresistible. If a large body of Englishmen became thoroughly
discontented, instead of presenting requisitions, holding large
meetings, passing resolutions, signing petitions, forming
associations and unions, they rose up; they took their halberds
and their bows; and, if the sovereign was not sufficiently
popular to find among his subjects other halberds and other bows
to oppose to the rebels, nothing remained for him but a
repetition of the horrible scenes of Berkeley and Pomfret, He had
no regular army which could, by its superior arms and its
superior skill, overawe or vanquish the sturdy Commons of his
realm, abounding in the native hardihood of Englishmen, and
trained in the simple discipline of the militia.

It has been said that the Tudors were as absolute as the Caesars.
Never was parallel so unfortunate. The government of the Tudors
was the direct opposite to the government of Augustus and his
successors. The Caesars ruled despotically, by means of a great
standing army, under the decent forms of a republican
constitution. They called themselves citizens. They mixed
unceremoniously with other citizens. In theory they were only the
elective magistrates of a free commonwealth. Instead of
arrogating to themselves despotic power, they acknowledged
allegiance to the senate. They were merely the lieutenants of
that venerable body. They mixed in debate. They even appeared as
advocates before the courts of law. Yet they could safely indulge
in the wildest freaks of cruelty and rapacity, while their
legions remained faithful. Our Tudors, on the other hand, under
the titles and forms of monarchical supremacy, were essentially
popular magistrates. They had no means of protecting themselves
against the public hatred; and they were therefore compelled to
court the public favour. To enjoy all the state and all the
personal indulgences of absolute power, to be, adored with
Oriental prostrations, to dispose at will of the liberty and even
of the life of ministers and courtiers, this nation granted to
the Tudors. But the condition on which they were suffered to be
the tyrants of Whitehall was that they should be the mild and
paternal sovereigns of England. They were under the same
restraints with regard to their people under which a military
despot is placed with regard to his army. They would have found
it as dangerous to grind their subjects with cruel taxation as
Nero would have found it to leave his praetorians unpaid. Those
who immediately surrounded the royal person, and engaged in the
hazardous game of ambition, were exposed to the most fearful
dangers. Buckingham, Cromwell, Surrey, Seymour of Sudeley,
Somerset, Northumberland, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, perished on
the scaffold. But in general the country gentleman hunted and the
merchant traded in peace. Even Henry, as cruel as Domitian, but
far more politic, contrived, while reeking with the blood of the
Lamiae, to be a favourite with the cobblers.

The Tudors committed very tyrannical acts. But in their ordinary
dealings with the people they were not, and could not safely be,
tyrants. Some excesses were easily pardoned. For the nation was
proud of the high and fiery blood of its magnificent princes, and
saw in many proceedings which a lawyer would even then have
condemned, the outbreak of the same noble spirit which so
manfully hurled foul scorn at Parma and at Spain. But to this
endurance there was a limit. If the government ventured to adopt
measures which the people really felt to be oppressive, it was
soon compelled to change its course. When Henry the Eighth
attempted to raise a forced loan of unusual amount by proceedings
of unusual rigour, the opposition which he encountered was such
as appalled even his stubborn and imperious spirit. The people,
we are told, said that, if they were treated thus, "then were it
worse than the taxes Of France; and England should be bond, and
not free." The county of Suffolk rose in arms. The king prudently
yielded to an opposition which, if he had persisted, would, in
all probability, have taken the form of a general rebellion.
Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people felt
themselves aggrieved by the monopolies. The Queen, proud and
courageous as she was, shrank from a contest with the nation,
and, with admirable sagacity, conceded all that her subjects had
demanded, while it was yet in her power to concede with dignity
and grace.

It cannot be imagined that a people who had in their own hands
the means of checking their princes would suffer any prince to
impose upon them a religion generally detested. It is absurd to
suppose that, if the nation had been decidedly attached to the
Protestant faith, Mary could have re-established the Papal
supremacy. It is equally absurd to suppose that, if the nation
had been zealous for the ancient religion, Elizabeth could have
restored the Protestant Church. The truth is, that the people
were not disposed to engage in a struggle either for the new or
for the old doctrines. Abundance of spirit was shown when it
seemed likely that Mary would resume her father's grants of
church property, or that she would sacrifice the interests of
England to the husband whom she regarded with unmerited
tenderness. That queen found that it would be madness to attempt
the restoration of the abbey lands. She found that her subjects
would never suffer her to make her hereditary kingdom a fief of
Castile. On these points she encountered a steady resistance, and
was compelled to give way. If she was able to establish the
Catholic worship and to persecute those who would not conform to
it, it was evidently because the people cared far less for the
Protestant religion than for the rights of property and for the
independence of the English crown. In plain words, they did not
think the difference between the hostile sects worth a struggle.
There was undoubtedly a zealous Protestant party and a zealous
Catholic party. But both these parties were, we believe, very
small. We doubt, whether both together made up, at the time of
Mary's death, the twentieth part of the nation. The remaining
nineteen twentieths halted between the two opinions, and were not
disposed to risk a revolution in the government, for the purpose
of giving to either of the extreme factions an advantage over the
other.

We possess no data which will enable us to compare with exactness
the force of the two sects. Mr. Butler asserts that, even at the
accession of James the First, a majority of the population of
England were Catholics. This is pure assertion; and is not only
unsupported by evidence, but, we think, completely disproved by
the strongest evidence. Dr. Lingard is of opinion that the
Catholics were one-half of the nation in the middle of the reign
of Elizabeth. Rushton says that, when Elizabeth  came to the
throne, the Catholics were two-thirds of the nation, and the
Protestants only one-third. The most judicious and impartial of
English historians, Mr. Hallam, is, on the contrary, of opinion,
that two-thirds were Protestants and only one-third Catholics. To
us, we must confess, it seems, incredible that, if the
Protestants were really two to one, they should have borne the
government of Mary, or that, if the Catholics were really two to
one, they should have borne the government of Elizabeth. We are
at a loss to conceive how a sovereign who has no standing army,
and whose power rests solely on the loyalty of his subjects, can
continue for years to persecute a religion to which the majority
of his subjects are sincerely attached. In fact, the Protestants
did rise up against one sister, and the Catholics against the
other. Those risings clearly showed how small and feeble both the
parties were. Both in the one case and in the other the nation
ranged itself on the side of the government, and the insurgents
were speedily put down and punished. The Kentish gentlemen who
took up arms for the reformed doctrines against Mary, and the
great Northern Earls who displayed the banner of the Five Wounds
against Elizabeth, were alike considered by the great body of their
countrymen as wicked disturbers of the public peace.

The account which Cardinal Bentivoglio gave of the state of
religion in England well deserves consideration. The zealous
Catholics he reckoned at one-thirtieth part of the nation. The
people who would without the least scruple become Catholics, if
the Catholic religion were established, he estimated at four-
fifths of the nation. We believe this account to have been very
near the truth. We believe that people, whose minds were made up
on either side, who were inclined to make any sacrifice or run
any risk for either religion, were very few. Each side had a few
enterprising champions, and a few stout-hearted martyrs; but the
nation, undetermined in its opinions and feelings, resigned
itself implicitly to the guidance of the government, and lent to
the sovereign for the time being an equally ready aid against
either of the extreme parties.

We are very far from saying that the English of that generation
were irreligious. They held firmly those doctrines which are
common to the Catholic and to the Protestant theology. But they
had no fixed opinion as to the matters in dispute between the
churches. They were in a situation resembling that of those
Borderers whom Sir Walter Scott has described with so much
spirit,

"Who sought the beeves that made their broth
In England and in Scotland both."

And who

"Nine times outlawed had been
By England's king and Scotland's queen."

They were sometimes Protestants, sometimes Catholics; sometimes
half Protestants half Catholics.

The English had not, for ages, been bigoted Papists. In the
fourteenth century, the first and perhaps the greatest of the
reformers, John Wicliffe, had stirred the public mind to its
inmost depths. During the same century, a scandalous schism in
the Catholic Church had diminished, in many parts of Europe, the
reverence in which the Roman pontiffs were held. It is clear
that, a hundred years before the time of Luther, a great party in
this kingdom was eager for a change at least as extensive as that
which was subsequently effected by Henry the Eighth. The House of
Commons, in the reign of Henry the Fourth, proposed a
confiscation of ecclesiastical property, more sweeping and
violent even than that which took place under the administration
of Thomas Cromwell; and, though defeated in this attempt, they
succeeded in depriving the clerical order of some of its most
oppressive privileges. The splendid conquests of Henry the Fifth
turned the attention of the nation from domestic reform. The
Council of Constance removed some of the grossest of those
scandals which had deprived the Church of the public respect. The
authority of that venerable synod propped up the sinking
authority of the Popedom. A considerable reaction took place. It
cannot, however, be doubted, that there was still some concealed
Lollardism in England; or that many who did not absolutely
dissent from any doctrine held by the Church of Rome were jealous
of the wealth and power enjoyed by her ministers. At the very
beginning of the reign of Henry the Eighth, a struggle took place
between the clergy and the courts of law, in which the courts of
law remained victorious. One of the bishops, on that occasion,
declared that the common people entertained the strongest
prejudices against his order, and that a clergyman had no chance
of fair play before a lay tribunal. The London juries, he said,
entertained such a spite to the Church that, if Abel were a
priest, they would find him guilty of the murder of Cain. This
was said a few months before the time when Martin Luther began to
preach at Wittenburg against indulgences.

As the Reformation did not find the English bigoted Papists, so
neither was it conducted in such a manner as to make them zealous
Protestants. It was not under the direction of men like that
fiery Saxon who swore that he would go to Worms, though he had to
face as many devils as there were tiles on the houses, or like
that brave Switzer who was struck down while praying in front of
the ranks of Zurich. No preacher of religion had the same power
here which Calvin had at Geneva and Knox in Scotland. The
government put itself early at the head of the movement, and thus
acquired power to regulate, and occasionally to arrest, the
movement.

To many persons it appears extraordinary that Henry the Eighth
should have been able to maintain himself so long in an
intermediate position between the Catholic and Protestant
parties. Most extraordinary it would indeed be, if we were to
suppose that the nation consisted of none but decided Catholics
and decided Protestants. The fact is that the great mass of the
people was neither Catholic nor Protestant, but was, like its
sovereign, midway between the two sects. Henry, in that very part
of his conduct which has been represented as most capricious and
inconsistent, was probably following a policy far more pleasing
to the majority of his subjects than a policy like that of
Edward, or a policy like that of Mary, would have been. Down even
to the very close of the reign of Elizabeth, the people were in a
state somewhat resembling that in which, as Machiavelli says, the
inhabitants of the Roman empire were, during the transition from
heathenism to Christianity; "sendo la maggior parte di loro
incerti a quale Dio dovessero ricorrere." They were generally, we
think, favourable to the royal supremacy. They disliked the
policy of the Court of Rome. Their spirit rose against the
interference of a foreign priest with their national concerns.
The bull which pronounced sentence of deposition against
Elizabeth, the plots which were formed against her life, the
usurpation of her titles by the Queen of Scotland, the hostility
of Philip, excited their strongest indignation. The cruelties of
Bonner were remembered with disgust. Some parts of the new
system, the use of the English language, for example, in public
worship, and the communion in both kinds, were undoubtedly
popular. On the other hand, the early lessons of the nurse and
the priest were not forgotten.  The ancient ceremonies were long
remembered with affectionate reverence. A large portion of the
ancient theology lingered to the last in the minds which had been
imbued with it in childhood.

The best proof that the religion of the people was of this mixed
kind is furnished by the Drama of that age. No man would bring
unpopular opinions prominently forward in a play intended for
representation. And we may safely conclude, that feelings and
opinions which pervade the whole Dramatic Literature of a
generation, are feelings and opinions of which the men of that
generation generally partook.

The greatest and most popular dramatists of the Elizabethan age
treat religious subjects in a very remarkable manner. They speak
respectfully of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But
they speak neither like Catholics nor like Protestants, but like
persons who are wavering between the two systems, or who have
made a system for themselves out of parts selected from both.
They seem to hold some of the Romish rites and doctrines in high
respect. They treat the vow of celibacy, for example, so
tempting, and, in later times, so common a subject for ribaldry,
with mysterious reverence. Almost every member of a religious
order whom they introduce is a holy and venerable man. We
remember in their plays nothing resembling the coarse ridicule
with which the Catholic religion and its ministers were assailed,
two generations later, by dramatists who wished to please the
multitude. We remember no Friar Dominic, no Father Foigard, among
the characters drawn by those great poets. The scene at the close
of the Knight of Malta might have been written by a fervent
Catholic. Massinger shows a great fondness for ecclesiastics of
the Romish Church, and has even gone so far as to bring a
virtuous and interesting Jesuit on the stage. Ford, in that fine
play which it is painful to read and scarcely decent to name,
assigns a highly creditable part to the Friar. The partiality of
Shakspeare for Friars is well known. In Hamlet, the Ghost
complains that he died without extreme unction, and, in defiance
of the article which condemns the doctrine of purgatory, declares
that he is

                      "Confined to fast in fires,
Till the foul crimes, done in his days of nature,
Are burnt and purged away."

These lines, we suspect, would have raised a tremendous storm In
the theatre at any time during the reign of Charles the Second.
They were clearly not written by a zealous Protestant, or for
zealous Protestants. Yet the author of King John and Henry the
Eighth was surely no friend to papal supremacy.

There is, we think, only one solution of the phaenomena which we
find in the history and in the drama of that age. The religion of
the English was a mixed religion, like that of the Samaritan
settlers, described in the second book of Kings, who "feared the
Lord, and served their graven images"; like that of the
Judaizing Christians who blended the ceremonies and doctrines of
the synagogue with those of the church; like that of the Mexican
Indians, who, during many generations after the subjugation of
their race, continued to unite with the rites learned from their
conquerors the worship of the grotesque idols which had been
adored by Montezuma and Guatemozin.

These feelings were not confined to the populace. Elizabeth
herself was by no means exempt from them. A crucifix, with wax-
lights burning round it, stood in her private chapel. She always
spoke with disgust and anger of the marriage of priests. "I was
in horror," says Archbishop Parker, "to hear such words to come
from her mild nature and Christian learned conscience, as she
spake concerning God's holy ordinance and institution of
matrimony." Burleigh prevailed on her to connive at the marriages
of churchmen. But she would only connive; and the children sprung
from such marriages were illegitimate till the accession of James
the First.

That which is, as we have said, the great stain on the character
of Burleigh is also the great stain on the character of
Elizabeth. Being herself an Adiaphorist, having no scruple about
conforming to the Romish Church when conformity was necessary to
her own safety, retaining to the last moment of her life a
fondness for much of the doctrine and much of the ceremonial of
that church, yet she subjected that church to a persecution even
more odious than the persecution with which her sister had
harassed the Protestants. We say more odious. For Mary had at
least the plea of fanaticism. She did nothing for her religion
which she was not prepared to suffer for it. She had held it
firmly under persecution. She fully believed it to be essential
to salvation. If she burned the bodies of her subjects, it was in
order to rescue their souls. Elizabeth had no such pretext. In
opinion, she was little more than half a Protestant. She had
professed, when it suited her, to be wholly a Catholic. There is
an excuse, a wretched excuse, for the massacres of Piedmont and
the Autos da fe of Spain. But what can be said in defence of a
ruler who is at once indifferent and intolerant?

If the great Queen, whose memory is still held in just veneration
by Englishmen, had possessed sufficient virtue and sufficient
enlargement of mind to adopt those principles which More, wiser
in speculation than in action, had avowed in the preceding
generation, and by which the excellent L'Hospital regulated his
conduct in her own time, how different would be the colour of the
whole history of the last two hundred and fifty years! She had
the happiest opportunity ever vouchsafed to any sovereign of
establishing perfect freedom of conscience throughout her
dominions, without danger to her government, without scandal to
any large party among her subjects. The nation, as it was clearly
ready to profess either religion, would, beyond all doubt, have
been ready to tolerate both. Unhappily for her own glory and for
the public peace, she adopted a policy from the effects of which
the empire is still suffering. The yoke of the Established Church
was pressed down on the people till they would bear it no longer.
Then a reaction came. Another reaction followed. To the tyranny
of the establishment succeeded the tumultuous conflict of sects,
infuriated by manifold wrongs, and drunk with unwonted freedom.
To the conflict of sects succeeded again the cruel domination of
one persecuting church. At length oppression put off its most
horrible form, and took a milder aspect. The penal laws which had
been framed for the protection of the established church were
abolished. But exclusions and disabilities still remained. These
exclusions and disabilities, after having generated the most
fearful discontents, after having rendered all government in one
part of the kingdom impossible, after having brought the state to
the very brink of ruin, have, in our times, been removed, but,
though removed have left behind them a rankling which may last
for many years. It is melancholy to think with what case
Elizabeth might have united all conflicting sects under the
shelter of the same impartial laws and the same paternal throne,
and thus have placed the nation in the same situation, as far as
the rights of conscience are concerned, in which we at last
stand, after all the heart-burnings, the persecutions, the
conspiracies, the seditions, the revolutions, the judicial
murders, the civil wars, of ten generations.

This is the dark side of her character. Yet she surely was a
great woman. Of all the sovereigns who exercised a power which
was seemingly absolute, but which in fact depended for support on
the love and confidence of their subjects, she was by far the
most illustrious. It has often been alleged as an excuse for the
misgovernment of her successors that they only followed her
example, that precedents might be found in the transactions of
her reign for persecuting the Puritans, for levying money without
the sanction of the House of Commons, for confining men without
bringing them to trial, for interfering with the liberty of
parliamentary debate. All this may be true. But it is no good
plea for her successors; and for this plain reason, that they
were her successors. She governed one generation, they governed
another; and between the two generations there was almost as
little in common as between the people of two different
countries. It was not by looking at the particular measures which
Elizabeth had adopted, but by looking at the great general
principles of her government, that those who followed her were
likely to learn the art of managing untractable subjects. If,
instead of searching the records of her reign for precedents
which might seem to vindicate the mutilation of Prynne and the
imprisonment of Eliot, the Stuarts had attempted to discover the
fundamental rules which guided her conduct in all her dealings
with her people, they would have perceived that their policy was
then most unlike to hers, when to a superficial observer it would
have seemed most to resemble hers. Firm, haughty, sometimes
unjust and cruel, in her proceedings towards individuals or
towards small parties, she avoided with care, or retracted with
speed, every measure which seemed likely to alienate the great
mass of the people. She gained more honour and more love by the
manner in which she repaired her errors than she would have
gained by never committing errors. If such a man as Charles the
First had been in her place when the whole nation was crying out
against the monopolies, he would have refused all redress. He
would have dissolved the Parliament, and imprisoned the most
popular members. He would have called another Parliament. He
would have given some vague and delusive promises of relief in
return for subsidies. When entreated to fulfil his promises, he
would have again dissolved the Parliament, and again imprisoned
his leading opponents. The country would have become more
agitated than before. The next House of Commons would have been
more unmanageable than that which preceded it. The tyrant would
have agreed to all that the nation demanded. He would have
solemnly ratified an act abolishing monopolies for ever. He would
have received a large supply in return for this concession; and
within half a year new patents, more oppressive than those which
had been cancelled, would have been issued by scores. Such was
the policy which brought the heir of a long line of kings, in
early youth the darling of his countrymen, to a prison and a
scaffold.

Elizabeth, before the House of Commons could address her, took
out of their mouths the words which they were about to utter in
the name of the nation. Her promises went beyond their desires.
Her performance followed close upon her promise. She did not
treat the nation as an adverse party, as a party which had an
interest opposed to hers, as a party to which she was to grant as
few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as
much money as possible. Her benefits were given, not sold; and,
when once given, they were never withdrawn. She gave them too
with a frankness, an effusion of heart, a princely dignity, a
motherly tenderness, which enhanced their value. They were
received by the sturdy country gentlemen who had come up to
Westminster full of resentment, with tears of joy, and shouts of
"God save the Queen." Charles the First gave up half the
prerogatives of his crown to the Commons; and the Commons sent
him in return the Grand Remonstrance.

We had intended to say something concerning that illustrious
group of which Elizabeth is the central figure, that group which
the last of the bards saw in vision from the top of Snowdon,
encircling the Virgin Queen,

                 "Many a baron bold,
And gorgeous dames and statesmen old
In bearded majesty."

We had intended to say something concerning the dexterous
Walsingham, the impetuous Oxford, the graceful Sackville, the
all-accomplished Sydney; concerning Essex, the ornament of the
court and of the camp, the model of chivalry, the munificent
patron of genius, whom great virtues, great courage, great
talents, the favour of his sovereign, the love of his countrymen,
all that seemed to ensure a happy and glorious life, led to an
early and an ignominious death, concerning Raleigh, the soldier,
the sailor, the scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the
historian, the philosopher, whom we picture to ourselves,
sometimes reviewing the Queen's guard, sometimes giving chase to
a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party
in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet
love-songs too near the ears of her Highness's maids of honour,
and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with
Livy. We had intended also to say something concerning the
literature of that splendid period, and especially concerning
those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets, and the Prince
of Philosophers, who have made the Elizabethan age a more
glorious and important era in the history of the human mind than
the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo. But subjects so vast
require a space far larger than we can at present afford. We
therefore stop here, fearing that, if we proceed, our article may
swell to a bulk exceeding that of all other reviews, as much as
Dr. Nares's book exceeds the bulk of all other histories.


JOHN HAMPDEN

(December 1831)

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By LORD
NUGENT. Two vols. 8vo. London: 1831.

We have read this book with great pleasure, though not exactly
with that kind of pleasure which we had expected. We had hoped
that Lord Nugent would have been able to collect, from family
papers and local traditions, much new and interesting information
respecting the life and character of the renowned leader of the
Long Parliament, the first of those great English commoners whose
plain addition of Mister has, to our ears, a more majestic sound
than the proudest of the feudal titles. In this hope we have been
disappointed; but assuredly not from any want of zeal or
diligence on the part of the noble biographer. Even at Hampden,
there are, it seems, no important papers relating to the most
illustrious proprietor of that ancient domain. The most valuable
memorials of him which still exist, belong to the family of his
friend Sir John Eliot. Lord Eliot has furnished the portrait
which is engraved for this work, together with some very
interesting letters. The portrait is undoubtedly an original, and
probably the only original now in existence. The intellectual
forehead, the mild penetration of the eye, and the inflexible
resolution expressed by the lines of the mouth, sufficiently
guarantee the likeness. We shall probably make some extracts from
the letters. They contain almost all the new information that
Lord Nugent has been able to procure respecting the private
pursuits of the great man whose memory he worships with an
enthusiastic, but not extravagant veneration.

The public life of Hampden is surrounded by no obscurity. His
history, more particularly from the year 1640 to his death, is
the history of England. These Memoirs must be considered as
Memoirs of the history of England; and, as such, they well
deserve to be attentively perused. They contain some curious
facts which, to us at least, are new, much spirited narrative,
many judicious remarks, and much eloquent declamation.

We are not sure that even the want of information respecting the
private character of Hampden is not in itself a circumstance as
strikingly characteristic as any which the most minute
chronicler, O'Meara, Mrs. Thrale, or Boswell himself, ever
recorded concerning their heroes. The celebrated Puritan leader
is an almost solitary instance of a great man who neither sought
nor shunned greatness, who found glory only because glory lay in
the plain path of duty. During more than forty years he was known
to his country neighbours as a gentleman of cultivated mind, of
high principles, of polished address, happy in his family, and
active in the discharge of local duties; and to political men as
an honest, industrious, and sensible member of Parliament, not
eager to display his talents, stanch to his party and attentive
to the interests of his constituents. A great and terrible crisis
came. A direct attack was made by an arbitrary government on a
sacred right of Englishmen, on a right which was the chief
security for all their other rights. The nation looked round for
a defender. Calmly and unostentatiously the plain Buckinghamshire
Esquire placed himself at the head of his countrymen, and right
before the face and across the path of tyranny. The times grew
darker and more troubled. Public service, perilous, arduous,
delicate, was required, and to every service the intellect and
the courage of this wonderful man were found fully equal. He
became a debater of the first order, a most dexterous manager of
the House of Commons, a negotiator, a soldier. He governed a
fierce and turbulent assembly, abounding in able men, as easily
as he had governed his family. He showed himself as competent to
direct a campaign as to conduct the business of the petty
sessions. We can scarcely express the admiration which we feel
for a mind so great, and, at the same time, so healthful and so
well proportioned, so willingly contracting itself to the
humblest duties, so easily expanding itself to the highest, so
contented in repose, so powerful in action. Almost every part of
this virtuous and blameless life which is not hidden from us in
modest privacy is a precious and splendid portion of our national
history. Had the private conduct of Hampden afforded the
slightest pretence for censure, he would have been assailed by
the same blind malevolence which, in defiance of the clearest
proofs, still continues to call Sir John Eliot an assassin. Had
there been even any weak part in the character of Hampden, had
his manners been in any respect open to ridicule, we may be sure
that no mercy would have been shown to him by the writers of
Charles's faction. Those writers have carefully preserved every
little circumstance which could tend to make their opponents
odious or contemptible.  They have made themselves merry with the
cant of injudicious zealots. They have told us that Pym broke
down in speech, that Ireton had his nose pulled by Hollis, that
the Earl of Northumberland cudgelled Henry Martin, that St.
John's manners were sullen, that Vane had an ugly face, that
Cromwell had a red nose. But neither the artful Clarendon nor the
scurrilous Denham could venture to throw the slightest imputation
on the morals or the manners of Hampden. What was the opinion
entertained respecting him by the best men of his time we learn
from Baxter. That eminent person, eminent not only for his piety
and his fervid devotional eloquence, but for his moderation, his
knowledge of political affairs, and his skill in judging of
characters, declared in the Saint's Rest, that one of the
pleasures which he hoped to enjoy in heaven was the society of
Hampden. In the editions printed after the Restoration, the name
of Hampden was omitted. "But I must tell the reader," says
Baxter, "that I did blot it out, not as changing my opinion of
the person. . . . Mr. John Hampden was one that friends and
enemies acknowledged to be most eminent for prudence, piety, and
peaceable counsels, having the most universal praise of any
gentleman that I remember of that age. I remember a moderate,
prudent, aged gentleman, far from him, but acquainted with him,
whom I have heard saying, that if he might choose what person he
would be then in the world, he would be John Hampden." We cannot
but regret that we have not fuller memorials of a man who, after
passing through the most severe temptations by which human virtue
can be tried, after acting a most conspicuous part in a
revolution and a civil war, could yet deserve such praise as this
from such authority. Yet the want of memorials is surely the best
proof that hatred itself could find no blemish on his memory.

The story of his early life is soon told. He was the head of a
family which had been settled in Buckinghamshire before the
Conquest. Part of the estate which he inherited had been bestowed
by Edward the Confessor on Baldwyn de Hampden, whose name seems
to indicate that he was one of the Norman favourites of the last
Saxon king. During the contest between the houses of York and
Lancaster, the Hampdens adhered to the party of the Red Rose, and
were, consequently, persecuted by Edward the Fourth, and favoured
by Henry the Seventh. Under the Tudors, the family was great and
flourishing. Griffith Hampden, high sheriff of Buckinghamshire,
entertained Elizabeth with great magnificence at his seat. His
son, William Hampden, sate in the Parliament which that Queen
summoned in the year 1593. William married Elizabeth Cromwell,
aunt of the celebrated man who afterwards governed the British
islands with more than regal power; and from this marriage sprang
John Hampden.

He was born in 1594. In 1597 his father died, and left him heir
to a very large estate. After passing some years at the grammar
school of Thame, young Hampden was sent, at fifteen, to Magdalen
College, in the University of Oxford. At nineteen, he was
admitted a student of the Inner Temple, where he made himself
master of the principles of the English law. In 1619 he married
Elizabeth Symeon, a lady to whom he appears to have been fondly
attached. In the following year he was returned to parliament by
a borough which has in our time obtained a miserable celebrity,
the borough of Grampound.

Of his private life during his early years little is known beyond
what Clarendon has told us. "In his entrance into the world,"
says that great historian, "he indulged himself in all the
licence in sports, and exercises, and company, which were used by
men of the most jolly conversation." A remarkable change,
however, passed on his character. "On a sudden," says Clarendon,
"from a life of great pleasure and licence, he retired to
extraordinary sobriety and strictness, to a more reserved and
melancholy society." It is probable that this change took place
when Hampden was about twenty-five years old. At that age he was
united to a woman whom he loved and esteemed. At that age he
entered into political life. A mind so happily constituted as his
would naturally, under such circumstances, relinquish the
pleasures of dissipation for domestic enjoyments and public
duties.

His enemies have allowed that he was a man in whom virtue showed
itself in its mildest and least austere form. With the morals of
a Puritan, he had the manners of an accomplished courtier. Even
after the change in his habits, "he preserved," says Clarendon,
"his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a
flowing courtesy to all men." These qualities distinguished him
from most of the members of his sect and his party, and, in the
great crisis in which he afterwards took a principal part, were
of scarcely less service to the country than his keen sagacity
and his dauntless courage.

In January 1621, Hampden took his seat in the House of Commons.
His mother was exceedingly desirous that her son should obtain a
peerage. His family, his possessions, and his personal
accomplishments were such as would, in any age, have justified
him in pretending to that honour. But in the reign of James the
First there was one short cut to the House of Lords. It was but
to ask, to pay, and to have. The sale of titles was carried on as
openly as the sale of boroughs in our times. Hampden turned away
with contempt from the degrading honours with which his family
desired to see him invested, and attached himself to the party
which was in opposition to the court.

It was about this time, as Lord Nugent has justly remarked, that
parliamentary opposition began to take a regular form. From a
very early age, the English had enjoyed a far larger share of
liberty than had fallen to the lot of any neighbouring people.
How it chanced that a country conquered and enslaved by invaders,
a country of which the soil had been portioned out among foreign
adventurers and of which the laws were written in a foreign
tongue, a country given over to that worst tyranny, the tyranny
of caste over caste, should have become the seat of civil
liberty, the object of the admiration and envy of surrounding
states, is one of the most obscure problems in the philosophy of
history. But the fact is certain. Within a century and a half
after the Norman conquest, the Great Charter was conceded. Within
two centuries after the Conquest, the first House of Commons met.
Froissart tells us, what indeed his whole narrative sufficiently
proves, that of all the nations of the fourteenth century, the
English were the least disposed to endure oppression. "C'est le
plus perilleux peuple qui soit au monde, et plus outrageux et
orgueilleux." The good canon probably did not perceive that all
the prosperity and internal peace which this dangerous people
enjoyed were the fruits of the spirit which he designates as
proud and outrageous. He has, however, borne ample testimony to
the effect, though he was not sagacious enough to trace it to its
cause. "En le royaume d'Angleterre," says he, "toutes gens,
laboureurs et marchands, ont appris de vivre en paix, et a mener
leurs marchandises paisiblement, et les laboureurs labourer." In
the fifteenth century, though England was convulsed by the
struggle between the two branches of the royal family, the
physical and moral condition of the people continued to improve.
Villenage almost wholly disappeared. The calamities of war were
little felt, except by those who bore arms. The oppressions of
the government were little felt, except by the aristocracy. The
institutions of the country when compared with the institutions
of the neighbouring kingdoms, seem to have been not undeserving
of the praises of Fortescue. The government of Edward the Fourth,
though we call it cruel and arbitrary, was humane and liberal
when compared with that of Lewis the Eleventh, or that of Charles
the Bold. Comines, who had lived amidst the wealthy cities of
Flanders, and who had visited Florence and Venice, had never seen
a people so well governed as the English. "Or selon mon advis,"
says he, "entre toutes les seigneuries du monde, dont j'ay
connoissance, ou la chose publique est mieulx traitee, et ou
regne moins de violence sur le peuple, et ou il n'y a nuls
edifices abbatus ny demolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et
tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceulx qui font la guerre."

About the close of the fifteenth and the commencement of the
sixteenth century, a great portion of the influence which the
aristocracy had possessed passed to the crown. No English king
has ever enjoyed such absolute power as Henry the Eighth. But
while the royal prerogatives were acquiring strength at the
expense of the nobility, two great revolutions took place,
distined to be the parents of many revolutions, the invention of
Printing, and the reformation of the Church.

The immediate effect of the Reformation in England was by no
means favourable to political liberty. The authority which had
been exercised by the Popes was transferred almost entire to the
King. Two formidable powers which had often served to check each
other were united in a single despot. If the system on which the
founders of the Church of England acted could have been
permanent, the Reformation would have been, in a political sense,
the greatest curse that ever fell on our country. But that system
carried within it the seeds of its own death. It was possible to
transfer the name of Head of the Church from Clement to Henry;
but it was impossible to transfer to the new establishment the
veneration which the old establishment had inspired. Mankind had
not broken one yoke in pieces only in order to put on another.
The supremacy of the Bishop of Rome had been for ages considered
as a fundamental principle of Christianity. It had for it
everything that could make a prejudice deep and strong, venerable
antiquity, high authority, general consent. It had been taught in
the first lessons of the nurse. It was taken for granted in all
the exhortations of the priest. To remove it was to break
innumerable associations, and to give a great and perilous shock
to the principles. Yet this prejudice, strong as it was, could
not stand in the great day of the deliverance of the human
reason. And it was not to be expected that the public mind, just
after freeing itself by an unexampled effort, from a bondage
which it had endured for ages, would patiently submit to a
tyranny which could plead no ancient title. Rome had at least
prescription on its side. But Protestant intolerance, despotism
in an upstart sect, infallibility claimed by guides who
acknowledged that they had passed the greater part of their lives
in error, restraints imposed on the liberty of private judgment
at the pleasure of rulers who could vindicate their own
proceedings only by asserting the liberty of private judgment,
these things could not long be borne. Those who had pulled down
the crucifix could not long continue to persecute for the
surplice. It required no great sagacity to perceive the
inconsistency and dishonesty of men who, dissenting from almost
all Christendom, would suffer none to dissent from themselves,
who demanded freedom of conscience, yet refused to grant it, who
execrated persecution, yet persecuted, who urged reason against
the authority of one opponent, and authority against the reasons
of another. Bonner acted at least in accordance with his own
principles. Cranmer could vindicate himself from the charge of
being a heretic only by arguments which made him out to be a
murderer.

Thus the system on which the English Princes acted with respect
to ecclesiastical affairs for some time after the Reformation was
a system too obviously unreasonable to be lasting. The public
mind moved while the government moved, but would not stop where
the government stopped. The same impulse which had carried
millions away from the Church of Rome continued to carry them
forward in the same direction. As Catholics had become
Protestants, Protestants became Puritans; and the Tudors and
Stuarts were as unable to avert the latter change as the Popes
had been to avert the former. The dissenting party increased and
became strong under every kind of discouragement and oppression.
They were a sect. The government persecuted them; and they became
an opposition. The old constitution of England furnished to them
the means of resisting the sovereign without breaking the law.
They were the majority of the House of Commons. They had the
power of giving or withholding supplies; and, by a judicious
exercise of this power, they might hope to take from the Church
its usurped authority over the consciences of men, and from the
Crown some part of the vast prerogative which it had recently
acquired at the expense of the nobles and of the Pope.

The faint beginnings of this memorable contest may be discerned
early in the reign of Elizabeth. The conduct of her last
Parliament made it clear that one of those great revolutions
which policy may guide but cannot stop was in progress. It was on
the question of monopolies that the House of Commons gained its
first great victory over the throne. The conduct of the
extraordinary woman who then governed England is an admirable
study for politicians who live in unquiet times. It shows how
thoroughly she understood the people whom she ruled, and the
crisis in which she was called to act. What she held she held
firmly. What she gave she gave graciously. She saw that it was
necessary to make a concession to the nation; and she made it not
grudgingly, not tardily, not as a matter of bargain and sale,
not, in a word, as Charles the First would have made it, but
promptly and cordially. Before a bill could be framed or an
address presented, she applied a remedy to the evil of which the
nation complained. She expressed in the warmest terms her
gratitude to her faithful Commons for detecting abuses which
interested persons had concealed from her. If her successors had
inherited her wisdom with her crown, Charles the First might have
died of old age, and James the Second would never have seen St.
Germains.

She died; and the kingdom passed to one who was, in his own
opinion, the greatest master of king-craft that ever lived, but
who was, in truth, one of those kings whom God seems to send for
the express purpose of hastening revolutions. Of all the enemies
of liberty whom Britain has produced, he was at once the most
harmless and the most provoking. His office resembled that of the
man who, in a Spanish bull-fight, goads the torpid savage to
fury, by shaking a red rag in the air, and by now and then
throwing a dart, sharp enough to sting, but too small to injure.
The policy of wise tyrants has always been to cover their violent
acts with popular forms. James was always obtruding his despotic
theories on his subjects without the slightest necessity. His
foolish talk exasperated them infinitely more than forced loans
or benevolences would have done. Yet, in practice, no king ever
held his prerogatives less tenaciously. He neither gave way
gracefully to the advancing spirit of liberty nor took vigorous
measures to stop it, but retreated before it with ludicrous
haste, blustering and insulting as he retreated. The English
people had been governed during near a hundred and fifty years
by Princes who, whatever might be their frailties or their vices,
had all possessed great force of character, and who, whether
beloved or hated, had always been feared. Now, at length, for the
first time since the day when the sceptre of Henry the Fourth
dropped from the hand of his lethargic grandson, England had a
king whom she despised.

The follies  and vices of the man increased the contempt which
was produced by the feeble policy of the sovereign. The
indecorous gallantries of the Court, the habits of gross
intoxication in which even the ladies indulged, were alone
sufficient to disgust a people whose manners were beginning to be
strongly tinctured with austerity. But these were trifles. Crimes
of the most frightful kind had been discovered; others were
suspected. The strange story of the Gowries was not forgotten.
The ignominious fondness of the King for his minions, the
perjuries, the sorceries, the poisonings, which his chief
favourites had planned within the walls of his palace, the pardon
which, in direct violation of his duty and of his word, he had
granted to the mysterious threats of a murderer, made him an
object of loathing to many of his subjects. What opinion grave
and moral persons residing at a distance from the Court
entertained respecting him, we learn from Mrs. Hutchinson's
Memoirs. England was no place, the seventeenth century no time,
for Sporus and Locusta.

This was not all. The most ridiculous weaknesses seemed to meet
in the wretched Solomon of Whitehall, pedantry, buffoonery,
garrulity, low curiosity, the most contemptible personal
cowardice. Nature and education had done their best to produce a
finished specimen of all that a king ought not to be. His awkward
figure, his rolling eye, his rickety walk, his nervous
tremblings, his slobbering mouth, his broad Scotch accent, were
imperfections which might have been found in the best and
greatest man. Their effect, however, was to make James and his
office objects of contempt, and to dissolve those associations
which had been created by the noble bearing of preceding
monarchs, and which were in themselves no inconsiderable fence to
royalty.

The sovereign whom James most resembled was, we think, Claudius
Caesar. Both had the same feeble vacillating temper, the same
childishness, the same coarseness, the same poltroonery. Both
were men of learning; bath wrote and spoke, not, indeed, well,
but still in a manner in which it seems almost incredible that
men so foolish should have written or spoken.

The follies and indecencies of James are well described in the
words which Suetonius uses respecting Claudius: "Multa talia,
etiam privatis deformia, nedum principi, neque infacundo, neque
indocto, immo etiam pertinaciter liberalibus studiis dedito." The
description given by Suetonius of the manner in which the Roman
prince transacted business exactly suits the Briton. "In
cognoscendo ac decernendo mira varietate animi fuit, modo
circumspectus et sagax, modo inconsultus ac praeceps, nonnunquam
frivolus amentique similis." Claudius was ruled successively by
two bad women: James successively by two bad men. Even the
description of the person of Claudius, which we find in the
ancient memoirs, might, in many points, serve for that of James.
"Ceterum et ingredientem destituebant poplites minus firmi, et
remisse quid vel serio, agentem multa dehonestabant, risus
indecens, ira turpior, spumante rictu, praeterea linguae
titubantia."

The Parliament which James had called soon after his accession
had been refractory. His second Parliament, called in the spring
of 1614, had been more refractory still. It had been dissolved
after a session of two months; and during six years the King had
governed without having recourse to the legislature. During those
six years, melancholy and disgraceful events, at home and abroad,
had followed one another in rapid succession; the divorce of Lady
Essex, the murder of Overbury, the elevation of Villiers, the
pardon of Somerset, the disgrace of Coke, the execution of
Raleigh, the battle of Prague, the invasion of the Palatinate by
Spinola, the ignominious flight of the son-in-law of the English
king, the depression of the Protestant interest all over the
Continent. All the extraordinary modes by which James could
venture to raise money had been tried. His necessities were
greater than ever; and he was compelled to summon the Parliament
in which Hampden first appeared as a public man.

This Parliament lasted about twelve months. During that time it
visited with deserved punishment several of those who, during the
preceding six years, had enriched themselves by peculation and
monopoly. Mitchell, one of the grasping patentees who had
purchased of the favourite the power of robbing the nation, was
fined and imprisoned for life. Mompesson, the original, it is
said, of Massinger's Overreach, was outlawed and deprived of his
ill-gotten wealth. Even Sir Edward Villiers, the brother of
Buckingham, found it convenient to leave England. A greater name
is to be added to the ignominious list. By this Parliament was
brought to justice that illustrious philosopher whose memory
genius has half redeemed from the infamy due to servility, to
ingratitude, and to corruption.

After redressing internal grievances, the Commons proceeded to
take into consideration the state of Europe. The King flew into a
rage with them for meddling with such matters, and, with
characteristic judgment, drew them into a controversy about the
origin of their House and of its privileges. When he found that
he could not convince them, he dissolved them in a passion, and
sent some of the leaders of the Opposition to ruminate on his
logic in prison.

During the time which elapsed between this dissolution and the
meeting of the next Parliament, took place the celebrated
negotiation respecting the Infanta. The would-be despot was
unmercifully browbeaten. The would-be Solomon was ridiculously
over-reached. Steenie, in spite of the begging and sobbing of his
dear dad and gossip, carried off baby Charles in triumph to
Madrid. The sweet lads, as James called them, came back safe, but
without their errand. The great master of king-craft, in looking
for a Spanish match, had found a Spanish war. In February 1624, a
Parliament met, during the whole sitting of which, James was a
mere puppet in the hands of his baby, and of his poor slave and
dog. The Commons were disposed to support the King in the
vigorous policy which his favourite urged him to adopt. But they
were not disposed to place any confidence in their feeble
sovereign and his dissolute courtiers, or to relax in their
efforts to remove public grievances. They therefore lodged the
money which they voted for the war in the hands of Parliamentary
Commissioners. They impeached the treasurer, Lord Middlesex, for
corruption, and they passed a bill by which patents of monopoly
were declared illegal.

Hampden did not, during the reign of James, take any prominent
part in public affairs. It is certain, however, that he paid
great attention to the details of Parliamentary business, and to
the local interests of his own country. It was in a great measure
owing to his exertions that Wendover and some other boroughs on
which the popular party could depend recovered the elective
franchise, in spite of the opposition of the Court.

The health of the King had for some time been declining. On the
twenty-seventh of March 1625, he expired. Under his weak rule,
the spirit of liberty had grown strong, and had become equal to a
great contest. The contest was brought on by the policy of his
successor. Charles bore no resemblance to his father. He was not
a driveller, or a pedant, or a buffoon, or a coward. It would be
absurd to deny that he was a scholar and a gentleman, a man of
exquisite tastes in the fine arts, a man of strict morals in
private life. His talents for business were respectable; his
demeanour was kingly. But he was false, imperious, obstinate,
narrow-minded, ignorant of the temper of his people, unobservant
of the signs of his times. The whole principle of his government
was resistance to public opinion; nor did he make any real
concession to that opinion till it mattered not whether he
resisted or conceded, till the nation, which had long ceased to
love him or to trust him, had at last ceased to fear him.

His first Parliament met in June 1625. Hampden sat in it as
burgess for Wendover. The King wished for money. The Commons
wished for the redress of grievances. The war, however, could not
be carried on without funds. The plan of the Opposition was, it
should seem, to dole out supplies by small sums, in order to
prevent a speedy dissolution. They gave the King two subsidies
only, and proceeded to complain that his ships had been employed
against the Huguenots in France, and to petition in behalf of the
Puritans who were persecuted in England. The King dissolved them,
and raised money by Letters under his Privy Seal. The supply fell
far short of what he needed; and, in the spring of 1626, he
called together another Parliament. In this Parliament Hampden
again sat for Wendover.

The Commons resolved to grant a very liberal supply, but to defer
the final passing of the act for that purpose till the grievances
of the nation should be redressed. The struggle which followed
far exceeded in violence any that had yet taken place. The
Commons impeached Buckingham. The King threw the managers of the
impeachment into prison. The Commons denied the right of the King
to levy tonnage and poundage without their consent. The King
dissolved them. They put forth a remonstrance. The King
circulated a declaration vindicating his measures, and committed
some of the most distinguished members of the Opposition to close
custody. Money was raised by a forced loan, which was apportioned
among the people according to the rate at which they had been
respectively assessed to the last subsidy. On this occasion it
was, that Hampden made his first stand for the fundamental
principle of the English constitution. He positively refused to
lend a farthing. He was required to give his reasons. He
answered, "that he could be content to lend as well as others,
but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta which
should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." For
this spirited answer, the Privy Council committed him close
prisoner to the Gate House. After some time, he was again brought
up; but he persisted in his refusal, and was sent to a place of
confinement in Hampshire.

The government went on, oppressing at home, and blundering in all
its measures abroad. A war was foolishly undertaken against
France, and more foolishly conducted. Buckingham led an
expedition against Rhe, and failed ignominiously. In the mean
time soldiers were billeted on the people. Crimes of which
ordinary justice should have taken cognisance were punished by
martial law. Near eighty gentlemen were imprisoned for refusing
to contribute to the forced loan. The lower people who showed any
signs of insubordination were pressed into the fleet, or
compelled to serve in the army. Money, however, came in slowly;
and the King was compelled to summon another Parliament. In the
hope of conciliating his subjects, he set at liberty the persons
who had been imprisoned for refusing to comply with his unlawful
demands. Hampden regained his freedom, and was immediately
re-elected burgess for Wendover.

Early in 1628 the Parliament met. During its first session, the
Commons prevailed on the King, after many delays and much
equivocation, to give, in return for five subsidies, his full and
solemn assent to that celebrated instrument, the second great
charter of the liberties of England, known by the name of the
Petition of Right. By agreeing to this act, the King bound
himself to raise no taxes without the consent of Parliament, to
imprison no man except by legal process, to billet no more
soldiers on the people, and to leave the cognisance of offences
to the ordinary tribunals.

In the summer, this memorable Parliament was prorogued. It met
again in January 1629. Buckingham was no more. That weak,
violent, and dissolute adventurer, who, with no talents or
acquirements but those of a mere courtier, had, in a great crisis
of foreign and domestic politics, ventured on the part of prime
minister, had fallen, during the recess of Parliament, by the
hand of an assassin. Both before and after his death the war had
been feebly and unsuccessfully conducted. The King had continued,
in direct violation of the Petition of Right, to raise tonnage
and poundage without the consent of Parliament. The troops had
again been billeted on the people; and it was clear to the
Commons that the five subsidies which they had given as the price
of the national liberties had been given in vain.

They met accordingly in no complying humour. They took into their
most serious consideration the measures of the government
concerning tonnage and poundage. They summoned the officers of
the custom-house to their bar. They interrogated the barons of
the exchequer. They committed one of the sheriffs of London. Sir
John Eliot, a distinguished member of the Opposition, and an
intimate friend of Hampden, proposed a resolution condemning the
unconstitutional imposition. The Speaker said that the King had
commanded him to put no such question to the vote. This decision
produced the most violent burst of feeling ever seen within the
walls of Parliament. Hayman remonstrated vehemently against the
disgraceful language which had been heard from the chair. Eliot
dashed the paper which contained his resolution on the floor of
the House. Valentine and Hollis held the Speaker down in his seat
by main force, and read the motion amidst the loudest shouts. The
door was locked. The key was laid on the table. Black Rod knocked
for admittance in vain. After passing several strong resolutions,
the House adjourned. On the day appointed for its meeting it was
dissolved by the King, and several of its most eminent members,
among whom were Hollis and Sir John Eliot, were committed to
prison.

Though Hampden had as yet taken little part in the debates of the
House, he had been a member of many very important committees,
and had read and written much concerning the law of Parliament. A
manuscript volume of Parliamentary cases, which is still in
existence, contains many extracts from his notes.

He now retired to the duties and pleasures of a rural life.
During the eleven years which followed the dissolution of the
Parliament of 1628, he resided at his seat in one of the most
beautiful parts of the county of Buckingham. The house, which has
since his time been greatly altered, and which is now, we
believe, almost entirely neglected, was an old English mansion,
built in the days of the Plantagenets and the Tudors. It stood on
the brow of a hill which overlooks a narrow valley. The extensive
woods which surround it were pierced by long avenues. One of
those avenues the grandfather of the great statesman had cut for
the approach of Elizabeth; and the opening which is still visible
for many miles, retains the name of the Queen's Gap. In this
delightful retreat, Hampden passed several years, performing with
great activity all the duties of a landed gentleman and a
magistrate, and amusing himself with books and with field sports.

He was not in his retirement unmindful of his persecuted friends.
In particular, he kept up a close correspondence with Sir John
Eliot, who was confined in the Tower. Lord Nugent has published
several of the Letters. We may perhaps be fanciful; but it seems
to us that every one of them is an admirable illustration of some
part of the character of Hampden which Clarendon has drawn.

Part of the correspondence relates to the two sons of Sir John
Eliot. These young men were wild and unsteady; and their father,
who was now separated from them, was naturally anxious about
their conduct. He at length resolved to send one of them to
France, and the other to serve a campaign in the Low Countries.
The letter which we subjoin shows that Hampden, though rigorous
towards himself, was not uncharitable towards others, and that his
puritanism was perfectly compatible with the sentiments and the
tastes of an accomplished gentleman. It also illustrates
admirably what has been said of him by Clarendon: "He was of that
rare affability and temper in debate, and of that seeming
humility and submission of judgment, as if he brought no opinion
of his own with him, but a desire of information and instruction.
Yet he had so subtle a way of interrogating, and, under cover of
doubts, insinuating his objections, that he infused his own
opinions into those from whom he pretended to learn and receive
them."

The letter runs thus: "I am so perfectly acquainted with your
clear insight into the dispositions of men, and ability to fit
them with courses suitable, that, had you bestowed sons of mine
as you have done your own, my judgment durst hardly have called
it into question, especially when, in laying the design, you have
prevented the objections to be made against it. For if Mr.
Richard Eliot will, in the intermissions of action, add study to
practice, and adorn that lively spirit with flowers of
contemplation, he will raise our expectations of another Sir
Edward Vere, that had this character--all summer in the field,
all winter in his study--in whose fall fame makes this kingdom a
greater loser; and, having taken this resolution from counsel
with the highest wisdom, as I doubt not you have, I hope and pray
that the same power will crown it with a blessing answerable to
our wish. The way you take with my other friend shows you to be
none of the Bishop of Exeter's converts; [Hall, Bishop of Exeter,
had written strongly, both in verse and in prose, against the
fashion of sending young men of quality to travel.]  of whose
mind neither am I superstitiously. But had my opinion been asked,
I should, as vulgar conceits use me to do, have showed my power
rather to raise objections than to answer them. A temper between
France and Oxford might have taken away his scruples, with more
advantage to his years. . . . For although he be one of those
that, if his age were looked for in no other book but that of the
mind, would be found no ward if you should die tomorrow, yet it
is a great hazard, methinks, to see so sweet a disposition
guarded with no more, amongst a people whereof many make it their
religion to be superstitious in impiety, and their behaviour to
be affected in all manners. But God, who only knoweth the periods
of life and opportunities to come, hath designed him, I hope, for
his own service betime, and stirred up your providence to husband
him so early for great affairs. Then shall he be sure to find Him
in France that Abraham did in Shechem and Joseph in Egypt, under
whose wing alone is perfect safety."

Sir John Eliot employed himself, during his imprisonment, in
writing a treatise on government, which he transmitted to his
friend. Hampden's criticisms are strikingly characteristic. They
are written with all that "flowing courtesy" which is ascribed to
him by Clarendon. The objections are insinuated with so much
delicacy that they could scarcely gall the most irritable author.
We see too how highly Hampden valued in the writings of others
that conciseness which was one of the most striking peculiarities
of his own eloquence. Sir John Eliot's style was, it seems, too
diffuse, and it is impossible not to admire the skill with which
this is suggested. "The piece," says Hampden, "is as complete an
image of the pattern as can be drawn by lines, a lively character
of a large mind, the subject, method, and expression, excellent
and homogeneal, and, to say truth, sweetheart, somewhat exceeding
my commendations. My words cannot render them to the life. Yet,
to show my ingenuity rather than wit, would not a less model have
given a full representation of that subject, not by diminution
but by contraction of parts? I desire to learn. I dare not say.
The variations upon each particular seem many; all, I confess,
excellent. The fountain was full, the channel narrow; that may be
the cause; or that the author resembled Virgil, who made more
verses by many than he intended to write. To extract a just
number, had I seen all his, I could easily have bid him make
fewer; but if he had bade me tell him which he should have
spared, I had been posed."

This is evidently the writing not only of a man of good sense and
natural good taste, but of a man of literary habits. Of the
studies of Hampden little is known. But as it was at one time in
contemplation to give him the charge of the education of the
Prince of Wales, it cannot be doubted that his acquirements were
considerable. Davila, it is said, was one of his favourite
writers. The moderation of Davila's opinions and the perspicuity
and manliness of his style could not but recommend him to so
judicious a reader. It is not improbable that the parallel
between France and England, the Huguenots and the Puritans, had
struck the mind of Hampden, and that he already found within
himself powers not unequal to the lofty part of Coligni.

While he was engaged in these pursuits, a heavy domestic calamity
fell on him. His wife, who had borne him nine children, died in
the summer of 1634. She lies in the parish church of Hampden,
close to the manor-house. The tender and energetic language of
her epitaph still attests the bitterness of her husband's sorrow,
and the consolation which he found in a hope full of immortality.

In the meantime, the aspect of public affairs grew darker and
darker. The health of Eliot had sunk under an unlawful
imprisonment of several years. The brave sufferer refused to
purchase liberty, though liberty would to him have been life, by
recognising the authority which had confined him. In consequence
of the representations of his physicians, the severity of
restraint was somewhat relaxed. But it was in vain. He languished
and expired a martyr to that good cause for which his friend
Hampden was destined to meet a more brilliant, but not a more
honourable death.

All the promises of the king were violated without scruple or
shame. The Petition of Right to which he had, in consideration of
moneys duly numbered, given a solemn assent, was set at nought.
Taxes were raised by the royal authority. Patents of monopoly
were granted. The old usages of feudal times were made pretexts
for harassing the people with exactions unknown during many
years. The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty worthy of the
Holy Office. They were forced to fly from the country. They were
imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their
noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron. But
the cruelty of the oppressor could not tire out the fortitude of
the victims. The mutilated defenders of liberty again defied the
vengeance of the Star-Chamber, came back with undiminished
resolution to the place of their glorious infamy, and manfully
presented the stumps of their ears to be grubbed out by the
hangman's knife. The hardy sect grew up and flourished in spite
of everything that seemed likely to stunt it, struck its roots
deep into a barren soil, and spread its branches wide to an
inclement sky. The multitude thronged round Prynne in the pillory
with more respect than they paid to Mainwaring in the pulpit, and
treasured up the rags which the blood of Burton had soaked, with
a veneration such as mitres and surplices had ceased to inspire.

For the misgovernment of this disastrous period Charles himself
is principally responsible. After the death of Buckingham, he
seems to have been his own prime minister. He had, however, two
counsellors who seconded him, or went beyond him, in intolerance
and lawless violence, the one a superstitious driveller, as
honest as a vile temper would suffer him to be, the other a man
of great valour and capacity, but licentious, faithless, corrupt,
and cruel.

Never were faces more strikingly characteristic of the
individuals to whom they belonged, than those of Laud and
Strafford, as they still remain portrayed by the most skilful
hand of that age. The mean forehead, the pinched features, the
peering eyes, of the prelate, suit admirably with his
disposition. They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic,
differing from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who founded the
Inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar imp of a spiteful
witch to differ from an archangel of darkness. When we read His
Grace's judgments, when we read the report which he drew up,
setting forth that he had sent some separatists to prison, and
imploring the royal aid against others, we feel a movement of
indignation. We turn to his Diary, and we are at once as cool as
contempt can make us. There we learn how his picture fell down,
and how fearful he was lest the fall should be an omen; how he
dreamed that the Duke of Buckingham came to bed to him, that King
James walked past him, that he saw Thomas Flaxney in green
garments, and the Bishop of Worcester with his shoulders wrapped
in linen. In the early part of 1627, the sleep of this great
ornament of the church seems to have been much disturbed. On the
fifth of January, he saw a merry old man with a wrinkled
countenance, named Grove, lying on the ground. On the fourteenth
of the same memorable month, he saw the Bishop of Lincoln jump on
a horse and ride away. A day or two after this he dreamed that he
gave the King drink in a silver cup, and that the King refused
it, and called for glass. Then he dreamed that he had turned
Papist; of all his dreams the only one, we suspect, which came
through the gate of horn. But of these visions our favourite is
that which, as he has recorded, he enjoyed on the night of
Friday, the ninth of February 1627. "I dreamed," says he, "that I
had the scurvy: and that forthwith all my teeth became loose.
There was one in especial in my lower jaw, which I could scarcely
keep in with my finger till I had called for help." Here was a
man to have the superintendence of the opinions of a great
nation!

But Wentworth,--who ever names him without thinking of those
harsh dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than
the majesty of an antique Jupiter; of that brow, that eye, that
cheek, that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the
events of many stormy and disastrous years, high enterprise
accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unsparingly
exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look, so
full of severity, of mournful anxiety, of deep thought, of
dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and to defy
a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvas of
Vandyke? Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as
he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest
when arraigned before the tribunal of history which he excited at
the bar of the House of Lords. In spite of ourselves, we
sometimes feel towards his memory a certain relenting similar to
that relenting which his defence, as Sir John Denham tells us,
produced in Westminster Hall.

This great, brave, bad man entered the House of Commons at the
same time with Hampden, and took the same side with Hampden. Both
were among the richest and most powerful commoners in the
kingdom. Both were equally distinguished by force of character
and by personal courage. Hampden had more judgment and sagacity
than Wentworth. But no orator of that time equalled Wentworth in
force and brilliancy of expression. In 1626 both these eminent
men were committed to prison by the King, Wentworth, who was
among the leaders of the Opposition, on account of his
parliamentary conduct, Hampden, who had not as yet taken a
prominent part in debate, for refusing to pay taxes illegally
imposed.

Here their path separated. After the death of Buckingham, the
King attempted to seduce some of the chiefs of the Opposition
from their party; and Wentworth was among those who yielded to
the seduction. He abandoned his associates, and hated them ever
after with the deadly hatred of a renegade. High titles and great
employments were heaped upon him. He became Earl of Strafford,
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, President of the Council of the
North; and he employed all his power for the purpose of crushing
those liberties of which he had been the most distinguished
champion. His counsels respecting public affairs were fierce and
arbitrary. His correspondence with Laud abundantly proves that
government without parliaments, government by the sword, was his
favourite scheme. He was angry even that the course of justice
between man and man should be unrestrained by the royal
prerogative. He grudged to the courts of King's Bench and Common
Pleas even that measure of liberty which the most absolute of the
Bourbons allowed to the Parliaments of France. In Ireland, where
he stood in place of the King, his practice was in strict
accordance with his theory. He set up the authority of the
executive government over that of the courts of law. He permitted
no person to leave the island without his licence. He established
vast monopolies for his own private benefit. He imposed taxes
arbitrarily. He levied them by military force. Some of his acts
are described even by the partial Clarendon as powerful acts,
acts which marked a nature excessively imperious, acts which
caused dislike and terror in sober and dispassionate persons,
high acts of oppression. Upon a most frivolous charge, he
obtained a capital sentence from a court-martial against a man of
high rank who had given him offence. He debauched the daughter-
in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and then commanded that
nobleman to settle his estate according to the wishes of the
lady. The Chancellor refused. The Lord Lieutenant turned him out
of office and threw him into prison. When the violent acts of the
Long Parliament are blamed, let it not be forgotten from what a
tyranny they rescued the nation.

Among the humbler tools of Charles were Chief-Justice Finch and
Noy the Attorney-General. Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the
cause of liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth,
abandoned that cause for the sake of office. He devised, in
conjunction with Finch, a scheme of exaction which made the
alienation of the people from the throne complete. A writ was
issued by the King, commanding the city of London to equip and
man ships of war for his service. Similar writs were sent to the
towns along the coast. These measures, though they were direct
violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show
of precedent in their favour. But, after a time, the government
took a step for which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent
writs of ship-money to the inland counties. This was a stretch
of power on which Elizabeth herself had not ventured, even at a
time when all laws might with propriety have been made to bend
to that highest law, the safety of the state. The inland counties
had not been required to furnish ships, or money in the room of
ships, even when the Armada was approaching our shores. It seemed
intolerable that a prince who, by assenting to the Petition of Right,
had relinquished the power of levying ship-money even in the
out-ports, should be the first to levy it on parts of the kingdom
where it had been unknown under the most absolute of his
predecessors.

Clarendon distinctly admits that this tax was intended, not only
for the support of the navy, but "for a spring and magazine that
should have no bottom, and for an everlasting supply of all
occasions." The nation well understood this; and from one end of
England to the other the public mind was strongly excited.

Buckinghamshire was assessed at a ship of four hundred and fifty
tons, or a sum of four thousand five hundred pounds. The share of
the tax which fell to Hampden was very small; so small, indeed,
that the sheriff was blamed for setting so wealthy a man at so
low a rate. But, though the sum demanded was a trifle, the
principle involved was fearfully important. Hampden, after
consulting the most eminent constitutional lawyers of the time,
refused to pay the few shillings at which he was assessed, and
determined to incur all the certain expense, and the probable
danger, of bringing to a solemn hearing, this great controversy
between the people and the Crown. "Till this time," says
Clarendon, "he was rather of reputation in his own country than
of public discourse or fame in the kingdom; but then he grew the
argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who and what he was
that durst, at his own charge, support the liberty and prosperity
of the kingdom."

Towards the close of the year 1636 this great cause came on in
the Exchequer Chamber before all the judges of England. The
leading counsel against the writ was the celebrated Oliver St.
John, a man whose temper was melancholy, whose manners were
reserved, and who was as yet little known in Westminster Hall,
but whose great talents had not escaped the penetrating eye of
Hampden. The Attorney-General and Solicitor-General appeared for
the Crown.

The arguments of the counsel occupied many days; and the
Exchequer Chamber took a considerable time for deliberation. The
opinion of the bench was divided. So clearly was the law in
favour of Hampden that, though the judges held their situations
only during the royal pleasure, the majority against him was the
least possible. Five of the twelve pronounced in his favour. The
remaining seven gave their voices for the writ.

The only effect of this decision was to make the public
indignation stronger and deeper. "The judgment," says Clarendon,
"proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned
than to the King's service." The courage which Hampden had shown
on this occasion, as the same historian tells us, "raised his
reputation to a great height generally throughout the kingdom."
Even courtiers and crown-lawyers spoke respectfully of him. "His
carriage," says Clarendon, "throughout that agitation, was with
that rare temper and modesty, that they who watched him narrowly
to find some advantage against his person, to make him less
resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just
testimony." But his demeanour, though it impressed Lord Falkland
with the deepest respect, though it drew forth the praises of
Solicitor-General Herbert, only kindled into a fiercer flame the
ever-burning hatred of Strafford. That minister in his letters to
Laud murmured against the lenity with which Hampden was treated.
"In good faith," he wrote, "were such men rightly served, they
should be whipped into their right wits." Again he says, "I still
wish Mr. Hampden, and others to his likeness, were well whipped
into their right senses. And if the rod be so used that it smart
not, I am the more sorry."

The person of Hampden was now scarcely safe. His prudence and
moderation had hitherto disappointed those who would gladly have
had a pretence for sending him to the prison of Eliot. But he
knew that the eye of a tyrant was on him. In the year 1637
misgovernment had reached its height. Eight years had passed
without a Parliament. The decision of the Exchequer Chamber had
placed at the disposal of the Crown the whole property of the
English people. About the time at which that decision was
pronounced, Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton were mutilated by the
sentence of the Star-Chamber, and sent to rot in remote dungeons.
The estate and the person of every man who had opposed the court
were at its mercy.

Hampden determined to leave England. Beyond the Atlantic Ocean a
few of the persecuted Puritans had formed, in the wilderness of
Connecticut, a settlement which has since become a prosperous
commonwealth, and which, in spite of the lapse of time and of the
change of government, still retains something of the character
given to it by its first founders. Lord Saye and Lord Brooke were
the original projectors of this scheme of emigration. Hampden had
been early consulted respecting it. He was now, it appears,
desirous to withdraw himself beyond the reach of oppressors who,
as he probably suspected, and as we know, were bent on punishing
his manful resistance to their tyranny. He was accompanied by his
kinsman Oliver Cromwell, over whom he possessed great influence,
and in whom he alone had discovered, under an exterior appearance
of coarseness and extravagance, those great and commanding
talents which were afterwards the admiration and the dread of
Europe.

The cousins took their passage in a vessel which lay in the
Thames, and which was bound for North America. They were actually
on board, when an order of council appeared, by which the ship
was prohibited from sailing. Seven other ships, filled with
emigrants, were stopped at the same time.

Hampden and Cromwell remained; and with them remained the Evil
Genius of the House of Stuart. The tide of public affairs was
even now on the turn. The King had resolved to change the
ecclesiastical constitution of Scotland, and to introduce into
the public worship of that kingdom ceremonies which the great
body of the Scots regarded as Popish. This absurd attempt
produced, first discontents, then riots, and at length open
rebellion. A provisional government was established at Edinburgh,
and its authority was obeyed throughout the kingdom. This
government raised an army, appointed a general, and summoned an
assembly of the Kirk. The famous instrument called the Covenant
was put forth at this time, and was eagerly subscribed by the
people.

The beginnings of this formidable insurrection were strangely
neglected by the King and his advisers. But towards the close of
the year 1638 the danger became pressing.  An army was raised;
and early in the following spring Charles marched northward at
the head of a force sufficient, as it seemed, to reduce the
Covenanters to submission.

But Charles acted at this conjuncture as he acted at every
important conjuncture throughout his life. After oppressing,
threatening, and blustering, he hesitated and failed. He was bold
in the wrong place, and timid in the wrong place. He would have
shown his wisdom by being afraid before the liturgy was read in
St. Giles's church. He put off his fear till he had reached the
Scottish border with his troops. Then, after a feeble campaign,
he concluded a treaty with the insurgents, and withdrew his army.
But the terms of the pacification were not observed. Each party
charged the other with foul play. The Scots refused to disarm.
The King found great difficulty in re-assembling his forces. His
late expedition had drained his treasury. The revenues of the
next year had been anticipated. At another time, he might have
attempted to make up the deficiency by illegal expedients; but
such a course would clearly have been dangerous when part of the
island was in rebellion. It was necessary to call a Parliament.
After eleven years of suffering, the voice of the nation was to
be heard once more.

In April 1640, the Parliament met; and the King had another
chance of conciliating his people. The new House of Commons was,
beyond all comparison, the least refractory House of Commons that
had been known for many years. Indeed, we have never been able to
understand how, after so long a period of misgovernment, the
representatives of the nation should have shown so moderate and
so loyal a disposition. Clarendon speaks with admiration of their
dutiful temper. "The House, generally," says he, "was exceedingly
disposed to please the King, and to do him service." "It could
never be hoped," he observes elsewhere, "that more sober or
dispassionate men would ever meet together in that place, or
fewer who brought ill purposes with them."

In this Parliament Hampden took his seat as member for
Buckinghamshire, and thenceforward, till the day of his death,
gave himself up, with scarcely any intermission, to public
affairs. He took lodgings in Gray's Inn Lane, near the house
occupied by Pym, with whom he lived in habits of the closest
intimacy. He was now decidedly the most popular man in England.
The Opposition looked to him as their leader, and the servants of
the King treated him with marked respect.

Charles requested the Parliament to vote an immediate supply, and
pledged his word that, if they would gratify him in this request,
he would afterwards give them time to represent their grievances
to him. The grievances under which the nation suffered were so
serious, and the royal word had been so shamefully violated, that
the Commons could hardly be expected to comply with this request.
During the first week of the session, the minutes of the
proceedings against Hampden were laid on the table by Oliver St.
John, and a committee reported that the case was matter of
grievance. The King sent a message to the Commons, offering, if
they would vote him twelve subsidies, to give up the prerogative
of ship-money. Many years before, he had received five subsidies
in consideration of his assent to the Petition of Right. By
assenting to that petition, he had given up the right of levying
ship-money, if he ever possessed it. How he had observed the
promises made to his third Parliament, all England knew; and it
was not strange that the Commons should be somewhat unwilling to
buy from him, over and over again, their own ancient and
undoubted inheritance.

His message, however, was not unfavourably received. The Commons
were ready to give a large supply; but they were not disposed to
give it in exchange for a prerogative of which they altogether
denied the existence. If they acceded to the proposal of the
King, they recognised the legality of the writs of ship-money.

Hampden, who was a greater master of parliamentary tactics than
any man of his time, saw that this was the prevailing feeling,
and availed himself of it with great dexterity. He moved that the
question should be put, "Whether the House would consent to the
proposition made by the King, as contained in the message." Hyde
interfered, and proposed that the question should be divided;
that the sense of the House should be taken merely on the point
whether there should be a supply or no supply; and that the
manner and the amount should be left for subsequent
consideration.

The majority of the House was for granting a supply, but against
granting it in the manner proposed by the King. If the House had
divided on Hampden's question, the court would have sustained a
defeat; if on Hyde's, the court would have gained an apparent
victory. Some members called for Hyde's motion, others, for
Hampden's. In the midst of the uproar, the secretary of state,
Sir Harry Vane, rose and stated that the supply would not be
accepted unless it were voted according to the tenor of the
message. Vane was supported by Herbert, the Solicitor-General.
Hyde's motion was therefore no further pressed, and the debate on
the general question was adjourned till the next day.

On the next day the King came down to the House of Lords, and
dissolved the Parliament with an angry speech. His conduct on
this occasion has never been defended by any of his apologists.
Clarendon condemns it severely. "No man," says he, "could imagine
what offence the Commons had given." The offence which they had
given is plain. They had, indeed, behaved most temperately and
most respectfully. But they had shown a disposition to redress
wrongs and to vindicate the laws; and this was enough to make
them hateful to a king whom no law could bind, and whose whole
government was one system of wrong.

The nation received the intelligence of the dissolution with
sorrow and indignation, The only persons to whom this event gave
pleasure were those few discerning men who thought that the
maladies of the state were beyond the reach of gentle remedies.
Oliver St. John's joy was too great for concealment. It lighted
up his dark and melancholy features, and made him, for the first
time, indiscreetly communicative. He told Hyde that things must
be worse before they could be better, and that the dissolved
Parliament would never have done all that was necessary. St.
John, we think, was in the right. No good could then have been
done by any Parliament which did not fully understand that no
confidence could safely be placed in the King, and that, while he
enjoyed more than the shadow of power, the nation would never
enjoy more than the shadow of liberty.

As soon as Charles had dismissed the Parliament, he threw several
members of the House of Commons into prison. Ship-money was
exacted more rigorously than ever; and the Mayor and Sheriffs of
London were prosecuted before the Star-Chamber for slackness in
levying it. Wentworth, it is said, observed, with characteristic
insolence and cruelty, that things would never go right till the
Aldermen were hanged. Large sums were raised by force on those
counties in which the troops were quartered. All the wretched
shifts of a beggared exchequer were tried. Forced loans were
raised. Great quantities of goods were bought on long credit and
sold for ready money. A scheme for debasing the currency was
under consideration. At length, in August, the King again marched
northward.

The Scots advanced into England to meet him. It is by no means
improbable that this bold step was taken by the advice of
Hampden, and of those with whom he acted; and this has been made
matter of grave accusation against the English Opposition. It is
said that to call in the aid of foreigners in a domestic quarrel
is the worst of treasons, and that the Puritan leaders, by taking
this course, showed that they were regardless of the honour and
independence of the nation, and anxious only for the success of
their own faction. We are utterly unable to see any distinction
between the case of the Scotch invasion in 1640, and the case of
the Dutch invasion in 1688; or rather, we see distinctions which
are to the advantage of Hampden and his friends. We believe Charles
to have been a worse and more dangerous king than his son. The
Dutch were strangers to us, the Scots a kindred people speaking
the same language, subjects of the same prince, not aliens in the
eye of the law. If, indeed, it had been possible that a Scotch
army or a Dutch army could have enslaved England, those who
persuaded Leslie to cross the Tweed, and those who signed the
invitation to the Prince of Orange, would have been traitors to
their country. But such a result was out of the question. All that
either a Scotch or a Dutch invasion could do was to give the
public feeling of England an opportunity to show itself. Both
expeditions would have ended in complete and ludicrous
discomfiture, had Charles and James been supported by their
soldiers and their people. In neither case, therefore, was the
independence of England endangered; in both cases her liberties
were preserved.

The second campaign of Charles against the Scots was short and
ignominious. His soldiers, as soon as they saw the enemy, ran
away as English soldiers have never run either before or since.
It can scarcely be doubted that their flight was the effect, not
of cowardice, but of disaffection. The four northern counties of
England were occupied by the Scotch army and the King retired to
York.

The game of tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and lost his
last stake. It is not easy to retrace the mortifications and
humiliations which the tyrant now had to endure, without a
feeling of vindictive pleasure. His army was mutinous; his
treasury was empty; his people clamoured for a Parliament;
addresses and petitions against the government were presented.
Strafford was for shooting the petitioners by martial law; but
the King could not trust the soldiers. A great council of Peers
was called at York; but the King could not trust even the Peers.
He struggled, evaded, hesitated, tried every shift, rather than
again face the representatives of his injured people. At length
no shift was left. He made a truce with the Scots, and summoned a
Parliament.

The leaders of the popular party had, after the late dissolution,
remained in London for the purpose of organizing a scheme of
opposition to the Court. They now exerted themselves to the
utmost. Hampden, in particular, rode from county to county,
exhorting the electors to give their votes to men worthy of their
confidence. The great majority of the returns was on the side of
the Opposition. Hampden was himself chosen member both for
Wendover and Buckinghamshire. He made his election to serve for
the county.

On the third of November 1640, a day to be long remembered, met
that great Parliament, destined to every extreme of fortune, to
empire and to servitude, to glory and to contempt; at one time
the sovereign of its sovereign, at another time the servant of
its servants. From the first day of meeting the attendance was
great; and the aspect of the members was that of men not disposed
to do the work negligently. The dissolution of the late
Parliament had convinced most of them that half measures would no
longer suffice. Clarendon tells us, that "the same men who, six
months before, were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and
to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, talked now in
another dialect both of kings and persons; and said that they
must now be of another temper than they were the last
Parliament." The debt of vengeance was swollen by all the usury
which had been accumulating during many years; and payment was
made to the full.

This memorable crisis called forth parliamentary abilities such
as England had never before seen. Among the most distinguished
members of the House of Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, young
Harry Vane, Oliver St. John, Denzil Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes.
But two men exercised a paramount influence over the legislature
and the country, Pym and Hampden; and by the universal consent of
friends and enemies, the first place belonged to Hampden.

On occasions which required set speeches Pym generally took the
lead. Hampden very seldom rose till late in a debate. His
speaking was of that kind which has, in every age, been held in
the highest estimation by English Parliaments, ready, weighty,
perspicuous, condensed. His perception of the feelings of the
House was exquisite, his temper unalterably placid, his manner
eminently courteous and gentlemanlike. "Even with those," says
Clarendon, "who were able to preserve themselves from his
infusions, and who discerned those opinions to be fixed in him
with which they could not comply, he always left the character of
an ingenious and conscientious person." His talents for business
were as remarkable as his talents for debate. "He was," says
Clarendon, "of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or
wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed
upon by the most subtle and sharp." Yet it was rather to his
moral than to his intellectual qualities that he was indebted for
the vast influence which he possessed. "When this parliament
began"--we again quote Clarendon--"the eyes of all men were fixed
upon him, as their patriae pater, and the pilot that must steer
the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it.
And I am persuaded his power and interest at that time were
greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than
any man of his rank hath had in any time; for his reputation of
honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly
guided, that no corrupt or private ends could bias them. . . . He
was indeed a very wise man, and of great parts, and possessed
with the most absolute spirit of popularity, and the most
absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man I ever knew."

It is sufficient to recapitulate shortly the acts of the Long
Parliament during its first session. Strafford and Laud were
impeached and imprisoned. Strafford was afterwards attainted by
Bill, and executed. Lord Keeper Finch fled to Holland, Secretary
Windebank to France. All those whom the King had, during the last
twelve years, employed for the oppression of his people, from the
servile judges who had pronounced in favour of the crown against
Hampden, down to the sheriffs who had distrained for ship-money,
and the custom-house officers who had levied tonnage and
poundage, were summoned to answer for their conduct. The Star-
Chamber, the High Commission Court, the Council of York, were
abolished. Those unfortunate victims of Laud who, after
undergoing ignominious exposure and cruel manglings, had been
sent to languish in distant prisons, were set at liberty, and
conducted through London in triumphant procession. The King was
compelled to give the judges patents for life or during good
behaviour. He was deprived of those oppressive powers which were
the last relics of the old feudal tenures. The Forest Courts and
the Stannary Courts were reformed. It was provided that the
Parliament then sitting should not be prorogued or dissolved
without its own consent, and that a Parliament should be held at
least once every three years.

Many of these measures Lord Clarendon allows to have been most
salutary; and few persons will, in our times, deny that, in the
laws passed during this session, the good greatly preponderated
over the evil. The abolition of those three hateful courts, the
Northern Council, the Star-Chamber, and the High Commission,
would alone entitle the Long Parliament to the lasting gratitude
of Englishmen.

The proceeding against Strafford undoubtedly seems hard to people
living in our days. It would probably have seemed merciful and
moderate to people living in the sixteenth century. It is curious
to compare the trial of Charles's minister with the trial, if it
can be so called, of Lord Seymour of Sudeley, in the blessed
reign of Edward the Sixth. None of the great reformers of our
Church doubted the propriety of passing an act of Parliament for
cutting off Lord Seymour's head without a legal conviction. The
pious Cranmer voted for that act; the pious Latimer preached for
it; the pious Edward returned thanks for it; and all the pious
Lords of the council together exhorted their victim to what they
were pleased facetiously to call "the quiet and patient suffering
of justice."

But it is not necessary to defend the proceedings against
Strafford by any such comparison. They are justified, in our
opinion, by that which alone justifies capital punishment or any
punishment, by that which alone justifies war, by the public
danger. That there is a certain amount of public danger which
will justify a legislature in sentencing a man to death by
retrospective law, few people, we suppose, will deny. Few people,
for example, will deny that the French Convention was perfectly
justified in placing Robespierre, St. Just, and Couthon under the
ban of the law, without a trial. This proceeding differed from
the proceeding against Strafford only in being much more rapid
and violent. Strafford was fully heard. Robespierre was not
suffered to defend himself. Was there, then, in the case of
Strafford, a danger sufficient to justify an act of attainder? We
believe that there was. We believe that the contest in which the
Parliament was engaged against the King was a contest for the
security of our property, for the liberty of our persons, for
everything which makes us to differ from the subjects of Don
Miguel. We believe that the cause of the Commons was such as
justified them in resisting the King, in raising an army, in
sending thousands of brave men to kill and to be killed. An act
of attainder is surely not more a departure from the ordinary
course of law than a civil war. An act of attainder produces much
less suffering than a civil war. We are, therefore, unable to
discover on what principle it can be maintained that a cause
which justifies a civil war will not justify an act of attainder.

Many specious arguments have been urged against the retrospective
law by which Strafford was condemned to death. But all these
arguments proceed on the supposition that the crisis was an
ordinary crisis. The attainder was, in truth, a revolutionary
measure. It was part of a system of resistance which oppression
had rendered necessary. It is as unjust to judge of the conduct
pursued by the Long Parliament towards Strafford on ordinary
principles, as it would have been to indict Fairfax for murder
because he cut down a cornet at Naseby. From the day on which the
Houses met, there was a war waged by them against the King, a war
for all that they held dear, a war carried on at first by means
of parliamentary forms, at last by physical force; and, as in the
second stage of that war, so in the first, they were entitled to
do many things which, in quiet times, would have been culpable.

We must not omit to mention that those who were afterwards the
most distinguished ornaments of the King's party supported the
bill of attainder. It is almost certain that Hyde voted for it.
It is quite certain that Falkland both voted and spoke for it.
The opinion of Hampden, as far as it can be collected from a very
obscure note of one of his speeches, seems to have been that the
proceeding by Bill was unnecessary, and that it would be a better
course to obtain judgment on the impeachment.

During this year the Court opened a negotiation with the leaders
of the Opposition. The Earl of Bedford was invited to form an
administration on popular principles. St. John was made
solicitor-general. Hollis was to have been secretary of state,
and Pym chancellor of the exchequer. The post of tutor to the
Prince of Wales was designed for Hampden. The death of the Earl
of Bedford prevented this arrangement from being carried into
effect; and it may be doubted whether, even if that nobleman's
life had been prolonged, Charles would ever have consented to
surround himself with counsellors whom he could not but hate and
fear.

Lord Clarendon admits that the conduct of Hampden during this
year was mild and temperate, that he seemed disposed rather to
soothe than to excite the public mind, and that, when violent and
unreasonable motions were made by his followers, he generally
left the House before the division, lest he should seem to give
countenance to their extravagance. His temper was moderate. He
sincerely loved peace. He felt also great fear lest too
precipitate a movement should produce a reaction. The events
which took place early in the next session clearly showed that
this fear was not unfounded.

During the autumn the Parliament adjourned for a few weeks.
Before the recess, Hampden was despatched to Scotland by the
House of Commons, nominally as a commissioner, to obtain security
for a debt which the Scots had contracted during the last
invasion; but in truth that he might keep watch over the King,
who had now repaired to Edinburgh, for the purpose of finally
adjusting the points of difference which remained between him and
his northern subjects. It was the business of Hampden to dissuade
the Covenanters from making their peace with the Court, at the
expense of the popular party in England.

While the King was in Scotland, the Irish rebellion broke out.
The suddenness and violence of this terrible explosion excited a
strange suspicion in the public mind. The Queen was a professed
Papist. The King and the Archbishop of Canterbury had not indeed
been reconciled to the See of Rome; but they had, while acting
towards the Puritan party with the utmost rigour, and speaking of
that party with the utmost contempt, shown great tenderness and
respect towards the Catholic religion and its professors. In
spite of the wishes of successive Parliaments, the Protestant
separatists had been cruelly persecuted. And at the same time, in
spite of the wishes of those very Parliaments, laws which were in
force against the Papists, and which, unjustifiable as they were,
suited the temper of that age, had not been carried into
execution. The Protestant nonconformists had not yet learned
toleration in the school of suffering. They reprobated the
partial lenity which the government showed towards idolaters;
and, with some show of reason, ascribed to bad motives conduct
which, in such a king as Charles, and such a prelate as Laud,
could not possibly be ascribed to humanity or to liberality of
sentiment. The violent Arminianism of the Archbishop, his
childish attachment to ceremonies, his superstitious veneration
for altars, vestments, and painted windows, his bigoted zeal for
the constitution and the privileges of his order, his known
opinions respecting the celibacy of the clergy, had excited great
disgust throughout that large party which was every day becoming
more and more hostile to Rome, and more and more inclined to the
doctrines and the discipline of Geneva. It was believed by many
that the Irish rebellion had been secretly encouraged by the
Court; and, when the Parliament met again in November, after a
short recess, the Puritans were more intractable than ever.

But that which Hampden had feared had come to pass. A reaction
had taken place. A large body of moderate and well-meaning men,
who had heartily concurred in the strong measures adopted before
the recess, were inclined to pause. Their opinion was that,
during many years the country had been grievously misgoverned,
and that a great reform had been necessary; but that a great
reform had been made, that the grievances of the nation had been
fully redressed, that sufficient vengeance had been exacted for
the past, that sufficient security had been provided for the
future, and that it would, therefore, be both ungrateful and
unwise to make any further attacks on the royal prerogative. In
support of this opinion many plausible arguments have been used.
But to all these arguments there is one short answer. The King
could not be trusted.

At the head of those who may be called the Constitutional
Royalists were Falkland, Hyde, and Culpeper. All these eminent
men had, during the former year, been in very decided opposition
to the Court. In some of those very proceedings with which their
admirers reproach Hampden, they had taken a more decided part
than Hampden. They had all been concerned in the impeachment of
Strafford. They had all, there is reason to believe, voted for
the Bill of Attainder. Certainly none of them voted against it.
They had all agreed to the act which made the consent of the
Parliament necessary to a dissolution or prorogation. Hyde had
been among the most active of those who attacked the Council of
York. Falkland had voted for the exclusion of the bishops from
the Upper House. They were now inclined to halt in the path of
reform, perhaps to retrace a few of their steps.

A direct collision soon took place between the two parties into
which the House of Commons, lately at almost perfect unity with
itself, was now divided. The opponents of the government moved
that celebrated address to the King which is known by the name of
the Grand Remonstrance. In this address all the oppressive acts
of the preceding fifteen years were set forth with great energy
of language; and, in conclusion, the King was entreated to employ
no ministers in whom the Parliament could not confide.

The debate on the Remonstrance was long and stormy. It commenced
at nine in the morning of the twenty-first of November, and
lasted till after midnight. The division showed that a great
change had taken place in the temper of the House. Though many
members had retired from exhaustion, three hundred voted and
the Remonstrance was carried by a majority of only nine. A
violent debate followed, on the question whether the minority
should be allowed to protest against this decision. The
excitement was so great that several members were on the point of
proceeding to personal violence. "We had sheathed our swords in
each other's bowels," says an eye-witness, "had not the sagacity
and great calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented
it." The House did not rise till two in the morning.

The situation of the Puritan leaders was now difficult and full
of peril. The small majority which they still had might soon
become a minority. Out of doors, their supporters in the higher
and middle classes were beginning to fall off. There was a
growing opinion that the King had been hardly used. The English
are always inclined to side with a weak party which is in the
wrong, rather than with a strong party which is in the right.
This may be seen in all contests, from contests of boxers to
contests of faction. Thus it was that a violent reaction took
place in favour of Charles the Second against the Whigs in 1681.
Thus it was that an equally violent reaction took place in favour
of George the Third against the coalition in 1784. A similar
action was beginning to take place during the second year of the
Long Parliament. Some members of the Opposition "had resumed"
says Clarendon, "their old resolution of leaving the kingdom."
Oliver Cromwell openly declared that he and many others would
have emigrated if they had been left in a minority on the
question of the Remonstrance.

Charles had now a last chance of regaining the affection of his
people. If he could have resolved to give his confidence to the
leaders of the moderate party in the House of Commons, and to
regulate his proceedings by their advice, he might have been,
not, indeed, as he had been, a despot, but the powerful and
respected king of a free people. The nation might have enjoyed
liberty and repose under a government with Falkland at its head,
checked by a constitutional Opposition under the conduct of
Hampden. It was not necessary that, in order to accomplish this
happy end, the King should sacrifice any part of his lawful
prerogative, or submit to any conditions inconsistent with his
dignity. It was necessary only that he should abstain from
treachery, from violence, from gross breaches of the law. This
was all that the nation was then disposed to require of him. And
even this was too much.

For a short time he seemed inclined to take a wise and temperate
course. He resolved to make Falkland secretary of state, and
Culpeper chancellor of the exchequer. He declared his intention
of conferring in a short time some important office on Hyde. He
assured these three persons that he would do nothing relating to
the House of Commons without their joint advice, and that he
would communicate all his designs to them in the most unreserved
manner. This resolution, had he adhered to it, would have averted
many years of blood and mourning. But "in very few days," says
Clarendon, "he did fatally swerve from it."

On the third of January 1642, without giving the slightest hint
of his intention to those advisers whom he had solemnly promised
to consult, he sent down the attorney-general to impeach Lord
Kimbolton, Hampden, Pym, Hollis, and two other members of the
House of Commons, at the bar of the Lords, on a charge of High
Treason. It is difficult to find in the whole history of England
such an instance of tyranny, perfidy, and folly. The most
precious and ancient rights of the subject were violated by this
act. The only way in which Hampden and Pym could legally be tried
for treason at the suit of the King, was by a petty jury on a
bill found by a grand jury. The attorney-general had no right to
impeach them. The House of Lords had no right to try them.

The Commons refused to surrender their members. The Peers showed
no inclination to usurp the unconstitutional jurisdiction which
the King attempted to force on them. A contest began, in which
violence and weakness were on the one side, law and resolution on
the other. Charles sent an officer to seal up the lodgings and
trunks of the accused members. The Commons sent their sergeant to
break the seals. The tyrant resolved to follow up one outrage by
another. In making the charge, he had struck at the institution
of juries. In executing the arrest, he struck at the privileges
of Parliament. He resolved to go to the House in person with an
armed force, and there to seize the leaders of the Opposition,
while engaged in the discharge of their parliamentary duties.

What was his purpose? Is it possible to believe that he had no
definite purpose, that he took the most important step of his
whole reign without having for one moment considered what might
be its effects? Is it possible to believe that he went merely for
the purpose of making himself a laughing-stock, that he intended,
if he had found the accused members, and if they had refused, as
it was their right and duty to refuse, the submission which he
illegally demanded, to leave the House without bringing them
away? If we reject both these suppositions, we must believe, and
we certainly do believe, that he went fully determined to carry
his unlawful design into effect by violence, and, if necessary,
to shed the blood of the chiefs of the Opposition on the very
floor of the Parliament House.

Lady Carlisle conveyed intelligence of the design to Pym. The
five members had time to withdraw before the arrival of Charles.
They left the House as he was entering New Palace Yard. He was
accompanied by about two hundred halberdiers of his guard, and by
many gentlemen of the Court armed with swords. He walked up
Westminster Hall. At the southern end of the Hall his attendants
divided to the right and left and formed a lane to the door of
the House of Commons. He knocked, entered, darted a look towards
the place which Pym usually occupied, and, seeing it empty,
walked up to the table. The Speaker fell on his knee. The members
rose and uncovered their heads in profound silence, and the King
took his seat in the chair. He looked round the House. But the
five members were nowhere to be seen. He interrogated the
Speaker. The Speaker answered, that he was merely the organ of
the House, and had neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, but
according to their direction. The King muttered a few feeble
sentences about his respect for the laws of the realm, and the
privileges of Parliament, and retired. As he passed along the
benches, several resolute voices called out audibly "Privilege!"
He returned to Whitehall with his company of bravoes, who, while
he was in the House, had been impatiently waiting in the lobby
for the word, cocking their pistols, and crying, "Fall on." That
night he put forth a proclamation, directing that the ports
should be stopped, and that no person should, at his peril,
venture to harbour the accused members.

Hampden and his friends had taken refuge in Coleman Street. The
city of London was indeed the fastness of public liberty, and
was, in those times, a place of at least as much importance as
Paris during the French Revolution. The city, properly so called,
now consists in a great measure of immense warehouses and
counting-houses, which are frequented by traders and their clerks
during the day, and left in almost total solitude during the
night. It was then closely inhabited by three hundred thousand
persons, to whom it was not merely a place of business, but a
place of constant residence. The great capital had as complete a
civil and military organization as if it had been an independent
republic. Each citizen had his company; and the companies, which
now seem to exist only for the sake of epicures and of
antiquaries, were then formidable brotherhoods, the members of
which were almost as closely bound together as the members of a
Highland clan. How strong these artificial ties were, the
numerous and valuable legacies anciently bequeathed by citizens
to their corporations abundantly prove. The municipal offices
were filled by the most opulent and respectable merchants of the
kingdom. The pomp of the magistracy of the capital was inferior
only to that which surrounded the person of the sovereign. The
Londoners loved their city with that patriotic love which is
found only in small communities, like those of ancient Greece, or
like those which arose in Italy during the middle ages. The
numbers, the intelligence, the wealth of the citizens, the
democratical form of their local government, and their vicinity
to the Court and to the Parliament, made them one of the most
formidable bodies in the kingdom. Even as soldiers they were not
to be despised. In an age in which war is a profession, there is
something ludicrous in the idea of battalions composed of
apprentices and shopkeepers, and officered by aldermen. But in
the early part of the seventeenth century, there was no standing
army in the island; and the militia of the metropolis was not
inferior in training to the militia of other places. A city which
could furnish many thousands of armed men, abounding in natural
courage, and not absolutely untinctured with military discipline,
was a formidable auxiliary in times of internal dissension. On
several occasions during the civil war, the trainbands of London
distinguished themselves highly; and at the battle of Newbury, in
particular, they repelled the fiery onset of Rupert, and saved
the army of the Parliament from destruction.

The people of this great city had long been thoroughly devoted to
the national cause. Many of them had signed a protestation in
which they declared their resolution to defend the privileges of
Parliament. Their enthusiasm had, indeed, of late begun to cool.
But the impeachment of the five members, and the insult offered
to the House of Commons, inflamed them to fury. Their houses,
their purses, their pikes, were at the command of the
representatives of the nation. London was in arms all night. The
next day the shops were closed; the streets were filled with
immense crowds; the multitude pressed round the King's coach, and
insulted him with opprobrious cries. The House of Commons, in the
meantime, appointed a committee to sit in the city, for the
purpose of inquiring into the circumstances of the late outrage.

The members of the committee were welcomed by a deputation of the
common council, Merchant Taylors' Hall, Goldsmiths' Hall, and
Grocers' Hall, were fitted up for their sittings. A guard of
respectable citizens, duly relieved twice a day, was posted at
their doors. The sheriffs were charged to watch over the safety
of the accused members, and to escort them to and from the
committee with every mark of honour.

A violent and sudden revulsion of feeling, both in the House and
out of it, was the effect of the late proceedings of the King.
The Opposition regained in a few hours all the ascendency which
it had lost. The constitutional royalists were filled with shame
and sorrow. They saw that they had been cruelly deceived by
Charles. They saw that they were, unjustly, but not unreasonably,
suspected by the nation. Clarendon distinctly says that they
perfectly detested the counsels by which the King had been
guided, and were so much displeased and dejected at the unfair
manner in which he had treated them that they were inclined to
retire from his service. During the debates on the breach of
privilege, they preserved a melancholy silence. To this day, the
advocates of Charles take care to say as little as they can about
his visit to the House of Commons, and, when they cannot avoid
mention of it, attribute to infatuation an act which, on any
other supposition, they must admit to have been a frightful
crime.

The Commons, in a few days, openly defied the King, and ordered
the accused members to attend in their places at Westminster and
to resume their parliamentary duties. The citizens resolved to
bring back the champions of liberty in triumph before the windows
of Whitehall. Vast preparations were made both by land and water
for this great festival.

The King had remained in his palace, humbled, dismayed, and
bewildered, "feeling," says Clarendon, "the trouble and agony
which usually attend generous and magnanimous minds upon their
having committed errors"; feeling, we should say, the despicable
repentance which attends the man who, having attempted to commit
a crime, finds that he has only committed a folly. The populace
hooted and shouted all day before the gates of the royal
residence. The tyrant could not bear to see the triumph of those
whom he had destined to the gallows and the quartering-block. On
the day preceding that which was fixed for their return, he fled,
with a few attendants, from that palace which he was never to see
again till he was led through it to the scaffold.

On the eleventh of January, the Thames was covered with boats,
and its shores with the gazing multitude. Armed vessels decorated
with streamers, were ranged in two lines from London Bridge to
Westminster Hall. The members returned upon the river in a ship
manned by sailors who had volunteered their services. The
trainbands of the city, under the command of the sheriffs,
marched along the Strand, attended by a vast crowd of spectators,
to guard the avenues to the House of Commons; and thus, with
shouts, and loud discharges of ordnance, the accused patriots
were brought back by the people whom they had served, and for
whom they had suffered. The restored members, as soon as they had
entered the House, expressed, in the warmest terms, their
gratitude to the citizens of London. The sheriffs were warmly
thanked by the Speaker in the name of the Commons; and orders
were given that a guard selected from the trainbands of the city,
should attend daily to watch over the safety of the Parliament.

The excitement had not been confined to London. When intelligence
of the danger to which Hampden was exposed reached
Buckinghamshire, it excited the alarm and indignation of the
people. Four thousand freeholders of that county, each of them
wearing in his hat a copy of the protestation in favour of the
Privileges of Parliament, rode up to London to defend the person
of their beloved representative. They came in a body to assure
Parliament of their full resolution to defend its privileges.
Their petition was couched in the strongest terms. "In respect,"
said they, "of that latter attempt upon the honourable House of
Commons, we are now come to offer our service to that end, and
resolved, in their just defence, to live and die."

A great struggle was clearly at hand. Hampden had returned to
Westminster much changed. His influence had hitherto been exerted
rather to restrain than to animate the zeal of his party. But the
treachery, the contempt of law, the thirst for blood, which the
King had now shown, left no hope of a peaceable adjustment. It
was clear that Charles must be either a puppet or a tyrant, that
no obligation of law or of honour could bind him, and that the
only way to make him harmless was to make him powerless.

The attack which the King had made on the five members was not
merely irregular in manner. Even if the charges had been
preferred legally, if the Grand Jury of Middlesex had found a
true bill, if the accused persons had been arrested under a
proper warrant and at a proper time and place, there would still
have been in the proceeding enough of perfidy and injustice to
vindicate the strongest measures which the Opposition could take.
To impeach Pym and Hampden was to impeach the House of Commons.
It was notoriously on account of what they had done as members of
that House that they were selected as objects of vengeance; and
in what they had done as members of that House the majority had
concurred. Most of the charges brought against them were common
between them and the Parliament. They were accused, indeed, and
it may be with reason, of encouraging the Scotch army to invade
England. In doing this, they had committed what was, in
strictness of law, a high offence, the same offence which
Devonshire and Shrewsbury committed in 1688. But the King had
promised pardon and oblivion to those who had been the principals
in the Scotch insurrection. Did it then consist with his honour
to punish the accessaries? He had bestowed marks of his favour on
the leading Covenanters. He had given the great seal of Scotland
to one chief of the rebels, a marquisate to another, an earldom
to Leslie, who had brought the Presbyterian army across the
Tweed. On what principle was Hampden to be attainted for advising
what Leslie was ennobled for doing? In a court of law, of course,
no Englishman could plead an amnesty granted to the Scots. But,
though not an illegal, it was surely an inconsistent and a most
unkingly course, after pardoning and promoting the heads of the
rebellion in one kingdom, to hang, draw, and quarter their
accomplices in another.

The proceedings of the King against the five members, or rather
against that Parliament which had concurred in almost all the
acts of the five members, was the cause of the civil war. It was
plain that either Charles or the House of Commons must be
stripped of all real power in the state. The best course which
the Commons could have taken would perhaps have been to depose
the King, as their ancestors had deposed Edward the Second and
Richard the Second, and as their children afterwards deposed
James. Had they done this, had they placed on the throne a prince
whose character and whose situation would have been a pledge for
his good conduct, they might safely have left to that prince all
the old constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, the command of
the armies of the state, the power of making peers, the power of
appointing ministers, a veto on bills passed by the two Houses.
Such prince, reigning by their choice, would have been under the
necessity of acting in conformity with their wishes. But the
public mind was not ripe for such a measure. There was no Duke of
Lancaster, no Prince of Orange, no great and eminent person, near
in blood to the throne, yet attached to the cause of the people.
Charles was then to remain King; and it was therefore necessary
that he should be king only in name. A William the Third, or a
George the First, whose title to the crown was identical with the
title of the people to their liberty, might safely be trusted
with extensive powers. But new freedom could not exist in safety
under the old tyrant. Since he was not to be deprived of the name
of king, the only course which was left was to make him a mere
trustee, nominally seised of prerogatives of which others had the
use, a Grand Lama, a Roi Faineant, a phantom resembling those
Dagoberts and Childeberts who wore the badges of royalty, while
Ebroin and Charles Martel held the real sovereignty of the state.

The conditions which the Parliament propounded were hard, but, we
are sure, not harder than those which even the Tories, in the
Convention of 1689, would have imposed on James, if it had been
resolved that James should continue to be king. The chief
condition was that the command of the militia and the conduct of
the war in Ireland should be left to the Parliament. On this
point was that great issue joined, whereof the two parties put
themselves on God and on the sword.

We think, not only that the Commons were justified in demanding
for themselves the power to dispose of the military force, but
that it would have been absolute insanity in them to leave that
force at the disposal of the King. From the very beginning of his
reign, it had evidently been his object to govern by an army. His
third Parliament had complained, in the Petition of Right, of his
fondness for martial law, and of the vexatious manner in which he
billeted his soldiers on the people. The wish nearest the heart
of Strafford was, as his letters prove, that the revenue might be
brought into such a state as would enable the King to keep a
standing military establishment. In 1640 Charles had supported an
army in the northern counties by lawless exactions. In 1641 he
had engaged in an intrigue, the object of which was to bring that
army to London for the purpose of overawing the Parliament. His
late conduct had proved that, if he were suffered to retain even
a small body-guard of his own creatures near his person, the
Commons would be in danger of outrage, perhaps of massacre. The
Houses were still deliberating under the protection of the
militia of London. Could the command of the whole armed force of
the realm have been, under these circumstances, safely confided
to the King? Would it not have been frenzy in the Parliament to
raise and pay an army of fifteen or twenty thousand men for the
Irish war, and to give to Charles the absolute control of this
army, and the power of selecting, promoting, and dismissing
officers at his pleasure? Was it not probable that this army
might become, what it is the nature of armies to become, what so
many armies formed under much more favourable circumstances have
become, what the army of the Roman republic became, what the army
of the French republic became, an instrument of despotism? Was it
not probable that the soldiers might forget that they were also
citizens, and might be ready to serve their general against their
country? Was it not certain that, on the very first day on which
Charles could venture to revoke his concessions, and to punish
his opponents, he would establish an arbitrary government, and
exact a bloody revenge?

Our own times furnish a parallel case. Suppose that a revolution
should take place in Spain, that the Constitution of Cadiz should
be reestablished, that the Cortes should meet again, that the
Spanish Prynnes and Burtons, who are now wandering in rags round
Leicester Square, should be restored to their country. Ferdinand
the Seventh would, in that case, of course repeat all the oaths
and promises which he made in 1820, and broke in 1823. But would
it not be madness in the Cortes, even if they were to leave him
the name of King, to leave him more than the name? Would not all
Europe scoff at them, if they were to permit him to assemble a
large army for an expedition to America, to model that army at
his pleasure, to put it under the command of officers chosen by
himself? Should we not say that every member of the
Constitutional party who might concur in such a measure would
most richly deserve the fate which he would probably meet, the
fate of Riego and of the Empecinado? We are not disposed to pay
compliments to Ferdinand; nor do we conceive that we pay him any
compliment, when we say that, of all sovereigns in history, he
seems to us most to resemble, in some very important points, King
Charles the First. Like Charles, he is pious after a certain
fashion; like Charles, he has made large concessions to his
people after a certain fashion. It is well for him that he has
had to deal with men who bore very little resemblance to the
English Puritans.

The Commons would have the power of the sword; the King would not
part with it; and nothing remained but to try the chances of war.
Charles still had a strong party in the country. His august
office, his dignified manners, his solemn protestations that he
would for the time to come respect the liberties of his subjects,
pity for fallen greatness, fear of violent innovation, secured to
him many adherents. He had with him the Church, the Universities,
a majority of the nobles and of the old landed gentry. The
austerity of the Puritan manners drove most of the gay and
dissolute youth of that age to the royal standard. Many good,
brave, and moderate men, who disliked his former conduct, and who
entertained doubts touching his present sincerity, espoused his
cause unwillingly and with many painful misgivings, because,
though they dreaded his tyranny much, they dreaded democratic
violence more.

On the other side was the great body of the middle orders of
England, the merchants, the shopkeepers, the yeomanry, headed by
a very large and formidable minority of the peerage and of the
landed gentry. The Earl of Essex, a man of respectable abilities,
and of some military experience, was appointed to the command of
the parliamentary army.

Hampden spared neither his fortune nor his person in the cause.
He subscribed two thousand pounds to the public service. He took
a colonel's commission in the army, and went into Buckinghamshire
to raise a regiment of infantry. His neighbours eagerly enlisted
under his command. His men were known by their green uniform, and
by their standard, which bore on one side the watchword of the
Parliament, "God with us," and on the other the device of
Hampden, "Vestigia nulla retrorsum." This motto well described
the line of conduct which he pursued. No member of his party had
been so temperate, while there remained a hope that legal and
peaceable measures might save the country. No member of his party
showed so much energy and vigour when it became necessary to
appeal to arms. He made himself thoroughly master of his military
duty, and "performed it," to use the words of Clarendon, "upon
all occasions most punctually." The regiment which he had raised
and trained was considered as one of the best in the service of
the Parliament. He exposed his person in every action with an
intrepidity which made him conspicuous even among thousands of
brave men. "He was," says Clarendon, "of a personal courage equal
to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished
wherever he might have been made a friend, and as much to be
apprehended where he was so, as any man could deserve to be."
Though his military career was short, and his military situation
subordinate, he fully proved that he possessed the talents of a
great general, as well as those of a great statesman.

We shall not attempt to give a history of the war. Lord Nugent's
account of the military operations is very animating and
striking. Our abstract would be dull, and probably
unintelligible. There was, in fact, for some time no great and
connected system of operations on either side. The war of the two
parties was like the war of Arimanes and Oromasdes, neither of
whom, according to the Eastern theologians, has any exclusive
domain, who are equally omnipresent, who equally pervade all
space, who carry on their eternal strife within every particle of
matter. There was a petty war in almost every county. A town
furnished troops to the Parliament while the manor-house of the
neighbouring peer was garrisoned for the King. The combatants
were rarely disposed to march far from their own homes. It was
reserved for Fairfax and Cromwell to terminate this desultory
warfare, by moving one overwhelming force successively against
all the scattered fragments of the royal party.

It is a remarkable circumstance that the officers who had studied
tactics in what were considered as the best schools, under Vere
in the Netherlands, and under Gustavus Adolphus in Germany,
displayed far less skill than those commanders who had been bred
to peaceful employments, and who never saw even a skirmish till
the civil war broke out. An unlearned person might hence be
inclined to suspect that the military art is no very profound
mystery, that its principles are the principles of plain good
sense, and that a quick eye, a cool head, and a stout heart, will
do more to make a general than all the diagrams of Jomini. This,
however, is certain, that Hampden showed himself a far better
officer than Essex, and Cromwell than Leslie.

The military errors of Essex were probably in some degree
produced by political timidity. He was honestly, but not warmly,
attached to the cause of the Parliament; and next to a great
defeat he dreaded a great victory. Hampden, on the other hand,
was for vigorous and decisive measures. When he drew the sword,
as Clarendon has well said, he threw away the scabbard. He had
shown that he knew better than any public man of his time how to
value and how to practise moderation. But he knew that the
essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is
imbecility. On several occasions, particularly during the
operations in the neighbourhood of Brentford, he remonstrated
earnestly with Essex. Wherever he commanded separately, the
boldness and rapidity of his movements presented a striking
contrast to the sluggishness of his superior.

In the Parliament he possessed boundless influence. His
employments towards the close of 1642 have been described by
Denham in some lines which, though intended to be sarcastic,
convey in truth the highest eulogy. Hampden is described in this
satire as perpetually passing and repassing between the military
station at Windsor and the House of Commons at Westminster, as
overawing the general, and as giving law to that Parliament which
knew no other law. It was at this time that he organized that
celebrated association of counties to which his party was
principally indebted for its victory over the King.

In the early part of 1643, the shires lying in the neighbourhood
of London, which were devoted to the cause of the Parliament,
were incessantly annoyed by Rupert and his cavalry. Essex had
extended his lines so far that almost every point was vulnerable.
The young prince, who, though not a great general, was an active
and enterprising partisan, frequently surprised posts, burned
villages, swept away cattle, and was again at Oxford before a
force sufficient to encounter him could be assembled.

The languid proceedings of Essex were loudly condemned by the
troops. All the ardent and daring spirits in the parliamentary
party were eager to have Hampden at their head. Had his life been
prolonged, there is every reason to believe that the supreme
command would have been intrusted to him. But it was decreed
that, at this conjuncture, England should lose the only man who
united perfect disinterestedness to eminent talents, the only man
who, being capable of gaining the victory for her, was incapable
of abusing that victory when gained.

In the evening of the seventeenth of June, Rupert darted out of
Oxford with his cavalry on a predatory expedition. At three in
the morning of the following day, he attacked and dispersed a few
parliamentary soldiers who lay at Postcombe. He then flew to
Chinnor, burned the village, killed or took all the troops who
were quartered there, and prepared to hurry back with his booty
and his prisoners to Oxford.

Hampden had, on the preceding day, strongly represented to Essex
the danger to which this part of the line was exposed. As soon as
he received intelligence of Rupert's incursion, he sent off a
horseman with a message to the General. The cavaliers, he said,
could return only by Chiselhampton Bridge. A force ought to be
instantly despatched in that direction for the purpose of
intercepting them. In the meantime, he resolved to set out with
all the cavalry that he could muster, for the purpose of impeding
the march of the enemy till Essex could take measures for cutting
off their retreat. A considerable body of horse and dragoons
volunteered to follow him. He was not their commander. He did not
even belong to their branch of the service. But "he was," says
Lord Clarendon, "second to none but the General himself in the
observance and application of all men." On the field of Chalgrove
he came up with Rupert. A fierce skirmish ensued. In the first
charge Hampden was struck in the shoulder by two bullets, which
broke the bone, and lodged in his body. The troops of the
Parliament lost heart and gave way. Rupert, after pursuing them
for a short time, hastened to cross the bridge, and made his
retreat unmolested to Oxford.

Hampden, with his head drooping, and his hands leaning on his
horse's neck, moved feebly out of the battle. The mansion which
had been inhabited by his father-in-law, and from which in his
youth he had carried home his bride Elizabeth, was in sight.
There still remains an affecting tradition that he looked for a
moment towards that beloved house, and made an effort to go
thither to die. But the enemy lay in that direction. He turned
his horse towards Thame, where he arrived almost fainting with
agony. The surgeons dressed his wounds. But there was no hope.
The pain which he suffered was most excruciating. But he endured
it with admirable firmness and resignation. His first care was
for his country. He wrote from his bed several letters to London
concerning public affairs, and sent a last pressing message to
the head-quarters, recommending that the dispersed forces should
be concentrated. When his public duties were performed, he calmly
prepared himself to die. He was attended by a clergyman of the
Church of England, with whom he had lived in habits of intimacy,
and by the chaplain of the Buckinghamshire Greencoats, Dr.
Spurton, whom Baxter describes as a famous and excellent divine.

A short time before Hampden's death the sacrament was
administered to him. He declared that though he disliked the
government of the Church of England, he yet agreed with that
Church as to all essential matters of doctrine. His intellect
remained unclouded. When all was nearly over, he lay murmuring
faint prayers for himself, and for the cause in which, he died.
"Lord Jesus," he exclaimed in the moment of the last agony,
"receive my soul. O Lord, save my country. O Lord, be merciful
to--." In that broken ejaculation passed away his noble and
fearless spirit.

He was buried in the parish church of Hampden. His soldiers,
bareheaded, with reversed arms and muffled drums and colours,
escorted his body to the grave, singing, as they marched, that
lofty and melancholy psalm in which the fragility of human life
is contrasted with the immutability of Him to whom a thousand
years are as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the
night.

The news of Hampden's death produced as great a consternation in
his party, according to Clarendon, as if their whole army had
been cut off. The journals of the time amply prove that the
Parliament and all its friends were filled with grief and dismay.
Lord Nugent has quoted a remarkable passage from the next Weekly
Intelligencer. "The loss of Colonel Hampden goeth near the heart
of every man that loves the good of his king and country, and
makes some conceive little content to be at the army now that he
is gone. The memory of this deceased colonel is such, that in no
age to come but it will more and more be had in honour and
esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment,
temper, valour, and integrity, that he hath left few his like
behind."

He had indeed left none his like behind him. There still
remained, indeed, in his party, many acute intellects, many
eloquent tongues, many brave and honest hearts. There still
remained a rugged and clownish soldier, half fanatic, half
buffoon, whose talents, discerned as yet only by one penetrating
eye, were equal to all the highest duties of the soldier and the
prince. But in Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were united all the
qualities which, at such a crisis, were necessary to save the
state, the valour and energy of Cromwell, the discernment and
eloquence of Vane, the humanity and moderation of Manchester, the
stern integrity of Hale, the ardent public spirit of Sydney.
Others might possess the qualities which were necessary to save
the popular party in the crisis of danger; he alone had both the
power and the inclination to restrain its excesses in the hour of
triumph. Others could conquer; he alone could reconcile. A heart
as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of
battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the
Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. But it was
when to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded the
fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency
and burning for revenge, it was when the vices and ignorance
which the old tyranny had generated threatened the new freedom
with destruction, that England missed the sobriety, the self-
command, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude
of intention, to which the history of revolutions furnishes no
parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone.


MILTON
(August 1825)

Joannis Miltoni, Angli, de Doctrina Christiana libri duo
posthumi. A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, compiled from the
Holy Scriptures alone. By JOHN MILTON, translated from the
Original by Charles R. Sumner, M.A., etc., etc. 1825.

Towards the close of the year 1823, Mr. Lemon, deputy keeper of
the state papers, in the course of his researches among the
presses of his office, met with a large Latin manuscript. With it
were found corrected copies of the foreign despatches written by
Milton while he filled the office of Secretary, and several
papers relating to the Popish Trials and the Rye-house Plot. The
whole was wrapped up in an envelope, superscribed To Mr. Skinner,
Merchant. On examination, the large manuscript proved to be the
long-lost Essay on the Doctrines of Christianity, which,
according to Wood and Toland, Milton finished after the
Restoration, and deposited with Cyriac Skinner. Skinner, it is
well known, held the same political opinions with his illustrious
friend. It is therefore probable, as Mr. Lemon conjectures, that
he may have fallen under the suspicions of the Government during
that persecution of the Whigs which followed the dissolution of
the Oxford parliament, and that, in consequence of a general
seizure of his papers, this work may have been brought to the
office in which it has been found. But whatever the adventures of
the manuscript may have been, no doubt can exist that it is a
genuine relic of the great poet.

Mr. Sumner who was commanded by his Majesty to edit and translate
the treatise, has acquitted himself of his task in a manner
honourable to his talents and to his character. His version is
not indeed very easy or elegant; but it is entitled to the praise
of clearness and fidelity. His notes abound with interesting
quotations, and have the rare merit of really elucidating the
text. The preface is evidently the work of a sensible and candid
man, firm in his own religious opinions, and tolerant towards
those of others.

The book itself will not add much to the fame of Milton. It is,
like all his Latin works, well written, though not exactly in the
style of the prize essays of Oxford and Cambridge. There is no
elaborate imitation of classical antiquity, no scrupulous purity,
none of the ceremonial cleanness which characterises the diction
of our academical Pharisees. The author does not attempt to
polish and brighten his composition into the Ciceronian gloss and
brilliancy. He does not in short sacrifice sense and spirit to
pedantic refinements. The nature of his subject compelled him to
use many words

"That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp."

But he writes with as much ease and freedom as if Latin were his
mother tongue; and, where he is least happy, his failure seems to
arise from the carelessness of a native, not from the ignorance
of a foreigner. We may apply to him what Denham with great
felicity says of Cowley: "He wears the garb, but not the clothes
of the ancients."

Throughout the volume are discernible the traces of a powerful
and independent mind, emancipated from the influence of
authority, and devoted to the search of truth. Milton professes
to form his system from the Bible alone; and his digest of
scriptural texts is certainly among the best that have appeared.
But he is not always so happy in his inferences as in his
citations.

Some of the heterodox doctrines which he avows seemed to have
excited considerable amazement, particularly his Arianism, and
his theory on the subject of polygamy. Yet we can scarcely
conceive that any person could have read the Paradise Lost
without suspecting him of the former; nor do we think that any
reader, acquainted with the history of his life, ought to be much
startled at the latter. The opinions which he has expressed
respecting the nature of the Deity, the eternity of matter, and
the observation of the Sabbath, might, we think, have caused more
just surprise.

But we will not go into the discussion of these points. The book,
were it far more orthodox or far more heretical than it is, would
not much edify or corrupt the present generation. The men of our
time are not to be converted or perverted by quartos. A few more
days, and this essay will follow the Defensio Populi to the dust
and silence of the upper shelf. The name of its author, and the
remarkable circumstances attending its publication, will secure
to it a certain degree of attention. For a month or two it will
occupy a few minutes of chat in every drawing-room, and a few
columns in every magazine; and it will then, to borrow the
elegant language of the play-bills, be withdrawn to make room for
the forthcoming novelties.

We wish, however, to avail ourselves of the interest, transient
as it may be, which this work has excited. The dexterous
Capuchins never choose to preach on the life and miracles of a
saint, until they have awakened the devotional feelings of their
auditors by exhibiting some relic of him, a thread of his
garment, a lock of his hair, or a drop of his blood. On the same
principle, we intend to take advantage of the late interesting
discovery, and, while this memorial of a great and good man is
still in the hands of all, to say something of his moral and
intellectual qualities. Nor, we are convinced, will the severest
of our readers blame us if, on an occasion like the present, we
turn for a short time from the topics of the day, to commemorate,
in all love and reverence, the genius and virtues of John Milton,
the poet, the statesman, the philosopher, the glory of English
literature, the champion and the martyr of English liberty.

It is by his poetry that Milton is best known; and it is of his
poetry that we wish first to speak. By the general suffrage of
the civilised world, his place has been assigned among the
greatest masters of the art. His detractors, however, though
outvoted, have not been silenced. There are many critics, and
some of great name, who contrive in the same breath to extol the
poems and to decry the poet. The works they acknowledge,
considered in themselves, may be classed among the noblest
productions of the human mind. But they will not allow the author
to rank with those great men who, born in the infancy of
civilisation, supplied, by their own powers, the want of
instruction, and, though destitute of models themselves,
bequeathed to posterity models which defy imitation. Milton, it
is said, inherited what his predecessors created; he lived in an
enlightened age; he received a finished education, and we must
therefore, if we would form a just estimate of his powers, make
large deductions in consideration of these advantages.

We venture to say, on the contrary, paradoxical as the remark may
appear, that no poet has ever had to struggle with more
unfavourable circumstances than Milton. He doubted, as he has
himself owned, whether he had not been born "an age too late."
For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of
much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature
of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical
genius derived no advantage from the civilisation which
surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and
he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of
simple words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost
necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those
great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we
do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark
ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and
splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised
age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most
orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are
generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the
exception. Surely the uniformity of the phaenomenon indicates a
corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of
the experimental sciences to that of imitative arts. The
improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in
collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining them.
Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to
add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a
vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that
hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these
pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great
disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise.
Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily
surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs.
Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach
Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man
may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few years to
mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a
century of study and meditation.

But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture.
Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement
rarely supplies these arts with better objects of imitation. It
may indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the
mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the
painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted
for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals,
first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular
images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened
society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is
poetical.

This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly
the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their
intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and
poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of
knowledge; but particularity is indispensable to the creations of
the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more,
they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore
make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases
instead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They
may be better able to analyse human nature than their
predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His
office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral
sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-
interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter
at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his
poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may
have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation
of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes
of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives
of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have
been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have
contained half so much able reasoning on the subject as is to be
found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created
an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their
elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in
such a manner as to make up a man, a real, living, individual
man?

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry,
without a certain unsoundness of mind, if anything which gives so
much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean
not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our
definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other
grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of
employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the
imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter
does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has
described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and
felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of
the just notion which they convey of the art in which he
excelled:

           "As the imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name."

These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to
the poet--a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth,
indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness.
The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the
first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be
consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of
credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary
derangement  of the intellect. Hence of all people children are
the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to
every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their
mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man,
whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or
Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red
Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot
speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her
knowledge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go
into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at
her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over
uncultivated minds.

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater
variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that
we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest
perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much
intelligence, much science, much philosophy, abundance of just
classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and
eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but little
poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create.
They will talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a
certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to
conceive the effect which poetry produced on their ruder
ancestors, the agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The
Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer
without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the
scalping knife while he shouts his death-song. The power which
the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their
auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings
are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among those
who participate most in its improvements. They linger longest
amongst the peasantry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic
lantern produces an illusion on the eye of the body. And, as the
magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its
purpose most completely in a dark age. As the light of knowledge
breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty
become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more
and more distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phantoms which
the poet calls up grow fainter and fainter. We cannot unite the
incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear
discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a
great poet must first become a little child, he must take to
pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that
knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title
to superiority. His very talents will be a hindrance to him. His
difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the
pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that
proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and
activity of his mind. And it is well if, after all his sacrifices
and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a
modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense
labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against
the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely
in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over
greater difficulties than Milton. He received a learned
education: he was a profound and elegant classical scholar: he
had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature: he was
intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe, from
which either pleasure or information was then to be derived. He
was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been
distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of
Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the
ancient language, though much praised by those who have never
read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his
admirable wit and ingenuity, had little imagination: nor indeed
do we think his classical diction comparable to that of Milton.
The authority of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson
had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become
utterly insensible to the Augustan elegance, and was as ill
qualified to judge between two Latin styles as a habitual
drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched,
costly, sickly, imitation of that which elsewhere may be found in
healthful and spontaneous perfection. The soils on which this
rarity flourishes are in general as ill suited to the production
of vigorous native poetry as the flower-pots of a hot-house to
the growth of oaks. That the author of the Paradise Lost should
have written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful. Never
before were such marked originality and such exquisite, mimicry
found together. Indeed in all the Latin poems of Milton the
artificial manner indispensable to such works is admirably
preserved, while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a
peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which
distinguishes them from all other writings of the same class.
They remind us of the amusements of those angelic warriors who
composed the cohort of Gabriel:

"About him exercised heroic games
The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads
Celestial armoury, shields, helms, and spears
Hang high, with diamond flaming, and with gold."

We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius
of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the
gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The
strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So
intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was
not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the
whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance.

It is not our intention to attempt anything like a complete
examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been
agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the
incomparable harmony of the numbers, and the excellence of that
style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to
degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic
powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and
every modern language has contributed something of grace, of
energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we
are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles.
Yet the harvest is so abundant that the negligent search of a
straggling gleaner may be rewarded with a sheaf.

The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the
extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts
on the reader. Its effect is produced, not so much by what it
expresses, as by what it suggests; not so much by the ideas which
it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with
them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most
unimaginative man must understand the Iliad. Homer gives him no
choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole
upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light, that it is
impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be
comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate
with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or
play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others
to fill up the outline. He strikes the keynote, and expects his
hearer to make out the melody.

We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression
in general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton,
it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its
merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power.
There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than
in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are
they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near.
New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the
burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the
structure of the sentence; substitute one synonym for another,
and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power: and
he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as
much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood
crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no
sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his
attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the
Paradise Lost, is a remarkable instance of this.

In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any
passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more
frequently repeated than those which are little more than muster-
rolls of names. They are not always more appropriate or more
melodious than other names. Every one of them is the first link
in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling-place of
our infancy revisited in manhood, like the song of our country
heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly
independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a
remote period of history. Another places us among the novel
scenes avid manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the
dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the
dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings
before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the
trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the
haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of
enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses.

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more
happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is
impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be
brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems
differ from others, as attar of roses differs from ordinary rose
water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture.
They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, from
each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every
epithet is a text for a stanza.

The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of
very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance.
Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no
two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama
and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out
of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon
as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is
broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on
the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-
shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron were his least
successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures
invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a
single moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that
the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of
a hussar, the furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all
the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the
frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But
this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the
inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to
abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions.

Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to
effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The
Greek Drama, on the model of which the Samson was written, sprang
from the Ode. The dialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, and
naturally partook of its character. The genius of the greatest of
the Athenian dramatists cooperated with the circumstances under
which tragedy made its first appearance. Aeschylus was, head and
heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more
intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer; and they had
not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, and
in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them to
treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus
it should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of
disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it
was natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured
with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible
in the works of Pindar and Aeschylus. The latter often reminds us
of the Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and
diction, bears a considerable resemblance to some of his dramas.
Considered as plays, his works are absurd; considered as
choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we examine
the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the
description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of
dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous.
But if we forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we
shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and
magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek Drama as dramatic as was
consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a
sort of similarity; but it is the similarity not of a painting,
but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not
produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform
further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond
any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what
was excellent. He substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons
for good odes.

Milton, it is well known, admired Euripides highly, much more
highly than, in our opinion, Euripides deserved. Indeed the
caresses which this partiality leads our countryman to bestow on
"sad Electra's poet," sometimes remind us of the beautiful Queen
of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of Bottom. At all events,
there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian,
whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had
Milton taken Aeschylus for his model, he would have given himself
up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the
treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those
dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it
impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in
their own nature inconsistent he has failed, as every one else
must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the
characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with
the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an
acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise each other. We are by no
means insensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the
severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity
of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which
gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think
it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of
Milton.

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the
Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is
certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any
language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess as
the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the
Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides
to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern
Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he
entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry,
consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The
faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to
which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain
style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was
his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire;
but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry
and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day.
Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only
dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test
of the crucible.

Milton attended in the Comus to the distinction which he
afterwards neglected in the Samson. He made his Masque what it
ought to be, essentially lyrical, and dramatic only in
semblance. He has not attempted a fruitless struggle against a
defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition; and
he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not impossible.
The speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; and he who so
reads them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their
sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the dialogue,
however, impose a constraint upon the writer, and break the
illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are
lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says
the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, "the
tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain
Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must
plainly confess to, you, I have seen yet nothing parallel in our
language." The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from
the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the
labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty
to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises
even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from
the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in
celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,

"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run,"

to skim the earth, to soar above the clouds, to bathe in the
Elysian dew of the rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of
nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter
through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides.

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would
willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter
into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise
Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned
except as an instance of the blindness of the parental affection
which men of letters bear towards the offspring of their
intellects. That Milton was mistaken in preferring this work,
excellent as it is, to the Paradise Lost, we readily admit. But
we are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the
Paradise Regained is not more decided, than the superiority of
the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its
appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the
point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production
which the general suffrage of critics has placed in the highest
class of human compositions.

The only poem of modern times which can be compared with the
Paradise Lost is the Divine Comedy. The subject of Milton, in
some points, resembled that of Dante; but he has treated it in a
widely different manner. We cannot, we think, better illustrate
our opinion respecting our own great poet, than by contrasting
him with the father of Tuscan literature.

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante, as the
hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of
Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves; they
stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a
signification which is often discernible only to the initiated.
Their value depends less on what they directly represent than on
what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque,
may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he
never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the
colour, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers;
he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a
traveller. Unlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton,
they are introduced in a plain, business-like manner; not for the
sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn; not
for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem;
but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to
the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which
led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those
of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The
cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the
monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were
confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles.

Now let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim
intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English
poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives
us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend
lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in
size to the earth-born enemies of Jove, or to the sea-monster
which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses
himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like
Teneriffe or Atlas: his stature reaches the sky. Contrast with
these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the
gigantic spectre of Nimrod. "His face seemed to me as long and as
broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome, and his other limbs
were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from
the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that
three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his
hair." We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable
style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not
at hand; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to
illustrate our meaning.

Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the
Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton
avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indistinct but
solemn and tremendous imagery. Despair hurrying from couch to
couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, Death shaking his
dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to
strike. What says Dante? "There was such a moan there as there
would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in
the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of
Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing
forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs."

We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling
precedency between two such writers, Each in his own department
is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has wisely, or
fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar
talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal
narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which
he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented
spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky
characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has
hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from
the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Draghignazzo.
His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own
feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has
been marked by the purifying angel. The reader would throw aside
such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the
strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors,
with the greatest precision and multiplicity in its details. The
narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante,
as the adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. The
author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had
introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to
the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected
delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full
length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court,
springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not
shocked at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when,
saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves
to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver,
surgeon, resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants,
flying islands, and philosophising horses, nothing but such
circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a
deception on the imagination.

Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency
of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante
decidedly yields to him: and as this is a point on which many
rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel
inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal error
which a poet can possibly commit in the management of his
machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton
has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions
of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though
sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in
profound ignorance of the art of poetry.

What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit
with which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phaenomena.
We cannot explain them into material causes. We therefore infer
that there exists something which is not material. But of this
something we have no idea. We can define it only by negatives. We
can reason about it only by symbols. We use the word; but we have
no image of the thing; and the business of poetry is with images,
and not with words. The poet uses words indeed; but they are
merely the instruments of his art, not its objects. They are the
materials which he is to dispose in such a manner as to present a
picture to the mental eye. And if they are not so disposed, they
are no more entitled to be called poetry than a bale of canvas
and a box of colours to be called a painting.

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of
men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all
ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other
principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to
believe, worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of
having something more definite to adore produced, in a few
centuries, the innumerable crowd of Gods and Goddesses. In like
manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the
Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to the Sun
the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to
the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a
continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most
terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of
having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps
none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the
rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while
Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more
powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the
incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A
philosopher might admire so noble a conception; but the crowd
turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to
their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form,
walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on
their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the
manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the
Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the
Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty
legions, were humbled in the dust. Soon after Christianity had
achieved its triumph, the principle which had assisted it began
to corrupt it. It became a new Paganism. Patron saints assumed
the offices of household gods. St. George took the place of Mars.
St. Elmo consoled the mariner for the loss of Castor and Pollux.
The Virgin Mother and Cecilia succeeded to Venus and the Muses.
The fascination of sex and loveliness was again joined to that of
celestial dignity; and the homage of chivalry was blended with
that of religion. Reformers have often made a stand against these
feelings; but never with more than apparent and partial success.
The men who demolished the images in cathedrals have not always
been able to demolish those which were enshrined in their minds.
It would not be difficult to show that in politics the same rule
holds good. Doctrines, we are afraid, must generally be embodied
before they can excite a strong public feeling. The multitude is
more easily interested for the most unmeaning badge, or the most
insignificant name, than for the most important principle.

From these considerations, we infer that no poet, who should
affect that metaphysical accuracy for the want of which Milton
has been blamed, would escape a disgraceful failure. Still,
however, there was another extreme which, though far less
dangerous, was also to be avoided. The imaginations of men are in
a great measure under the control of their opinions. The most
exquisite art of poetical colouring can produce no illusion, when
it is employed to represent that which is at once perceived to be
incongruous and absurd. Milton wrote in an age of philosophers
and theologians. It was necessary, therefore, for him to abstain
from giving such a shock to their understanding as might break
the charm which it was his object to throw over their
imaginations. This is the real explanation of the indistinctness
and inconsistency with which he has often been reproached. Dr.
Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that the
spirit should be clothed with material forms. "But," says he,
"the poet should have secured the consistency of his system by
keeping immateriality out of sight, and seducing the reader to
drop it from his thoughts." This is easily said; but what if
Milton could not seduce his readers to drop immateriality from
their thoughts? What if the contrary opinion had taken so full a
possession of the minds of men as to leave no room even for the
half belief which poetry requires? Such we suspect to have been
the case. It was impossible for the poet to adopt altogether the
material or the immaterial system. He therefore took his stand on
the debatable ground. He left the whole in ambiguity. He has
doubtless, by so doing, laid himself open to the charge of
inconsistency. But, though philosophically in the wrong, we
cannot but believe that he was poetically in the right. This
task, which almost any other writer would have found
impracticable, was easy to him. The peculiar art which he
possessed of communicating his meaning circuitously through a
long succession of associated ideas, and of intimating more than
he expressed, enabled him to disguise those incongruities which
he could not avoid.

Poetry which relates to the beings of another world ought to be
at once mysterious and picturesque. That of Milton is so. That of
Dante is picturesque indeed beyond any that ever was written. Its
effect approaches to that produced by the pencil or the chisel.
But it is picturesque to the exclusion of all mystery. This is a
fault on the right side, a fault inseparable from the plan of
Dante's poem, which, as we have already observed, rendered the
utmost accuracy of description necessary. Still it is a fault.
The supernatural agents excite an interest; but it is not the
interest which is proper to supernatural agents. We feel that we
could talk to the ghosts and daemons, without any emotion of
unearthly awe. We could, like Don Juan, ask them to supper, and
eat heartily in their company. Dante's angels are good men with
wings. His devils are spiteful ugly executioners. His dead men
are merely living men in strange situations. The scene which
passes between the poet and Farinata is justly celebrated. Still,
Farinata in the burning tomb is exactly what Farinata would have
been at an auto da fe. Nothing can be more touching than the
first interview of Dante and Beatrice. Yet what is it, but a
lovely woman chiding, with sweet austere composure, the lover for
whose affection she is grateful, but whose vices she reprobates?
The feelings which give the passage its charm would suit the
streets of Florence as well as the summit of the Mount of
Purgatory.

The spirits of Milton are unlike those of almost all other
writers. His fiends, in particular, are wonderful creations. They
are not metaphysical abstractions. They are not wicked men. They
are not ugly beasts. They have no horns, no tails, none of the
fee-faw-fum of Tasso and Klopstock. They have just enough, in
common with human nature to be intelligible to human beings.
Their characters are, like their forms, marked by a certain dim
resemblance to those of men, but exaggerated to gigantic
dimensions, and veiled in mysterious gloom.

Perhaps the gods and daemons of Aeschylus may best bear a
comparison with the angels and devils of Milton. The style of the
Athenian had, as we have remarked, something of the Oriental
character; and the same peculiarity may be traced in his
mythology. It has nothing of the amenity and elegance which we
generally find in the superstitions of Greece. All is rugged,
barbaric, and colossal. The legends of Aeschylus seem to
harmonise less with the fragrant groves and graceful porticoes in
which his countrymen paid their vows to the God of Light and
Goddess of Desire, than with those huge and grotesque labyrinths
of eternal granite in which Egypt enshrined her mystic Osiris, or
in which Hindustan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His
favourite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of
heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a
stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the
inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class
stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man,
the sullen and implacable enemy of Heaven. Prometheus bears
undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. In
both we find the same impatience of control, the same ferocity,
the same unconquerable pride. In both characters also are
mingled, though in very different proportions, some kind and
generous feelings. Prometheus, however, is hardly superhuman
enough. He talks too much of his chains and his uneasy posture:
he is rather too much depressed and agitated. His resolution
seems to depend on the knowledge which he possesses that he holds
the fate of his torturer in his hands, and that the hour of his
release will surely come. But Satan is a creature of another
sphere. The might of his intellectual nature is victorious over
the extremity of pain. Amidst agonies which cannot be conceived
without horror, he deliberates, resolves, and even exults.
Against the sword of Michael, against the thunder of Jehovah,
against the flaming lake, and the marl burning with solid fire,
against the prospect of an eternity of unintermitted misery, his
spirit bears up unbroken, resting on its own innate energies,
requiring no support from anything external, nor even from hope
itself.

To return for a moment to the parallel which we have been
attempting to draw between Milton and Dante, we would add that
the poetry of these great men has in a considerable degree taken
its character from their moral qualities. They are not egotists.
They rarely obtrude their idiosyncrasies on their readers. They
have nothing in common with those modern beggars for fame, who
extort a pittance from the compassion of the inexperienced by
exposing the nakedness and sores of their minds. Yet it would be
difficult to name two writers whose works have been more
completely, though undesignedly, coloured by their personal
feelings.

The character of Milton was peculiarly distinguished by loftiness
of spirit, that of Dante by intensity of feeling. In every line
of the Divine Comedy we discern the asperity which is produced by
pride struggling with misery. There is perhaps no work in the
world so deeply and uniformly sorrowful. The melancholy of Dante
was no fantastic caprice. It was not, as far as at this distance
of time can be judged, the effect of external circumstances. It
was from within. Neither love nor glory, neither the conflicts of
earth nor the hope of heaven could dispel it. It turned every
consolation and every pleasure into its own nature. It resembled
that noxious Sardinian soil of which the intense bitterness is
said to have been perceptible even in its honey. His mind was, in
the noble language of the Hebrew poet, "a land of darkness, as
darkness itself, and where the light was as darkness." The gloom
of his character discolours all the passions of men, and all the
face of nature, and tinges with its own livid hue the flowers of
Paradise and the glories of the eternal throne. All the portraits
of him are singularly characteristic. No person can look on the
features, noble even to ruggedness, the dark furrows of the
cheek, the haggard and woeful stare of the eye, the sullen and
contemptuous curve of the lip, and doubt that they belong to a
man too proud and too sensitive to be happy.

Milton was, like Dante, a statesman and a lover; and, like Dante,
he had been unfortunate in ambition and in love. He had survived
his health and his sight, the comforts of his home, and the
prosperity of his party. Of the great men by whom he had been
distinguished at his entrance into life, some had been taken away
from the evil to come; some had carried into foreign climates
their unconquerable hatred of oppression; some were pining in
dungeons; and some had poured forth their blood on scaffolds.
Venal and licentious scribblers, with just sufficient talent to
clothe the thoughts of a pandar in the style of a bellman, were
now the favourite writers of the Sovereign and of the public. It
was a loathsome herd, which could be compared to nothing so fitly
as to the rabble of Comus, grotesque monsters, half bestial, half
human, dropping with wine, bloated with gluttony, and reeling in
obscene dances. Amidst these that fair Muse was placed, like the
chaste lady of the Masque, lofty, spotless, and serene, to be
chattered at, and pointed at, and grinned at, by the whole rout
of Satyrs and Goblins. If ever despondency and asperity could be
excused in any man, they might have been excused in Milton. But
the strength of his mind overcame every calamity. Neither
blindness, nor gout, nor age, nor penury, nor domestic
afflictions, nor political disappointments, nor abuse, nor
proscription, nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and
majestic patience. His spirits do not seem to have been high, but
they were singularly equable. His temper was serious, perhaps
stern; but it was a temper which no sufferings could render
sullen or fretful. Such as it was when, on the eve of great
events, he returned from his travels, in the prime of health and
manly beauty, loaded with literary distinctions, and glowing with
patriotic hopes, such it continued to be when, after having
experienced every calamity which is in incident to our nature,
old, poor, sightless and disgraced, he retired to his hovel to
die.

Hence it was that, though he wrote the Paradise Lost at a time of
life when images of beauty and tenderness are in general
beginning to fade, even from those minds in which they have not
been effaced by anxiety and disappointment, he adorned it with
all that is most lovely and delightful in the physical and in the
moral world. Neither Theocritus nor Ariosto had a finer or a more
healthful sense of the pleasantness of external objects, or loved
better to luxuriate amidst sunbeams and flowers, the songs of
nightingales, the juice of summer fruits, and the coolness of
shady fountains. His conception of love unites all the
voluptuousness of the Oriental haram, and all the gallantry of
the chivalric tournament, with all the pure and quiet affection
of an English fireside. His poetry reminds us of the miracles of
Alpine scenery. Nooks and dells, beautiful as fairyland, are
embosomed in its most rugged and gigantic elevations. The roses
and myrtles bloom unchilled on the verge of the avalanche.

Traces, indeed, of the peculiar character of Milton may be found
in all his works; but it is most strongly displayed in the
Sonnets. Those remarkable poems have been undervalued by critics
who have not understood their nature. They have no epigrammatic
point. There is none of the ingenuity of Filicaja in the thought,
none of the hard and brilliant enamel of Petrarch in the style.
They are simple but majestic records of the feelings of the poet;
as little tricked out for the public eye as his diary would have
been. A victory, an unexpected attack upon the city, a momentary
fit of depression or exultation, a jest thrown out against one of
his books, a dream which for a short time restored to him that
beautiful face over which the grave had closed for ever, led him
to musings, which without effort shaped themselves into verse.
The unity of sentiment and severity of style which characterise
these little pieces remind us of the Greek Anthology, or perhaps
still more of the Collects of the English Liturgy. The noble poem
on the Massacres of Piedmont is strictly a collect in verse.

The Sonnets are more or less striking, according as the occasions
which gave birth to them are more or less interesting. But they
are, almost without exception, dignified by a sobriety and
greatness of mind to which we know not where to look for a
parallel. It would, indeed, be scarcely safe to draw any decided
inferences as to the character of a writer from passages directly
egotistical. But the qualities which we have ascribed to Milton,
though perhaps most strongly marked in those parts of his works
which treat of his personal feelings, are distinguishable in
every page, and impart to all his writings, prose and poetry,
English, Latin, and Italian, a strong family likeness.

His public conduct was such as was to be expected from a man of a
spirit so high and of an intellect so powerful. He lived at one
of the most memorable eras in the history of mankind, at the very
crisis of the great conflict between Oromasdes and Arimanes,
liberty and despotism, reason and prejudice. That great battle
was fought for no single generation, for no single land. The
destinies of the human race were staked on the same cast with the
freedom of the English people. Then were first proclaimed those
mighty principles which have since worked their way into the
depths of the American forests, which have roused Greece from the
slavery and degradation of two thousand years, and which, from
one end of Europe to the other, have kindled an unquenchable fire
in the hearts of the oppressed, and loosed the knees of the
oppressors with an unwonted fear.

Of those principles, then struggling for their infant existence,
Milton was the most devoted and eloquent literary champion. We
need not say how much we admire his public conduct. But we
cannot disguise from ourselves that a large portion of his
countrymen still think it unjustifiable. The civil war, indeed,
has been more discussed, and is less understood, than any event
in English history. The friends of liberty laboured under the
disadvantage of which the lion in the fable complained so
bitterly. Though they were the conquerors, their
enemies were the painters. As a body, the Roundheads had done
their utmost to decry and ruin literature; and literature was
even with them, as, in the long-run, it always is with its
enemies. The best book on their side of the question is the
charming narrative of Mrs. Hutchinson. May's History of the
Parliament is good; but it breaks off at the most interesting
crisis of the struggle. The performance of Ludlow is foolish and
violent; and most of the later writers who have espoused the same
cause, Oldmixon for instance, and Catherine Macaulay, have, to
say the least, been more distinguished by zeal than either by
candour or by skill. On the other side are the most authoritative
and the most popular historical works in our language, that of
Clarendon, and that of Hume. The former is not only ably written
and full of valuable information, but has also an air of dignity
and sincerity which makes even the prejudices and errors with
which it abounds respectable. Hume, from whose fascinating
narrative the great mass of the reading public are still
contented to take their opinions, hated religion so much that he
hated liberty for having been allied with religion, and has
pleaded the cause of tyranny with the dexterity of an advocate,
while affecting the impartiality of a judge.

The public conduct of Milton must be approved or condemned
according as the resistance of the people to Charles the First
shall appear to be justifiable or criminal. We shall therefore
make no apology for dedicating a few pages to the discussion of
that interesting and most important question. We shall not argue
it on general grounds. We shall not recur to those primary
principles from which the claim of any government to the
obedience of its subjects is to be deduced. We are entitled to
that vantage ground; but we will relinquish it. We are, on this
point, so confident of superiority, that we are not unwilling to
imitate the ostentatious generosity of those ancient knights, who
vowed to joust without helmet or shield against all enemies, and
to give their antagonists the advantage of sun and wind. We will
take the naked constitutional question. We confidently affirm,
that every reason which can be urged in favour of the Revolution
of 1688 may be urged with at least equal force in favour of what
is called the Great Rebellion.

In one respect, only, we think, can the warmest admirers of
Charles venture to say that he was a better sovereign than his
son. He was not, in name and profession, a Papist; we say in name
and profession, because both Charles himself and his creature
Laud, while they abjured the innocent badges of Popery, retained
all its worst vices, a complete subjection of reason to
authority, a weak preference of form to substance, a childish
passion for mummeries, an idolatrous veneration for the priestly
character, and, above all, a merciless intolerance. This,
however, we waive. We will concede that Charles was a good
Protestant; but we say that his Protestantism does not make the
slightest distinction between his case and that of James.

The principles of the Revolution have often been grossly
misrepresented, and never more than in the course of the present
year. There is a certain class of men, who, while they profess to
hold in reverence the great names and great actions of former
times, never look at them for any other purpose than in order to
find in them some excuse for existing abuses. In every venerable
precedent they pass by what is essential, and take only what is
accidental: they keep out of sight what is beneficial, and hold
up to public imitation all that is defective. If, in any part of
any great example, there be any thing unsound, these flesh-flies
detect it with an unerring instinct, and dart upon it with a
ravenous delight. If some good end has been attained in spite of
them, they feel, with their prototype, that

"Their labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil."

To the blessings which England has derived from the Revolution
these people are utterly insensible. The expulsion of a tyrant,
the solemn recognition of popular rights, liberty, security,
toleration, all go for nothing with them. One sect there was,
which, from unfortunate temporary causes, it was thought
necessary to keep under close restraint. One part of the empire
there was so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its
misery was necessary to our happiness, and its slavery to our
freedom. These are the parts of the Revolution which the
politicians of whom we speak love to contemplate, and which seem
to them not indeed to vindicate, but in some degree to palliate,
the good which it has produced. Talk to them of Naples, of Spain,
or of South America. They stand forth zealots for the doctrine of
Divine Right which has now come back to us, like a thief from
transportation, under the alias of Legitimacy. But mention the
miseries of Ireland. Then William is a hero. Then Somers and
Shrewsbury are great men. Then the Revolution is a glorious era.
The very same persons, who, in this country never omit an
opportunity of reviving every wretched Jacobite slander
respecting the Whigs of that period, have no sooner crossed St.
George's Channel, than they begin to fill their bumpers to the
glorious and immortal memory. They may truly boast that they look
not at men, but at measures. So that evil be done, they care not
who does it; the arbitrary Charles, or the liberal William,
Ferdinand the Catholic, or Frederic the Protestant. On such
occasions their deadliest opponents may reckon upon their candid
construction. The bold assertions of these people have of late
impressed a large portion of the public with an opinion that
James the Second was expelled simply because he was a Catholic,
and that the Revolution was essentially a Protestant Revolution.

But this certainly was not the case; nor can any person who has
acquired more knowledge of the history of those times than is to
be found in Goldsmith's Abridgement believe that, if James had
held his own religious opinions without wishing to make
proselytes, or if, wishing even to make proselytes, he had
contented himself with exerting only his constitutional influence
for that purpose, the Prince of Orange would ever have been
invited over. Our ancestors, we suppose, knew their own meaning;
and, if we may believe them, their hostility was primarily not to
popery, but to tyranny. They did not drive out a tyrant because
he was a Catholic; but they excluded Catholics from the crown,
because they thought them likely to be tyrants. The ground on
which they, in their famous resolution, declared the throne
vacant, was this, "that James had broken the fundamental laws of
the kingdom." Every man, therefore, who approves of the
Revolution of 1688 must hold that the breach of fundamental laws
on the part of the sovereign justifies resistance. The question,
then, is this. Had Charles the First broken the fundamental laws
of England?

No person can answer in the negative, unless he refuses credit,
not merely to all the accusations brought against Charles by his
opponents, but to the narratives of the warmest Royalists, and to
the confessions of the King himself. If there be any truth in any
historian of any party, who has related the events of that reign,
the conduct of Charles, from his accession to the meeting of the
Long Parliament, had been a continued course of oppression and
treachery. Let those who applaud the Revolution and condemn the
Rebellion, mention one act of James the Second to which a
parallel is not to be found in the history of his father. Let
them lay their fingers on a single article in the Declaration of
Right, presented by the two Houses to William and Mary, which
Charles is not acknowledged to have violated. He had, according
to the testimony of his own friends, usurped the functions of the
legislature, raised taxes without the consent of parliament, and
quartered troops on the people in the most illegal and vexatious
manner. Not a single session of parliament had passed without
some unconstitutional attack on the freedom of debate; the right
of petition was grossly violated; arbitrary judgments, exorbitant
fines, and unwarranted imprisonments were grievances of daily
occurrence. If these things do not justify resistance, the
Revolution was treason; if they do, the Great Rebellion was
laudable.

But it is said, why not adopt milder measures? Why, after the
King had consented to so many reforms, and renounced so many
oppressive prerogatives, did the Parliament continue to rise in
their demands at the risk of provoking a civil war? The ship-
money had been given up. The Star-Chamber had been abolished.
Provision had been made for the frequent convocation and secure
deliberation of parliaments. Why not pursue an end confessedly
good by peaceable and regular means? We recur again to the
analogy of the Revolution. Why was James driven from the throne?
Why was he not retained upon conditions? He too had offered to
call a free parliament and to submit to its decision all the
matters in dispute. Yet we are in the habit of praising our
forefathers, who preferred a revolution, a disputed succession, a
dynasty of strangers, twenty years of foreign and intestine war,
a standing army, and a national debt, to the rule, however
restricted, of a tried and proved tyrant. The Long Parliament
acted on the same principle, and is entitled to the same praise.
They could not trust the King. He had no doubt passed salutary
laws; but what assurance was there that he would not break them?
He had renounced oppressive prerogatives but where was the
security that he would not resume them? The nation had to deal
with a man whom no tie could bind, a man who made and broke
promises with equal facility, a man whose honour had been a
hundred times pawned, and never redeemed.

Here, indeed, the Long Parliament stands on still stronger ground
than the Convention of 1688. No action of James can be compared
to the conduct of Charles with respect to the Petition of Right.
The Lords and Commons present him with a bill in which the
constitutional limits of his power are marked out. He hesitates;
he evades; at last he bargains to give his assent for five
subsidies. The bill receives his solemn assent; the subsidies are
voted; but no sooner is the tyrant relieved, than he returns at
once to all the arbitrary measures which he had bound himself to
abandon, and violates all the clauses of the very Act which he
had been paid to pass.

For more than ten years the people had seen the rights which were
theirs by a double claim, by immemorial inheritance and by recent
purchase, infringed by the perfidious king who had recognised
them. At length circumstances compelled Charles to summon another
parliament: another chance was given to our fathers: were they to
throw it away as they had thrown away the former? Were they again
to be cozened by le Roi le veut? Were they again to advance their
money on pledges which had been forfeited over and over again?
Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the
throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another
unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after
ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again
require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were
compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer
him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly.

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors
against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline
all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with
calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues!
And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell,
his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of
private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to
Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son,
and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary
household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim
for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband!
Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny,
and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are
told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given
up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed
and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his
little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having
violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for
good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we
are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six
o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these,
together with his Vandyck dress, his handsome face, and his
peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his
popularity with the present generation.

For ourselves, we own that we do not understand the common
phrase, a good man, but a bad king. We can as easily conceive a
good man and an unnatural father, or a good man and a treacherous
friend. We cannot, in estimating the character of an individual,
leave out of our consideration his conduct in the most important
of all human relations; and if in that relation we find him to
have been selfish, cruel, and deceitful, we shall take the
liberty to call him a bad man, in spite of all his temperance at
table, and all his regularity at chapel.

We cannot refrain from adding a few words respecting a topic on
which the defenders of Charles are fond of dwelling. If, they
say, he governed his people ill, he at least governed them after
the example of his predecessors. If he violated their privileges,
it was because those privileges had not been accurately defined.
No act of oppression has ever been imputed to him which has not a
parallel in the annals of the Tudors. This point Hume has
laboured, with an art which is as discreditable in a historical
work as it would be admirable in a forensic address. The answer
is short, clear, and decisive. Charles had assented to the
Petition of Right. He had renounced the oppressive powers said to
have been exercised by his predecessors, and he had renounced
them for money. He was not entitled to set up his antiquated
claims against his own recent release.

These arguments are so obvious, that it may seem superfluous to
dwell upon them. But those who have observed how much the events
of that time are misrepresented and misunderstood will not blame
us for stating the case simply. It is a case of which the
simplest statement is the strongest.

The enemies of the Parliament, indeed, rarely choose to take
issue on the great points of the question. They content
themselves with exposing some of the crimes and follies to which
public commotions necessarily give birth. They bewail the
unmerited fate of Strafford. They execrate the lawless violence
of the army. They laugh at the Scriptural names of the preachers.
Major-generals fleecing their districts; soldiers revelling on
the spoils of a ruined peasantry; upstarts, enriched by the
public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and
hereditary trees of the old gentry; boys smashing
the beautiful windows of cathedrals; Quakers riding naked through
the market-place; Fifth-monarchy-men shouting for King Jesus;
agitators lecturing from the tops of tubs on the fate of Agag;--
all these, they tell us, were the offspring of the Great
Rebellion.

Be it so. We are not careful to answer in this matter. These
charges, were they infinitely more important, would not alter our
opinion of an event which alone has made us to differ from the
slaves who crouch beneath despotic sceptres. Many evils, no
doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our
liberty. Has the acquisition been worth the sacrifice? It is the
nature of the Devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he
leaves. Are the miseries of continued possession less horrible
than the struggles of the tremendous exorcism?

If it were possible that a people brought up under an intolerant
and arbitrary system could subvert that system without acts of
cruelty and folly, half the objections to despotic power would be
removed. We should, in that case, be compelled to acknowledge
that it at least produces no pernicious effects on the
intellectual and moral character of a nation. We deplore the
outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the
outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was
necessary. The violence of those outrages will always be
proportioned to the ferocity and ignorance of the people; and the
ferocity and ignorance of the people will be proportioned to the
oppression and degradation under which they have been accustomed
to live. Thus it was in our civil war. The heads of the church
and state reaped only that which they had sown. The Government
had prohibited free discussion: it had done its best to keep the
people unacquainted with their duties and their rights. The
retribution was just and natural. If our rulers suffered from
popular ignorance, it was because they had themselves taken away
the key of knowledge. If they were assailed with blind fury, it
was because they had exacted an equally blind submission.

It is the character of such revolutions that we always see the
worst of them at first. Till men have been some time free, they
know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries
are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity
intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to
a northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said
that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves
able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive
luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however,
plenty teaches discretion; and, after wine has been for a few
months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had
ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and
permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy.
Its immediate effects are often atrocious crimes, conflicting
errors, scepticism on points the most clear, dogmatism on points
the most mysterious. It is just at this crisis that its enemies
love to exhibit it. They pull down the scaffolding from the half-
finished edifice. They point to the flying dust, the falling
bricks, the comfortless rooms, the frightful irregularity of the
whole appearance; and then ask in scorn where the promised
splendour and comfort is to be found. If such miserable sophisms
were to prevail, there would never be a good house or a good
government in the world.

Ariosto tells a pretty story of a fairy, who, by some mysterious
law of her nature, was condemned to appear at certain seasons in
the form of a foul and poisonous snake. Those who injured her
during the period of her disguise were for ever excluded from
participation in the blessings which she bestowed. But to those
who, in spite of her loathsome aspect, pitied and protected her,
she afterwards revealed herself in the beautiful and celestial
form which was natural to her, accompanied their steps, granted
all their wishes, filled their houses with wealth, made them
happy in love and victorious in war. Such a spirit is Liberty. At
times she takes the form of a hateful reptile. She grovels, she
hisses, she stings. But woe to those who in disgust shall venture
to crush her! And happy are those who, having dared to receive
her in her degraded and frightful shape, shall at length be
rewarded by her in the time of her beauty and her glory!

There is only one cure for the evils which newly acquired freedom
produces; and that cure is freedom. When a prisoner first leaves
his cell he cannot bear the light of day: he is unable to
discriminate colours, or recognise faces. But the remedy is, not
to remand him into his dungeon, but to accustom him to the rays
of the sun. The blaze of truth and liberty may at first dazzle
and bewilder nations which have become half blind in the house of
bondage. But let them gaze on, and they will soon be able to bear
it. In a few years men learn to reason. The extreme violence of
opinion subsides. Hostile theories correct each other. The
scattered elements of truth cease to contend, and begin to
coalesce. And at length a system of justice and order is
educed out of the chaos.

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down
as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free
till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of
the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water
till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till
they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed wait for
ever.

Therefore it is that we decidedly approve of the conduct of
Milton and the other wise and good men who, in spite of much that
was ridiculous and hateful in the conduct of their associates,
stood firmly by the cause of Public Liberty. We are not aware
that the poet has been charged with personal participation in any
of the blameable excesses of that time, The favourite topic of
his enemies is the line of conduct which he pursued with regard
to the execution of the King. Of that celebrated proceeding we by
no means approve. Still we must say, in justice to the many
eminent persons who concurred in it, and in justice more
particularly to the eminent person who defended it, that nothing
can be more absurd than the imputations which, for the last
hundred and sixty years, it has been the fashion to cast upon the
Regicides. We have, throughout, abstained from appealing to first
principles. We will not appeal to them now. We recur again to the
parallel case of the Revolution. What essential distinction can
be drawn between the execution of the father and the deposition
of the son? What constitutional maxim is there which applies to
the former and not to the latter? The King can do no wrong. If
so, James was as innocent as Charles could have been. The
minister only ought to be responsible for the acts of the
Sovereign. If so, why not impeach Jeffreys and retain James? The
person of a king is sacred. Was the person of James considered
sacred at the Boyne? To discharge cannon against an army in which
a king is known to be posted is to approach pretty near to
regicide. Charles, too, it should always be remembered, was put
to death by men who had been exasperated by the hostilities of
several years, and who had never been bound to him by any other
tie than that which was common to them with all their fellow-
citizens. Those who drove James from his throne, who seduced his
army, who alienated his friends, who first imprisoned him in his
palace, and then turned him out of it, who broke in upon his very
slumbers by imperious messages, who pursued him with fire and
sword from one part of the empire to another, who hanged, drew,
and quartered his adherents, and attainted his innocent heir,
were his nephew and his two daughters. When we reflect on all
these things, we are at a loss to conceive how the same persons
who, on the fifth of November, thank God for wonderfully
conducting his servant William, and for making all opposition
fall before him until he became our King and Governor, can, on
the thirtieth of January, contrive to be afraid that the blood of
the Royal Martyr may be visited on themselves and their children.

We disapprove, we repeat, of the execution of Charles; not
because the constitution exempts the King from responsibility,
for we know that all such maxims, however excellent, have their
exceptions; nor because we feel any peculiar interest in his
character, for we think that his sentence describes him with
perfect justice as "a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a
public enemy"; but because we are convinced that the measure was
most injurious to the cause of freedom. He whom it removed was a
captive and a hostage: his heir, to whom the allegiance of every
Royalist was instantly transferred, was at large. The
Presbyterians could never have been perfectly reconciled to the
father, they had no such rooted enmity to the son. The great body
of the people, also, contemplated that proceeding with feelings
which, however unreasonable, no government could safely venture
to outrage.

But though we think the conduct of the Regicides blameable, that
of Milton appears to us in a very different light. The deed was
done. It could not be undone. The evil was incurred; and the
object was to render it as small as possible. We censure the
chiefs of the army for not yielding to the popular opinion; but
we cannot censure Milton for wishing to change that opinion. The
very feeling which would have restrained us from committing the
act would have led us, after it had been committed, to defend it
against the ravings of servility and superstition. For the sake
of public liberty, we wish that the thing had not been done,
while the people disapproved of it. But, for the sake of public
liberty, we should also have wished the people to approve of it
when it was done. If anything more were wanting to the
justification of Milton, the book of Salmasius would furnish it.
That miserable performance is now with justice considered only as
a beacon to word-catchers, who wish to become statesmen. The
celebrity of the man who refuted it, the "Aeneae magni dextra,"
gives it all its fame with the present generation. In that age
the state of things was different. It was not then fully
understood how vast an interval separates the mere classical
scholar from the political philosopher. Nor can it be doubted
that a treatise which, bearing the name of so eminent a critic,
attacked the fundamental principles of all free governments,
must, if suffered to remain unanswered, have produced a most
pernicious effect on the public mind.

We wish to add a few words relative to another subject, on which
the enemies of Milton delight to dwell, his conduct during the
administration of the Protector. That an enthusiastic votary of
liberty should accept office under a military usurper seems, no
doubt, at first sight, extraordinary. But all the circumstances
in which the country was then placed were extraordinary. The
ambition of Oliver was of no vulgar kind. He never seems to have
coveted despotic power. He at first fought sincerely and manfully
for the Parliament, and never deserted it, till it had deserted
its duty. If he dissolved it by force, it was not till he found
that the few members who remained after so many deaths,
secessions, and expulsions, were desirous to appropriate to
themselves a power which they held only in trust, and to inflict
upon England the curse of a Venetian oligarchy. But even when
thus placed by violence at the head of affairs, he did not assume
unlimited power. He gave the country a constitution far more
perfect than any which had at that time been known in the world.
He reformed the representative system in a manner which has
extorted praise even from Lord Clarendon. For himself he demanded
indeed the first place in the commonwealth; but with powers
scarcely so great as those of a Dutch stadtholder, or an American
president. He gave the parliament a voice in the appointment of
ministers, and left to it the whole legislative authority, not
even reserving to himself a veto on its enactments; and he did
not require that the chief magistracy should be hereditary in his
family. Thus far, we think, if the circumstances of the time and
the opportunities which he had of aggrandising himself be fairly
considered, he will not lose by comparison with Washington or
Bolivar. Had his moderation been met by corresponding moderation,
there is no reason to think that he would have overstepped the
line which he had traced for himself. But when he found that his
parliaments questioned the authority under which they met, and
that he was in danger of being deprived of the restricted power
which was absolutely necessary to his personal safety, then, it
must be acknowledged, he adopted a more arbitrary policy.

Yet, though we believe that the intentions of Cromwell were at
first honest, though we believe that he was driven from the noble
course which he had marked out for himself by the almost
irresistible force of circumstances, though we admire, in common
with all men of all parties, the ability and energy of his
splendid administration, we are not pleading for arbitrary and
lawless power, even in his hands. We know that a good
constitution is infinitely better than the best despot. But we
suspect, that at the time of which we speak, the violence of
religious and political enmities rendered a stable and happy
settlement next to impossible. The choice lay, not between
Cromwell and liberty, but between Cromwell and the Stuarts. That
Milton chose well, no man can doubt who fairly compares the
events of the Protectorate with those of the thirty years which
succeeded it, the darkest and most disgraceful in the English
annals. Cromwell was evidently laying, though in an irregular
manner, the foundations of an admirable system. Never before had
religious liberty and the freedom of discussion been enjoyed in a
greater degree. Never had the national honour been better upheld
abroad, or the seat of justice better filled at home. And it was
rarely that any opposition which stopped short of open rebellion
provoked the resentment of the liberal and magnanimous usurper.
The institutions which he had established, as set down in the
Instrument of Government, and the Humble Petition and Advice,
were excellent. His practice, it is true, too often departed from
the theory of these institutions. But, had he lived a few years
longer, it is probable that his institutions would have survived
him, and that his arbitrary practice would have died with him.
His power had not been consecrated by ancient prejudices. It was
upheld only by his great personal qualities. Little, therefore,
was to be dreaded from a second protector, unless he were also a
second Oliver Cromwell. The events which followed his decease are
the most complete vindication of those who exerted themselves to
uphold his authority. His death dissolved the whole frame of
society. The army rose against the Parliament, the different
corps of the army against each other. Sect raved against sect.
Party plotted against party, The Presbyterians, in their
eagerness to be revenged on the Independents, sacrificed their
own liberty, and deserted all their old principles. Without
casting one glance on the past, or requiring one stipulation for
the future, they threw down their freedom at the feet of the most
frivolous and heartless of tyrants.

Then came those days, never to be recalled without a blush, the
days of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of
dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of cold hearts
and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot, and
the slave. The King cringed to his rival that he might trample on
his people, sank into a viceroy of France, and pocketed, with
complacent infamy, her degrading insults, and her more degrading
gold. The caresses of harlots, and the jests of buffoons,
regulated the policy of the State. The Government had just
ability enough to deceive, and just religion enough to persecute.
The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning
courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean. In
every high place, worship was paid to Charles and James, Belial
and Moloch; and England propitiated those obscene and cruel idols
with the blood of her best and bravest children. Crime succeeded
to crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race accursed of God
and man was a second time driven forth, to wander on the face of
the earth, and to be a by-word and a shaking of the head to the
nations.

Most of the remarks which we have hitherto made on the public
character of Milton, apply to him only as one of a large body. We
shall proceed to notice some of the peculiarities which
distinguished him from his contemporaries. And, for that purpose,
it is necessary to take a short survey of the parties into which
the political world was at that time divided. We must premise,
that our observations are intended to apply only to those who
adhered, from a sincere preference, to one or to the other side.
In days of public commotion, every faction, like an Oriental
army, is attended by a crowd of camp-followers, an useless and
heartless rabble, who prowl round its line of march in the hope
of picking up something under its protection, but desert it in
the day of battle, and often join to exterminate it after a
defeat. England, at the time of which we are treating, abounded
with fickle and selfish politicians, who transferred their
support to every government as it rose, who kissed the hand of
the King in 1640, and spat in his face in 1649, who shouted with
equal glee when Cromwell was inaugurated in Westminster Hall, and
when he was dug up to be hanged at Tyburn, who dined on calves'
heads or stuck-up oak-branches, as circumstances altered, without
the slightest shame or repugnance. These we leave out of the
account. We take our estimate of parties from those who really
deserved to be called partisans.

We would speak first of the Puritans, the most remarkable body of
men, perhaps, which the world has ever produced. The odious and
ridiculous parts of their character lie on the surface. He that
runs may read them; nor have there been wanting attentive and
malicious observers to point them out. For many years after the
Restoration, they were the theme of unmeasured invective and
derision. They were exposed to the utmost licentiousness of the
press and of the stage, at the time when the press and the stage
were most licentious. They were not men of letters; they were, as
a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the
public would not take them under its protection. They were
therefore abandoned, without reserve, to the tender mercies of
the satirists and dramatists. The ostentatious simplicity of
their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff
posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural
phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their contempt
of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were
indeed fair game for the laughers. But it is not from the
laughers alone that the philosophy of history is to be learnt.
And he who approaches this subject should carefully guard against
the influence of that potent ridicule which has already misled so
many excellent writers.

"Ecco il fonte del riso, ed ecco il rio
Che mortali perigli in so contiene:
Hor qui tener a fren nostro desio,
Ed esser cauti molto a noi conviene."

Those who roused the people to resistance, who directed their
measures through a long series of eventful years, who formed, out
of the most unpromising materials, the finest army that Europe
had ever seen, who trampled down King, Church, and Aristocracy,
who, in the short intervals of domestic sedition and rebellion,
made the name of England terrible to every nation on the face of
the earth, were no vulgar fanatics. Most of their absurdities
were mere external badges, like the signs of freemasonry, or the
dresses of friars. We regret that these badges were not more
attractive. We regret that a body to whose courage and talents
mankind has owed inestimable obligations had not the lofty
elegance which distinguished some of the adherents of Charles the
First, or the easy good-breeding for which the court of Charles
the Second was celebrated. But, if we must make our choice, we
shall, like Bassanio in the play, turn from the specious caskets
which contain only the Death's head and the Fool's head, and fix
on the plain leaden chest which conceals the treasure.

The Puritans were men whose minds had derived a peculiar
character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and
eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general
terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every
event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was
too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know
him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of
existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious homage
which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul.
Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the Deity through an
obscuring veil, they aspired to gaze full on his intolerable
brightness, and to commune with him face to face. Hence
originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The
difference between the greatest and the meanest of mankind seemed
to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which
separated the whole race from him on whom their own eyes were
constantly fixed. They recognised no title to superiority but his
favour; and, confident of that favour, they despised all the
accomplishments and all the dignities of the world. If they were
unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were
deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found
in the registers of heralds, they were recorded in the Book of
Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of
menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them.
Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems
crowns of glory which should never fade away. On the rich and the
eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt:
for they esteemed themselves rich in a more precious treasure,
and eloquent in a more sublime language, nobles by the right of
an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier
hand. The very meanest of them was a being to whose fate a
mysterious and terrible importance belonged, on whose slightest
action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious
interest, who had been destined, before heaven and earth were
created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven
and earth should have passed away. Events which shortsighted
politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his
account. For his sake empires had risen, and flourished, and
decayed. For his sake the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the
pen of the evangelist, and the harp of the prophet. He had been
wrested by no common deliverer from the grasp of no common foe.
He had been ransomed by the sweat of no vulgar agony, by the
blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him that the sun had
been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had
risen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her
expiring God.

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all
self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other proud,
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust
before his Maker: but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In
his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and
groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke
screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. Like Vane, he thought
himself intrusted with the sceptre of the millennial year. Like
Fleetwood, he cried in the bitterness of his soul that God had
hid his face from him. But when he took his seat in the council,
or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the
soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw
nothing of the godly but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might laugh
at them. But those had little reason to laugh who encountered
them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle. These
fanatics brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of
judgment and an immutability of purpose which some writers have
thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were in
fact the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings
on one subject made them tranquil on every other. One
overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself pity and hatred,
ambition and fear. Death had lost its terrors and pleasure its
charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and
their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm
had made them Stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar
passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of
danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue
unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through
the world, like Sir Artegal's iron man Talus with his flail,
crushing and trampling down oppressors, mingling with human
beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities,
insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain, not to be
pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any barrier.

Such we believe to have been the character of the Puritans. We
perceive the absurdity of their manners. We dislike the sullen
gloom of their domestic habits. We acknowledge that the tone of
their minds was often injured by straining after things too high
for mortal reach: and we know that, in spite of their hatred of
Popery, they too often fell into the worst vices of that bad
system, intolerance and extravagant austerity, that they had
their anchorites and their crusades, their Dunstans and their De
Montforts, their Dominics and their Escobars. Yet, when all
circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to
pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and an useful body.

The Puritans espoused the cause of civil liberty mainly because
it was the cause of religion. There was another party, by no
means numerous, but distinguished by learning and ability, which
acted with them on very different principles. We speak of those
whom Cromwell was accustomed to call the Heathens, men who were,
in the phraseology of that time, doubting Thomases or careless
Gallios with regard to religious subjects, but passionate
worshippers of freedom. Heated by the study of ancient
literature, they set up their country as their idol, and proposed
to themselves the heroes of Plutarch as their examples. They seem
to have borne some resemblance to the Brissotines of the French
Revolution. But it is not very easy to draw the line of
distinction between them and their devout associates, whose tone
and manner they sometimes found it convenient to affect, and
sometimes, it is probable, imperceptibly adopted.

We now come to the Royalists. We shall attempt to speak of them,
as we have spoken of their antagonists, with perfect candour. We
shall not charge upon a whole party the profligacy and baseness
of the horseboys, gamblers and bravoes, whom the hope of licence
and plunder attracted from all the dens of Whitefriars to the
standard of Charles, and who disgraced their associates by
excesses which, under the stricter discipline of the
Parliamentary armies, were never tolerated. We will select a more
favourable specimen. Thinking as we do that the cause of the King
was the cause of bigotry and tyranny, we yet cannot refrain from
looking with complacency on the character of the honest old
Cavaliers. We feel a national pride in comparing them with the
instruments which the despots of other countries are compelled to
employ, with the mutes who throng their ante-chambers, and the
Janissaries who mount guard at their gates. Our royalist
countrymen were not heartless dangling courtiers, bowing at every
step, and simpering at every word. They were not mere machines
for destruction dressed up in uniforms, caned into skill,
intoxicated into valour, defending without love, destroying
without hatred. There was a freedom in their subserviency, a
nobleness in their very degradation. The sentiment of individual
independence was strong within them. They were indeed misled, but
by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the
prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history,
threw over them a spell potent as that of Duessa; and, like the
Red-Cross Knight, they thought that they were doing battle for an
injured beauty, while they defended a false and loathsome
sorceress. In truth they scarcely entered at all into the merits
of the political question. It was not for a treacherous king or
an intolerant church that they fought, but for the old banner
which had waved in so many battles over the heads of their
fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands
of their brides. Though nothing could be more erroneous than
their political opinions, they possessed, in a far greater degree
than their adversaries, those qualities which are the grace of
private life. With many of the vices of the Round Table, they had
also many of its virtues, courtesy, generosity, veracity,
tenderness, and respect for women. They had far more both of
profound and of polite learning than the Puritans. Their manners
were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more
elegant, and their households more cheerful.

Milton did not strictly belong to any of the classes which we
have described. He was not a Puritan. He was not a freethinker.
He was not a Royalist. In his character the noblest qualities of
every party were combined in harmonious union. From the
Parliament and from the Court, from the conventicle and from the
Gothic cloister, from the gloomy and sepulchral circles of the
Roundheads, and from the Christmas revel of the hospitable
Cavalier, his nature selected and drew to itself whatever was
great and good, while it rejected all the base and pernicious
ingredients by which those finer elements were defiled. Like the
Puritans, he lived

"As ever in his great taskmaster's eye."

Like them, he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty
judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt
of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity,
their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the
most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion
of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous
jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure.
Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless all the
estimable and ornamental qualities which were almost entirely
monopolised by the party of the tyrant. There was none who had a
stronger sense of the value of literature, a finer relish for
every elegant amusement, or a more chivalrous delicacy of honour
and love. Though his opinions were democratic, his tastes and his
associations were such as harmonise best with monarchy and
aristocracy. He was under the influence of all the feelings by
which the gallant Cavaliers were misled. But of those feelings he
was the master and not the slave. Like the hero of Homer, he
enjoyed all the pleasures of fascination; but he was not
fascinated. He listened to the song of the Syrens; yet he glided
by without being seduced to their fatal shore. He tasted the cup
of Circe; but he bore about him a sure antidote against the
effects of its bewitching sweetness. The illusions which
captivated his imagination never impaired his reasoning powers.
The statesman was proof against the splendour, the solemnity, and
the romance which enchanted the poet. Any person who will
contrast the sentiments expressed in his treatises on Prelacy
with the exquisite lines on ecclesiastical architecture and music
in the Penseroso, which was published about the same time, will
understand our meaning. This is an inconsistency which, more than
anything else, raises his character in our estimation, because it
shows how many private tastes and feelings he sacrificed, in
order to do what he considered his duty to mankind. It is the
very struggle of the noble Othello. His heart relents; but his
hand is firm. He does nought in hate, but all in honour. He
kisses the beautiful deceiver before he destroys her.

That from which the public character of Milton derives its great
and peculiar splendour, still remains to be mentioned. If he
exerted himself to overthrow a forsworn king and a persecuting
hierarchy, he exerted himself in conjunction with others. But the
glory of the battle which he fought for the species of freedom
which is the most valuable, and which was then the least
understood, the freedom of the human mind, is all his own.
Thousands and tens of thousands among his contemporaries raised
their voices against Ship-money and the Star-Chamber. But there
were few indeed who discerned the more fearful evils of moral and
intellectual slavery, and the benefits which would result from
the liberty of the press and the unfettered exercise of private
judgment. These were the objects which Milton justly conceived to
be the most important. He was desirous that the people should
think for themselves as well as tax themselves, and should be
emancipated from the dominion of prejudice as well as from that
of Charles. He knew that those who, with the best intentions,
overlooked these schemes of reform, and contented themselves with
pulling down the King and imprisoning the malignants, acted like
the heedless brothers in his own poem, who in their eagerness to
disperse the train of the sorcerer, neglected the means of
liberating the captive. They thought only of conquering when they
should have thought of disenchanting.

"Oh, ye mistook! Ye should have snatch'd his wand
And bound him fast. Without the rod reversed,
And backward mutters of dissevering power,
We cannot free the lady that sits here
Bound in strong fetters fix'd and motionless."

To reverse the rod, to spell the charm backward, to break the
ties which bound a stupefied people to the seat of enchantment,
was the noble aim of Milton. To this all his public conduct was
directed. For this he joined the Presbyterians; for this he
forsook them. He fought their perilous battle; but he turned away
with disdain from their insolent triumph. He saw that they, like
those whom they had vanquished, were hostile to the liberty of
thought. He therefore joined the Independents, and called upon
Cromwell to break the secular chain, and to save free conscience
from the paw of the Presbyterian wolf. With a view to the same
great object, he attacked the licensing system, in that sublime
treatise which every statesman should wear as a sign upon his
hand and as frontlets between his eyes. His attacks were, in
general, directed less against particular abuses than against
those deeply-seated errors on which almost all abuses are
founded, the servile worship of eminent men and the irrational
dread of innovation.

That he might shake the foundations of these debasing sentiments
more effectually, he always selected for himself the boldest
literary services. He never came up in the rear, when the
outworks had been carried and the breach entered. He pressed into
the forlorn hope. At the beginning of the changes, he wrote with
incomparable energy and eloquence against the bishops. But, when
his opinion seemed likely to prevail, he passed on to other
subjects, and abandoned prelacy to the crowd of writers who now
hastened to insult a falling party. There is no more hazardous
enterprise than that of bearing the torch of truth into those
dark and infected recesses in which no light has ever shone. But
it was the choice and the pleasure of Milton to penetrate the
noisome vapours, and to brave the terrible explosion. Those who
most disapprove of his opinions must respect the hardihood with
which he maintained them. He, in general, left to others the
credit of expounding and defending the popular parts of his
religious and political creed. He took his own stand upon those
which the great body of his countrymen reprobated as criminal, or
derided as paradoxical. He stood up for divorce and regicide. He
attacked the prevailing systems of education. His radiant and
beneficent career resembled that of the god of light and
fertility.

"Nitor in adversum; nec me, qui caetera, vincit
Impetus, et rapido contrarius evehor orbi."

It is to be regretted that the prose writings of Milton should,
in our time, be so little read. As compositions, they deserve the
attention of every man who wishes to become acquainted with the
full power of the English language. They abound with passages
compared with which the finest declamations of Burke sink into
insignificance. They are a perfect field of cloth-of-gold. The
style is stiff with gorgeous embroidery. Not even in the earlier
books of the Paradise Lost has the great poet ever risen higher
than in those parts of his controversial works in which his
feelings, excited by conflict, find a vent in bursts of
devotional and lyric rapture. It is, to borrow his own majestic
language, "a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping
symphonies."

We had intended to look more closely at these performances, to
analyse the peculiarities of the diction, to dwell at some length
on the sublime wisdom of the Areopagitica and the nervous
rhetoric of the Iconoclast, and to point out some of those
magnificent passages which occur in the Treatise of Reformation,
and the Animadversions on the Remonstrant. But the length to
which our remarks have already extended renders this impossible.

We must conclude. And yet we can scarcely tear ourselves away
from the subject. The days immediately following the publication
of this relic of Milton appear to be peculiarly set apart, and
consecrated to his memory. And we shall scarcely be censured if,
on this his festival, we be found lingering near his shrine, how
worthless soever may be the offering which we bring to it. While
this book lies on our table, we seem to be contemporaries of the
writer. We are transported a hundred and fifty years back. We can
almost fancy that we are visiting him in his small lodging; that
we see him sitting at the old organ beneath the faded green
hangings; that we can catch the quick twinkle of his eyes,
rolling in vain to find the day; that we are reading in the lines
of his noble countenance the proud and mournful history of his
glory and his affliction. We image to ourselves the breathless
silence in which we should listen to his slightest word, the
passionate veneration with which we should kneel to kiss his hand
and weep upon it, the earnestness with which we should endeavour
to console him, if indeed such a spirit could need consolation,
for the neglect of an age unworthy of his talents and his
virtues, the eagerness with which we should contest with his
daughters, or with his Quaker friend Elwood, the privilege of
reading Homer to him, or of taking down the immortal accents
which flowed from his lips.

These are perhaps foolish feelings. Yet we cannot be ashamed of
them; nor shall we be sorry if what we have written shall in any
degree excite them in other minds. We are not much in the habit
of idolising either the living or the dead. And we think that
there is no more certain indication of a weak and ill-regulated
intellect than that propensity which, for want of a better name,
we will venture to christen Boswellism. But there are a few
characters which have stood the closest scrutiny and the severest
tests, which have been tried in the furnace and have proved pure,
which have been weighed in the balance and have not been found
wanting, which have been declared sterling by the general consent
of mankind, and which are visibly stamped with the image and
superscription of the Most High. These great men we trust that we
know how to prize; and of these was Milton. The sight of his
books, the sound of his name, are pleasant to us. His thoughts
resemble those celestial fruits and flowers which the Virgin
Martyr of Massinger sent down from the gardens of Paradise to the
earth, and which were distinguished from the productions of other
soils, not only by superior bloom and sweetness, but by
miraculous efficacy to invigorate and to heal. They are powerful,
not only to delight, but to elevate and purify. Nor do we envy
the man who can study either the life or the writings of the
great poet and patriot, without aspiring to emulate, not indeed
the sublime works with which his genius has enriched our
literature, but the zeal with which he laboured for the public
good, the fortitude with which he endured every private calamity,
the lofty disdain with which he looked down on temptations and
dangers, the deadly hatred which he bore to bigots and tyrants,
and the faith which he so sternly kept with his country and with
his fame.


SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE
(October 1838)

Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William
Temple. By the Right Hon. THOMAS PEREGRINE COURTENAY. Two vols.
8vo. London: 1836.

Mr. Courtenay has long been well known to politicians as an
industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and
consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most
moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members
of the Conservative party. His conduct has, indeed, on some
questions been so Whiggish, that both those who applauded and
those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered
as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast
through all changes of fortune and fashion; and he has at last
retired from public life, leaving behind him, to the best of our
belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and
goodwill of many who strongly dissent from his opinions.

This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by
a preface in which he informs us that the assistance furnished to
him from various quarters "has taught him the superiority of
literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and
conducing to an agreeable life." We are truly glad that Mr.
Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we
heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make
an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while
they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy
any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit from which, at
most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies
and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep and summers
without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that
laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is
mocked with the name of power.

The volumes before us are fairly entitled to the praise of
diligence, care, good sense, and impartiality; and these
qualities are sufficient to make a book valuable, but not quite
sufficient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has not sufficiently
studied the arts of selection and compression.  The information
with which he furnishes us, must still, we apprehend, be considered
as so much raw material. To manufacturers it will be highly
useful; but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed
by the idle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this
work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of
reading, than to those who read in order to write.

We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to
quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would
not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls against the
Whigs of the present day. Not only are these passages out of
place in a historical work, but some of them are intrinsically
such that they would become the editor of a third-rate party
newspaper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courtenay's talents and
knowledge. For example, we are told that, "it is a remarkable
circumstance, familiar to those who are acquainted with history,
but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politicians of
the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth,
never extended their liberality to the native Irish, or the
professors of the ancient religion." What schoolboy of fourteen
is ignorant of this remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or
old, was ever such an idiot as to think that it could be
suppressed? Really we might as well say that it is a remarkable
circumstance, familiar to people well read in history, but
carefully suppressed by the Clergy of the Established Church,
that in the fifteenth century England was in communion with Rome.
We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which
seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to have been
spoken against the Reform Bill: but we forbear.

We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William
Temple owes much to Mr. Courtenay's researches. Temple is one of
those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly without
knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to
lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet he is not without
fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen
of his time. A few of them equalled or surpassed him in talents;
but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few may be
named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested
than his; but they were of no eminent ability. Morally, he was
above Shaftesbury; intellectually, he was above Russell.

To say of a man that he occupied a high position in times of
misgovernment, of corruption, of civil and religious faction,
that nevertheless he contracted no great stain and bore no part
in any great crime, that he won the esteem of a profligate Court
and of a turbulent people, without being guilty of any
disgraceful subserviency to either, seems to be very high praise;
and all this may with truth be said of Temple.

Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. A temper not naturally
good, but under strict command; a constant regard to decorum; a
rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard,
human life; a disposition to be content with small and certain
winnings rather than to go on doubling the stake; these seem to
us to be the most remarkable features of his character. This sort
of moderation, when united, as in him it was, with very
considerable abilities, is, under ordinary circumstances,
scarcely to be distinguished from the highest and purest
integrity, and yet may be perfectly compatible with laxity of
principle, with coldness of heart, and with the most intense
selfishness. Temple, we fear, had not sufficient warmth and
elevation of sentiment to deserve the name of a virtuous man. He
did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he rendered
considerable services to her; but he risked nothing for her. No
temptation which either the King or the Opposition could hold out
ever induced him to come forward as the supporter either of
arbitrary or of factious measures. But he was most careful not to
give offence by strenuously opposing such measures. He never put
himself prominently before the public eye, except at conjunctures
when he was almost certain to gain, and could not possibly lose,
at conjunctures when the interest of the State, the views of the
Court, and the passions of the multitude, all appeared for an
instant to coincide. By judiciously availing himself of several
of these rare moments, he succeeded in establishing a high
character for wisdom and patriotism. When the favourable crisis
was passed, he never risked the reputation which he had won. He
avoided the great offices of State with a caution almost
pusillanimous, and confined himself to quiet and secluded
departments of public business, in which he could enjoy moderate
but certain advantages without incurring envy. If the
circumstances of the country became such that it was impossible
to take any part in politics without some danger, he retired to
his library and his orchard, and, while the nation groaned under
oppression, or resounded with tumult and with the din of civil
arms, amused himself by writing memoirs and tying up apricots.
His political career bore some resemblance to the military career
of Lewis the Fourteenth. Lewis, lest his royal dignity should be
compromised by failure, never repaired to a siege, till it had
been reported to him by the most skilful officers in his service,
that nothing could prevent the fall of the place. When this was
ascertained, the monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared
among the tents, held councils of war, dictated the capitulation,
received the keys, and then returned to Versailles to hear his
flatterers repeat that Turenne had been beaten at Mariendal, that
Conde had been forced to raise the siege of Arras, and that the
only warrior whose glory had never been obscured by a single
check was Lewis the Great. Yet Conde and Turenne will always be
considered as captains of a very different order from the
invincible Lewis; and we must own that many statesmen who have
committed great faults, appear to us to be deserving of more
esteem than the faultless Temple. For in truth his faultlessness
is chiefly to be ascribed to his extreme dread of all
responsibility, to his determination rather to leave his country
in a scrape than to run any chance of being in a scrape himself.
He seems to have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted
that the dangers to which a public man was exposed, in those days
of conflicting tyranny and sedition, were of a most serious kind.
He could not bear discomfort, bodily or mental. His lamentations,
when in the course of his diplomatic journeys he was put a little
out of his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, to rough it,
are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on a bad
Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of
travelling in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as if he
had gone on an expedition to the North Pole or to the source of
the Nile. This kind of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of
coddling himself, appears in all parts of his conduct. He loved
fame, but not with the love of an exalted and generous mind. He
loved it as an end, not at all as a means; as a personal luxury,
not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He scraped it
together and treasured it up with a timid and niggardly thrift;
and never employed the hoard in any enterprise, however virtuous
and useful, in which there was hazard of losing one particle. No
wonder if such a person did little or nothing which deserves
positive blame. But much more than this may justly be demanded of
a man possessed of such abilities, and placed in such a
situation. Had Temple been brought before Dante's infernal
tribunal, he would not have been condemned to the deeper recesses
of the abyss. He would not have been boiled with Dundee in the
crimson pool of Bulicame, or hurled with Danby into the seething
pitch of Malebolge, or congealed with Churchill in the eternal
ice of Giudecca; but he would perhaps have been placed in the
dark vestibule next to the shade of that inglorious pontiff

"Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto."

Of course a man is not bound to be a politician any more than he
is bound to be a soldier; and there are perfectly honourable ways
of quitting both politics and the military profession. But
neither in the one way of life, nor in the other, is any man
entitled to take all the sweet and leave all the sour. A man who
belongs to the army only in time of peace, who appears at reviews
in Hyde Park, escorts the Sovereign with the utmost valour and
fidelity to and from the House of Lords, and retires as soon as
he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an expedition, is
justly thought to have disgraced himself. Some portion of the
censure due to, such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the
mere holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as
those duties become difficult and disagreeable, that is to say,
as soon as it becomes peculiarly important that he should
resolutely perform them.

But though we are far indeed from considering Temple as a perfect
statesman, though we place him below many statesmen who have
committed very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared
with his contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable
appearance. The reaction which followed the victory of the
popular party over Charles the First, had produced a hurtful
effect on the national character; and this effect was most
discernible in the classes and in the places which had been most
strongly excited by the recent revolution. The deterioration was
greater in London than in the country, and was greatest of all in
the courtly and official circles. Almost all that remained of
what had been good and noble in the Cavaliers and Roundheads of
1642, was now to be found in the middling orders. The principles
and feelings which prompted the Grand Remonstrance were still
strong among the sturdy yeomen, and the decent God-fearing
merchants. The spirit of Derby and Capel still glowed in many
sequestered manor-houses; but among those political leaders who,
at the time of the Restoration, were still young or in the vigour
of manhood, there was neither a Southampton nor a Vane, neither a
Falkland nor a Hampden. The pure, fervent, and constant loyalty
which, in the preceding reign, had remained unshaken on fields
of disastrous battle, in foreign garrets and cellars, and at the
bar of the High Court of justice, was scarcely to be found among
the rising courtiers. As little, or still less, could the new
chiefs of parties lay claim to the great qualities of the
statesmen who had stood at the head of the Long Parliament.
Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are discriminated from the ablest
politicians of the succeeding generation, by all the strong
lineaments which distinguish the men who produce revolutions
from the men whom revolutions produce. The leader in a great
change, the man who stirs up a reposing community, and overthrows
a deeply-rooted system, may be a very depraved man; but he
can scarcely be destitute of some moral qualities, which extort
even from enemies a reluctant admiration, fixedness of purpose,
intensity of will, enthusiasm, which is not the less fierce
or persevering because it is sometimes disguised under the
semblance of composure, and which bears down before it the force
of circumstances and the opposition of reluctant minds. These
qualities, variously combined with all sorts of virtues and
vices, may be found, we think, in most of the authors of great
civil and religious movements, in Caesar, in Mahomet, in
Hildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robespierre; and these
qualities were found, in no scanty measure, among the chiefs of
the party which opposed Charles the First. The character of the
men whose minds are formed in the midst of the confusion which
follows a great revolution is generally very different. Heat, the
natural philosophers tell us, produces rarefaction of the air;
and rarefaction of the air produces cold. So zeal makes
revolutions; and revolutions make men zealous for nothing. The
politicians of whom we speak, whatever may be their natural
capacity or courage, are almost always characterised by a
peculiar levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apathetic way
of looking at the most solemn questions, a willingness to leave
the direction of their course to fortune and popular opinion, a
notion that one public cause is nearly as good as another, and a
firm conviction that it is much better to be the hireling of the
worst cause than to be a martyr to the best.

This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of
the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither
the enthusiasm of the Cavalier nor the enthusiasm of the
Republican. They had been early emancipated from the dominion of
old usages and feelings; yet they had not acquired a strong
passion for innovation. Accustomed to see old establishments
shaking, falling, lying in ruins all around them, accustomed to
live under a succession of constitutions of which the average
duration was about a twelvemonth, they had no religious reverence
for prescription, nothing of that frame of mind which naturally
springs from the habitual contemplation of immemorial antiquity
and immovable stability. Accustomed, on the other hand, to see
change after change welcomed with eager hope and ending in
disappointment, to see shame and confusion of face follow the
extravagant hopes and predictions of rash and fanatical
innovators, they had learned to look on professions of public
spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust and contempt.
They sometimes talked the language of devoted subjects, sometimes
that of ardent lovers of their country. But their secret creed
seems to have been, that loyalty was one great delusion and
patriotism another. If they really entertained any predilection
for the monarchical or for the popular part of the constitution,
for episcopacy or for presbyterianism, that predilection was
feeble and languid, and instead of overcoming, as in the times of
their fathers, the dread of exile, confiscation, and death, was
rarely of power to resist the slightest impulse of selfish
ambition or of selfish fear. Such was the texture of the
presbyterianism of Lauderdale, and of the speculative
republicanism of Halifax. The sense of political honour seemed to
be extinct. With the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity
in a public man is consistency. This test, though very defective,
is perhaps the best that any, except very acute or very near
observers, are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly enable
the people to form an estimate of the characters of the great,
which on the whole approximates to correctness. But during the
latter part of the seventeenth century, inconsistency had
necessarily ceased to be a disgrace; and a man was no more
taunted with it, than he is taunted with being black at
Timbuctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing what was common between
him and the whole nation. In the short space of about seven
years, the supreme power had been held by the Long Parliament, by
a Council of Officers, by Barebones' Parliament, by a Council of
Officers again, by a Protector according to the Instrument of
Government, by a Protector according to the Humble Petition and
Advice, by the Long Parliament again, by a third Council of
Officers, by the Long Parliament a third time, by the Convention,
and by the King. In such times, consistency is so inconvenient to
a man who affects it, and to all who are connected with him, that
it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, and is considered as
impracticable obstinacy and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such
times, a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve a succession
of Governments. Blake did so in one profession, and Hale in
another; and the conduct of both has been approved by posterity.
But it is clear that when inconsistency with respect to the most
important public questions has ceased to be a reproach,
inconsistency with respect to questions of minor importance is
not likely to be regarded as dishonourable. In a country in which
many very honest people had, within the space of a few months,
supported the government of the Protector, that of the Rump, and
that of the King, a man was not likely to be ashamed of
abandoning his party for a place, or of voting for a bill which
he had opposed.

The public men of the times which followed the Restoration were
by no means deficient in courage or ability; and some kinds of
talent appear to have been developed amongst them to a
remarkable, we might almost say, to a morbid and unnatural
degree. Neither Theramenes in ancient, nor Talleyrand in modern
times, had a finer perception of all the peculiarities of
character, and of all the indications of coming change, than some
of our countrymen in that age. Their power of reading things of
high import, in signs which to others were invisible or
unintelligible, resembled magic. But the curse of Reuben was upon
them all: "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel."

This character is susceptible of innumerable modifications,
according to the innumerable varieties of intellect and temper in
which it may be found. Men of unquiet minds and violent ambition
followed a fearfully eccentric course, darted wildly from one
extreme to another, served and betrayed all parties in turn,
showed their unblushing foreheads alternately in the van of the
most corrupt administrations and of the most factious
oppositions, were privy to the most guilty mysteries, first of
the Cabal, and then of the Rye-House Plot, abjured their religion
to win their sovereign's favour while they were secretly planning
his overthrow, shrived themselves to Jesuits, with letters in
cypher from the Prince of Orange in their pockets, corresponded
with the Hague whilst in office under James, and began to
correspond with St. Germain's as soon as they had kissed hands
for office under William. But Temple was not one of these. He was
not destitute of ambition. But his was not one of those souls in
which unsatisfied ambition anticipates the tortures of hell,
gnaws like the worm which dieth not, and burns like the fire
which is not quenched. His principle was to make sure of safety
and comfort, and to let greatness come if it would. It came: he
enjoyed it: and, in the very first moment in which it could no
longer be enjoyed without danger and vexation, he contentedly let
it go. He was not exempt, we think, from the prevailing political
immorality. His mind took the contagion, but took it ad modum
recipientis, in a form so mild that an undiscerning judge might
doubt whether it were indeed the same fierce pestilence that was
raging all around. The malady partook of the constitutional
languor of the patient. The general corruption, mitigated by his
calm and unadventurous temperament, showed itself in omissions
and desertions, not in positive crimes; and his inactivity,
though sometimes timorous and selfish, becomes respectable when
compared with the malevolent and perfidious restlessness of
Shaftesbury and Sunderland.

Temple sprang from a family which, though ancient and honourable,
had, before his time, been scarcely mentioned in our history, but
which, long after his death, produced so many eminent men, and
formed such distinguished alliances, that it exercised, in a
regular and constitutional manner, an influence in the state
scarcely inferior to that which, in widely different times, and
by widely different arts, the house of Neville attained in
England, and that of Douglas in Scotland. During the latter years
of George the Second, and through the whole reign of George the
Third, members of that widely spread and powerful connection were
almost constantly at the head either of the Government or of the
Opposition. There were times when the cousinhood, as it was once
nicknamed, would of itself have furnished almost all the
materials necessary for the construction of an efficient Cabinet.
Within the space of fifty years, three First Lords of the
Treasury, three Secretaries of State, two Keepers of the Privy
Seal, and four First Lords of the Admiralty were appointed from
among the sons and grandsons of the Countess Temple.

So splendid have been the fortunes of the main stock of the
Temple family, continued by female succession. William Temple,
the first of the line who attained to any great historical
eminence, was of a younger branch. His father, Sir John Temple,
was Master of the Rolls in Ireland, and distinguished himself
among the Privy Councillors of that kingdom by the zeal with
which, at the commencement of the struggle between the Crown and
the Long Parliament, he supported the popular cause. He was
arrested by order of the Duke of Ormond, but regained his liberty
by an exchange, repaired to England, and there sate in the House
of Commons as burgess for Chichester. He attached himself to the
Presbyterian party, and was one of those moderate members who, at
the close of the year 1648, voted for treating with Charles on
the basis to which that Prince had himself agreed, and who were,
in consequence, turned out of the House, with small ceremony, by
Colonel Pride. Sir John seems, however, to have made his peace
with the victorious Independents; for, in 1653, he resumed his
office in Ireland.

Sir John Temple was married to a sister of the celebrated Henry
Hammond, a learned and pious divine, who took the side of the
King with very conspicuous zeal during the Civil War, and was
deprived of his preferment in the church after the victory of the
Parliament. On account of the loss which Hammond sustained on
this occasion, he has the honour of being designated, in the cant
of that new brood of Oxonian sectaries who unite the worst parts
of the Jesuit to the worst parts of the Orangeman, as Hammond,
Presbyter, Doctor, and Confessor.

William Temple, Sir John's eldest son, was born in London in the
year 1628. He received his early education under his maternal
uncle, was subsequently sent to school at Bishop-Stortford, and,
at seventeen, began to reside at Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
where the celebrated Cudworth was his tutor. The times were not
favourable to study. The Civil War disturbed even the quiet
cloisters and bowling-greens of Cambridge, produced violent
revolutions in the government and discipline of the colleges, and
unsettled the minds of the students. Temple forgot at Emmanuel
all the little Greek which he had brought from Bishop-Stortford,
and never retrieved the loss; a circumstance which would hardly
be worth noticing but for the almost incredible fact that, fifty
years later, he was so absurd as to set up his own authority
against that of Bentley on questions of Greek history and
philology. He made no proficiency either in the old philosophy
which still lingered in the schools of Cambridge, or in the new
philosophy of which Lord Bacon was the founder. But to the end of
his life he continued to speak of the former with ignorant
admiration, and of the latter with equally ignorant contempt.

After residing at Cambridge two years, he departed without taking
a degree, and set out upon his travels. He seems to have been
then a lively, agreeable young man of fashion, not by any means
deeply read, but versed in all the superficial accomplishments of
a gentleman, and acceptable in all polite societies. In politics
he professed himself a Royalist. His opinions on religious
subjects seem to have been such as might be expected from a young
man of quick parts, who had received a rambling education, who
had not thought deeply, who had been disgusted by the morose
austerity of the Puritans, and who, surrounded from childhood by
the hubbub of conflicting sects, might easily learn to feel an
impartial contempt for them all.

On his road to France he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir
Peter Osborne. Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the
young people were, like their father, warm for the royal cause.
At an inn where they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother
amused himself with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the
ruling powers. For this instance of malignancy the whole party
were arrested, and brought before the governor. The sister,
trusting to the tenderness which, even in those troubled times,
scarcely any gentleman of any party ever failed to show where a
woman was concerned, took the crime on herself, and was
immediately set at liberty with her fellow-travellers.

This incident, as was natural, made a deep impression on Temple.
He was only twenty. Dorothy Osborne was twenty-one. She is said
to have been handsome; and there remains abundant proof that she
possessed an ample share of the dexterity, the vivacity, and the
tenderness of her sex. Temple soon became, in the phrase of that
time, her servant, and she returned his regard. But difficulties,
as great as ever expanded a novel to the fifth volume, opposed
their wishes. When the courtship commenced, the father of the
hero was sitting in the Long Parliament; the father of the
heroine was commanding in Guernsey for King Charles. Even when
the war ended, and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his seat at
Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less
gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in view
for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the meantime besieged by as
many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of Portia. The
most distinguished on the list was Henry Cromwell. Destitute of
the capacity, the energy, the magnanimity of his illustrious
father, destitute also of the meek and placid virtues of his
elder brother, this young man was perhaps a more formidable rival
in love than either of them would have been. Mrs. Hutchinson,
speaking the sentiments of the grave and aged, describes him
as an "insolent foole," and a "debauched ungodly cavalier." These
expressions probably mean that he was one who, among young and
dissipated people, would pass for a fine gentleman. Dorothy was
fond of dogs of larger and more formidable breed than those which
lie on modern hearth-rugs; and Henry Cromwell promised that the
highest functionaries at Dublin should be set to work to procure
her a fine Irish greyhound. She seems to have felt his attentions
as very flattering, though his father was then only Lord-General,
and not yet Protector. Love, however, triumphed over ambition,
and the young lady appears never to have regretted her decision;
though, in a letter written just at the time when all England was
ringing with the news of the violent dissolution of the Long
Parliament, she could not refrain from reminding Temple, with
pardonable vanity, "how great she might have been, if she had
been so wise as to have taken hold of the offer of H. C."

Nor was it only the influence of rivals that Temple had to dread.
The relations of his mistress regarded him with personal dislike,
and spoke of him as an unprincipled adventurer, without honour or
religion, ready to render service to any party for the sake of
preferment. This is, indeed, a very distorted view of Temple's
character. Yet a character, even in the most distorted view taken
of it by the most angry and prejudiced minds, generally retains
something of its outline. No caricaturist ever represented Mr.
Pitt as a Falstaff, or Mr. Fox as a skeleton; nor did any
libeller ever impute parsimony to Sheridan, or profusion to
Marlborough. It must be allowed that the turn of mind which the
eulogists of Temple have dignified with the appellation of
philosophical indifference, and which, however becoming it may be
in an old and experienced statesman, has a somewhat ungraceful
appearance in youth, might easily appear shocking to a family who
were ready to fight or to suffer martyrdom for their exiled King
and their persecuted church. The poor girl was exceedingly hurt
and irritated by these imputations on her lover, defended him
warmly behind his back, and addressed to himself some very tender
and anxious admonitions, mingled with assurances of her
confidence in his honour and virtue. On one occasion she was most
highly provoked by the way in which one of her brothers spoke of
Temple. "We talked ourselves weary," she says; "he renounced me,
and I defied him."

Near seven years did this arduous wooing continue. We are not
accurately informed respecting Temple's movements during that
time. But he seems to have led a rambling life, sometimes on the
Continent, sometimes in Ireland, sometimes in London. He made
himself master of the French and Spanish languages, and amused
himself by writing essays and romances, an employment which at
least served the purpose of forming his style. The specimen which
Mr. Courtenay has preserved of these early compositions is by no
means contemptible: indeed, there is one passage on Like and
Dislike which could have been produced only by a mind habituated
carefully to reflect on its own operations, and which reminds us
of the best things in Montaigne.

Temple appears to have kept up a very active correspondence with
his mistress. His letters are lost, but hers have been preserved;
and many of them appear in these volumes. Mr. Courtenay expresses
some doubt whether his readers will think him justified in
inserting so large a number of these epistles. We only wish that
there were twice as many. Very little indeed of the diplomatic
correspondence of that generation is so well worth reading. There
is a vile phrase of which bad historians are exceedingly fond,
"the dignity of history." One writer is in possession of some
anecdotes which would illustrate most strikingly the operation of
the Mississippi scheme on the manners and morals of the
Parisians. But he suppresses those anecdotes, because they are
too low for the dignity of history. Another is strongly tempted
to mention some facts indicating the horrible state of the
prisons of England two hundred years ago. But he hardly thinks
that the sufferings of a dozen felons, pigging together on bare
bricks in a hole fifteen feet square, would form a subject suited
to the dignity of history. Another, from respect for the dignity
of history, publishes an account of the reign of George the
Second, without ever mentioning Whitefield's preaching in
Moorfields. How should a writer, who can talk about senates, and
congresses of sovereigns, and pragmatic sanctions, and ravelines,
and counterscarps, and battles where ten thousand men are killed,
and six thousand men with fifty stand of colours and eighty guns
taken, stoop to the Stock Exchange, to Newgate, to the theatre,
to the tabernacle?

Tragedy has its dignity as well as history; and how much the
tragic art has owed to that dignity any man may judge who will
compare the majestic Alexandrines in which the Seigneur Oreste
and Madame Andromaque utter their complaints, with the chattering
of the fool in Lear and of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet.

That a historian should not record trifles, that he should
confine himself to what is important, is perfectly true. But many
writers seem never to have considered on what the historical
importance of an event depends. They seem not to be aware that
the importance of a fact, when that fact is considered with
reference to its immediate effects, and the importance of the
same fact, when that fact is considered as part of the materials
for the construction of a science, are two very different things.
The quantity of good or evil which a transaction produces is by
no means necessarily proportioned to the quantity of light which
that transaction affords, as to the way in which good or evil may
hereafter be produced. The poisoning of an emperor is in one
sense a far more serious matter than the poisoning of a rat. But
the poisoning of a rat may be an era in chemistry; and an emperor
may be poisoned by such ordinary means, and with such ordinary
symptoms, that no scientific journal would notice the occurrence.
An action for a hundred thousand pounds is in one sense a more
momentous affair than an action for fifty pounds. But it by no
means follows that the learned gentlemen who report the
proceedings of the courts of law ought to give a fuller account
of an action for a hundred thousand pounds, than of an action for
fifty pounds. For a cause in which a large sum is at stake may be
important only to the particular plaintiff and the particular
defendant. A cause, on the other hand, in which a small sum is at
stake, may establish some great principle interesting to half the
families in the kingdom. The case is exactly the same with that
class of subjects of which historians treat. To an Athenian, in
the time of the Peloponnesian war, the result of the battle of
Delium was far more important than the fate of the comedy of The
Knights. But to us the fact that the comedy of The Knights was
brought on the Athenian stage with success is far more important
than the fact that the Athenian phalanx gave way at Delium.
Neither the one event nor the other has now any intrinsic
importance. We are in no danger of being speared by the Thebans.
We are not quizzed in The Knights. To us the importance of both
events consists in the value of the general truth which is to be
learned from them. What general truth do we learn from the
accounts which have come down to us of the battle of Delium? Very
little more than this, that when two armies fight, it is not
improbable that one of them will be very soundly beaten, a truth
which it would not, we apprehend, be difficult to establish, even
if all memory of the battle of Delium were lost among men. But a
man who becomes acquainted with the comedy of The Knights, and
with the history of that comedy, at once feels his mind enlarged.
Society is presented to him under a new aspect. He may have read
and travelled much. He may have visited all the countries of
Europe, and the civilised nations of the East. He may have
observed the manners of many barbarous races. But here is
something altogether different from everything which he has seen,
either among polished men or among savages. Here is a community
politically, intellectually, and morally unlike any other
community of which he has the means of forming an opinion. This
is the really precious part of history, the corn which some
threshers carefully sever from the chaff, for the purpose of
gathering the chaff into the garner, and flinging the corn into
the fire.

Thinking thus, we are glad to learn so much, and would willingly
learn more, about the loves of Sir William and his mistress. In
the seventeenth century, to be sure, Lewis the Fourteenth was a
much more important person than Temple's sweetheart. But death
and time equalise all things. Neither the great King, nor the
beauty of Bedfordshire, neither the gorgeous paradise of Marli
nor Mistress Osborne's favourite walk "in the common that lay
hard by the house, where a great many young wenches used to keep
sheep and cows and sit in the shade singing of ballads," is
anything to us. Lewis and Dorothy are alike dust. A cotton-mill
stands on the ruins of Marli; and the Osbornes have ceased to
dwell under the ancient roof of Chicksands. But of that
information for the sake of which alone it is worth while to
study remote events, we find so much in the love letters which
Mr. Courtenay has published, that we would gladly purchase
equally interesting billets with ten times their weight in state-
papers taken at random. To us surely it is as useful to know how
the young ladies of England employed themselves a hundred and
eighty years ago, how far their minds were cultivated, what were
their favourite studies, what degree of liberty was allowed to
them, what use they made of that liberty, what accomplishments
they most valued in men, and what proofs of tenderness delicacy
permitted them to give to favoured suitors, as to know all about
the seizure of Franche Comte and the treaty of Nimeguen. The
mutual relations of the two sexes seem to us to be at least as
important as the mutual relations of any two governments in the
world; and a series of letters written by a virtuous, amiable,
and sensible girl, and intended for the eye of her lover alone,
can scarcely fail to throw some light on the relations of the
sexes; whereas it is perfectly possible, as all who have made
any historical researches can attest, to read bale after bale of
despatches and protocols, without catching one glimpse of light
about the relations of governments.

Mr. Courtenay proclaims that he is one of Dorothy Osborne's
devoted servants, and expresses a hope that the publication of
her letters will add to the number. We must declare ourselves his
rivals. She really seems to have been a very charming young
woman, modest, generous, affectionate, intelligent, and
sprightly; a royalist, as was to be expected from her
connections, without any of that political asperity which is as
unwomanly as a long beard; religious, and occasionally gliding
into a very pretty and endearing sort of preaching, yet not too
good to partake of such diversions as London afforded under the
melancholy rule of the Puritans, or to giggle a little at a
ridiculous sermon from a divine who was thought to be one of the
great lights of the Assembly at Westminster; with a little turn
of coquetry, which was yet perfectly compatible with warm and
disinterested attachment, and a little turn for satire, which yet
seldom passed the bounds of good-nature. She loved reading; but
her studies were not those of Queen Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey.
She read the verses of Cowley and Lord Broghill, French Memoirs
recommended by her lover, and the Travels of Fernando Mendez
Pinto. But her favourite books were those ponderous French
romances which modern readers know chiefly from the pleasant
satire of Charlotte Lennox. She could not, however, help laughing
at the vile English into which they were translated. Her own
style is very agreeable; nor are her letters at all the worse for
some passages in which raillery and tenderness are mixed in a
very engaging namby-pamby.

When at last the constancy of the lovers had triumphed over all
the obstacles which kinsmen and rivals could oppose to their
union, a yet more serious calamity befell them. Poor Mistress
Osborne fell ill of the small-pox, and, though she escaped with
life, lost all her beauty. To this most severe trial the
affection and honour of the lovers of that age was not
unfrequently subjected. Our readers probably remember what Mrs.
Hutchinson tells of herself. The lofty Cornelia-like spirit of
the aged matron seems to melt into a long-forgotten softness when
she relates how her beloved Colonel "married her as soon as she
was able to quit the chamber, when the priest and all that saw
her were affrighted to look on her. But God," she adds, with a
not ungraceful vanity, "recompensed his justice and constancy,
by restoring her as well as before." Temple showed on this
occasion the same justice and constancy which did so much honour
to Colonel Hutchinson. The date of the marriage is not exactly
known. But Mr. Courtenay supposes it to have taken place about
the end of the year 1654. From this time we lose sight of
Dorothy, and are reduced to form our opinion of the terms on
which she and her husband were from very slight indications which
may easily mislead us.

Temple soon went to Ireland, and resided with his father, partly
at Dublin, partly in the county of Carlow. Ireland was probably
then a more agreeable residence for the higher classes, as
compared with England, than it has ever been before or since. In
no part of the empire were the superiority of Cromwell's
abilities and the force of his character so signally displayed.
He had not the power, and probably had not the inclination, to
govern that island in the best way. The rebellion of the
aboriginal race had excited in England a strong religious and
national aversion to them; nor is there any reason to believe
that the Protector was so far beyond his age as to be free from
the prevailing sentiment. He had vanquished them; he knew that
they were in his power; and he regarded them as a band of
malefactors and idolaters, who were mercifully treated if they
were not smitten with the edge of the sword. On those who
resisted he had made war as the Hebrews made war on the
Canaanites. Drogheda was as Jericho; and Wexford as Ai. To the
remains of the old population the conqueror granted a peace, such
as that which Israel granted to the Gibeonites. He made them
hewers of wood and drawers of water. But, good or bad, he could
not be otherwise than great. Under favourable circumstances,
Ireland would have found in him a most just and beneficent ruler.
She found in him a tyrant; not a small teasing tyrant, such as
those who have so long been her curse and her shame, but one of
those awful tyrants who, at long intervals, seem to be sent on
earth, like avenging angels, with some high commission of
destruction and renovation. He was no man of half measures, of
mean affronts and ungracious concessions. His Protestant
ascendency was not an ascendency of ribands, and fiddles, and
statues, and processions. He would never have dreamed of
abolishing the penal code and withholding from Catholics the
elective franchise, of giving them the elective franchise and
excluding them from Parliament, of admitting them to Parliament,
and refusing to them a full and equal participation in all the
blessings of society and government. The thing most alien from
his clear intellect and his commanding spirit was petty
persecution. He knew how to tolerate; and he knew how to destroy.
His administration in Ireland was an administration on what are
now called Orange principles, followed out most ably, most
steadily, most undauntedly, most unrelentingly, to every extreme
consequence to which those principles lead; and it would, if
continued, inevitably have produced the effect which he
contemplated, an entire decomposition and reconstruction of
society. He had a great and definite object in view, to make
Ireland thoroughly English, to make Ireland another Yorkshire or
Norfolk. Thinly peopled as Ireland then was, this end was not
unattainable; and there is every reason to believe that, if his
policy had been followed during fifty years, this end would have
been attained. Instead of an emigration, such as we now see from
Ireland to England, there was, under his government, a constant
and large emigration from England to Ireland. This tide of
population ran almost as strongly as that which now runs from
Massachusetts and Connecticut to the states behind the Ohio. The
native race was driven back before the advancing van of the
Anglo-Saxon population, as the American Indians or the tribes of
Southern Africa are now driven back before the white settlers.
Those fearful phaenomena which have almost invariably attended
the planting of civilised colonies in uncivilised countries, and
which had been known to the nations of Europe only by distant and
questionable rumour, were now publicly exhibited in their sight.
The words "extirpation," "eradication," were often in the mouths
of the English back-settlers of Leinster and Munster, cruel
words, yet, in their cruelty, containing more mercy than much
softer expressions which have since been sanctioned by
universities and cheered by Parliaments. For it is in truth more
merciful to extirpate a hundred thousand human beings at once and
to fill the void with a well-governed population, than to
misgovern millions through a long succession of generations. We
can much more easily pardon tremendous severities inflicted for a
great object, than an endless series of paltry vexations and
oppressions inflicted for no rational object at all.

Ireland was fast becoming English. Civilisation and wealth were
making rapid progress in almost every part of the island. The
effects of that iron despotism are described to us by a hostile
witness in very remarkable language. "Which is more wonderful,"
says Lord Clarendon, "all this was done and settled within little
more than two years, to that degree of perfection that there were
many buildings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and
regular plantations of trees, and fences and inclosures raised
throughout the kingdom, purchases made by one from another at
very valuable rates, and jointures made upon marriages, and all
other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a kingdom at
peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the
validity of titles."

All Temple's feelings about Irish questions were those of a
colonist and a member of the dominant caste. He troubled himself
as little about the welfare of the remains of the old Celtic
population, as an English farmer on the Swan River troubles
himself about the New Hollanders, or a Dutch boor at the Cape
about the Caffres. The years which he passed in Ireland, while
the Cromwellian system was in full operation, he always described
as "years of great satisfaction." Farming, gardening, county
business, and studies rather entertaining than profound, occupied
his time. In politics he took no part, and many years later he
attributed this inaction to his love of the ancient constitution,
which, he said, "would not suffer him to enter into public
affairs till the way was plain for the King's happy restoration."
It does not appear, indeed, that any offer of employment was made
to him. If he really did refuse any preferment, we may, without
much breach of charity, attribute the refusal rather to the
caution which, during his whole life, prevented him from running
any risk, than to the fervour of his loyalty.

In 1660 he made his first appearance in public life. He sat in
the convention which, in the midst of the general confusion that
preceded the Restoration, was summoned by the chiefs of the army
of Ireland to meet in Dublin. After the King's return an Irish
parliament was regularly convoked, in which Temple represented
the county of Carlow. The details of his conduct in this
situation are not known to us. But we are told in general terms,
and can easily believe, that he showed great moderation, and
great aptitude for business. It is probable that he also
distinguished himself in debate; for many years afterwards he
remarked that "his friends in Ireland used to think that, if he
had any talent at all, it lay in that way."

In May, 1663, the Irish parliament was prorogued, and Temple
repaired to England with his wife. His income amounted to about
five hundred pounds a-year, a sum which was then sufficient for
the wants of a family mixing in fashionable circles, He passed
two years in London, where he seems to have led that easy,
lounging life which was best suited to his temper.

He was not, however, unmindful of his interest. He had brought
with him letters of introduction from the Duke of Ormond, then
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, to Clarendon, and to Henry Bennet,
Lord Arlington, who was Secretary of State. Clarendon was at the
head of affairs. But his power was visibly declining, and was
certain to decline more and more every day. An observer much less
discerning than Temple might easily perceive that the Chancellor
was a man who belonged to a by-gone world, a representative of a
past age, of obsolete modes of thinking, of unfashionable vices,
and of more unfashionable virtues. His long exile had made him a
stranger in the country of his birth. His mind, heated by
conflict and by personal suffering, was far more set against
popular and tolerant courses than it had been at the time of the
breaking out of the civil war. He pined for the decorous tyranny
of the old Whitehall; for the days of that sainted king who
deprived his people of their money and their ears, but let their
wives and daughters alone; and could scarcely reconcile himself
to a court with a seraglio and without a Star-Chamber. By taking
this course he made himself every day more odious, both to the
sovereign, who loved pleasure much more than prerogative, and to
the people, who dreaded royal prerogatives much more than royal
pleasures; and thus he was at last more detested by the Court
than any chief of the Opposition, and more detested by the
Parliament than any pandar of the Court.

Temple, whose great maxim was to offend no party, was not likely
to cling to the falling fortunes of a minister the study of whose
life was to offend all parties. Arlington, whose influence was
gradually rising as that of Clarendon diminished, was the most
useful patron to whom a young adventurer could attach himself.
This statesman, without virtue, wisdom, or strength of mind, had
raised himself to greatness by superficial qualities, and was the
mere creature of the time, the circumstances, and the company.
The dignified reserve of manners which he had acquired during a
residence in Spain provoked the ridicule of those who considered
the usages of the French court as the only standard of good
breeding, but served to impress the crowd with a favourable
opinion of his sagacity and gravity. In situations where the
solemnity of the Escurial would have been out of place, he threw
it aside without difficulty, and conversed with great humour and
vivacity. While the multitude were talking of "Bennet's grave
looks," ["Bennet's grave looks were a pretence" is a line in one
of the best political poems of that age,] his mirth made his
presence always welcome in the royal closet. While Buckingham, in
the antechamber, was mimicking the pompous Castilian strut of the
Secretary, for the diversion of Mistress Stuart, this stately Don
was ridiculing Clarendon's sober counsels to the King within,
till his Majesty cried with laughter, and the Chancellor with
vexation. There perhaps never was a man whose outward demeanour
made such different impressions on different people. Count
Hamilton, for example, describes him as a stupid formalist, who
had been made secretary solely on account of his mysterious and
important looks. Clarendon, on the other hand, represents him as
a man whose "best faculty was raillery," and who was "for his
pleasant and agreeable humour acceptable unto the King." The
truth seems to be that, destitute as Bennet was of all the higher
qualifications of a minister, he had a wonderful talent for
becoming, in outward semblance, all things to all men. He had two
aspects, a busy and serious one for the public, whom he wished to
awe into respect, and a gay one for Charles, who thought that the
greatest service which could be rendered to a prince was to amuse
him. Yet both these were masks which he laid aside when they had
served their turn. Long after, when he had retired to his deer-
park and fish-ponds in Suffolk, and had no motive to act the part
either of the hidalgo or of the buffoon, Evelyn, who was neither
an unpractised nor an undiscerning judge, conversed much with
him, and pronounced him to be a man of singularly polished
manners and of great colloquial powers.

Clarendon, proud and imperious by nature, soured by age and
disease, and relying on his great talents and services, sought
out no new allies. He seems to have taken a sort of morose
pleasure in slighting and provoking all the rising talent of the
kingdom. His connections were almost entirely confined to the
small circle, every day becoming smaller, of old cavaliers who
had been friends of his youth or companions of his exile.
Arlington, on the other hand, beat up everywhere for recruits. No
man had a greater personal following, and no man exerted himself
more to serve his adherents. It was a kind of habit with him to
push up his dependants to his own level, and then to complain
bitterly of their ingratitude because they did not choose to be
his dependants any longer. It was thus that he quarrelled with
two successive Treasurers, Gifford and Danby. To Arlington Temple
attached himself, and was not sparing of warm professions of
affection, or even, we grieve to say, of gross and almost profane
adulation. In no long time he obtained his reward.

England was in a very different situation with respect to foreign
powers from that which she had occupied during the splendid
administration of the Protector. She was engaged in war with the
United Provinces, then governed with almost regal power by the
Grand Pensionary, John de Witt; and though no war had ever cost
the kingdom so much, none had ever been more feebly and meanly
conducted. France had espoused the interests of the States-
General. Denmark seemed likely to take the same side. Spain,
indignant at the close political and matrimonial alliance which
Charles had formed with the House of Braganza, was not disposed
to lend him any assistance. The great plague of London had
suspended trade, had scattered the ministers and nobles, had
paralysed every department of the public service, and had
increased the gloomy discontent which misgovernment had begun to
excite throughout the nation. One continental ally England
possessed, the Bishop of Munster, a restless and ambitious
prelate, bred a soldier, and still a soldier in all his tastes
and passions. He hated the Dutch for interfering in the affairs
of his see, and declared himself willing to risk his little
dominions for the chance of revenge. He sent, accordingly, a
strange kind of ambassador to London, a Benedictine monk, who
spoke bad English, and looked, says Lord Clarendon, "like a
carter." This person brought a letter from the Bishop, offering
to make an attack by land on the Dutch territory. The English
ministers eagerly caught at the proposal, and promised a subsidy
of 500,000 rix-dollars to their new ally. It was determined to
send an English agent to Munster; and Arlington, to whose
department the business belonged, fixed on Temple for this post.

Temple accepted the commission, and acquitted himself to the
satisfaction of his employers, though the whole plan ended in
nothing, and the Bishop, finding that France had joined Holland,
made haste, after pocketing an instalment of his subsidy, to
conclude a separate peace. Temple, at a later period, looked back
with no great satisfaction to this part of his life; and excused
himself for undertaking a negotiation from which little good
could result, by saying that he was then young and very new to
business. In truth, he could hardly have been placed in a
situation where the eminent diplomatic talents which he possessed
could have appeared to less advantage. He was ignorant of the
German language, and did not easily accommodate himself to the
manners of the people. He could not bear much wine; and none but
a hard drinker had any chance of success in Westphalian society.
Under all these disadvantages, however, he gave so much
satisfaction that he was created a Baronet, and appointed
resident at the vice-regal court of Brussels.

Brussels suited Temple far better than the palaces of the boar-
hunting and wine-bibbing princes of Germany. He now occupied one
of the most important posts of observation in which a diplomatist
could be stationed. He was placed in the territory of a great
neutral power, between the territories of two great powers which
were at war with England. From this excellent school he soon came
forth the most accomplished negotiator of his age.

In the meantime the government of Charles had suffered a
succession of humiliating disasters. The extravagance of the
court had dissipated all the means which Parliament had supplied
for the purpose of carrying on offensive hostilities.

It was determined to wage only a defensive war; and even for
defensive war the vast resources of England, managed by triflers
and public robbers, were found insufficient. The Dutch insulted
the British coasts, sailed up the Thames, took Sheerness, and
carried their ravages to Chatham. The blaze of the ships burning
in the river was seen at London: it was rumoured that a foreign
army had landed at Gravesend; and military men seriously
proposed to abandon the Tower. To such a depth of infamy had a
bad administration reduced that proud and victorious country,
which a few years before had dictated its pleasure to Mazarine,
to the States-General, and to the Vatican. Humbled by the events
of the war, and dreading the just anger of Parliament, the
English Ministry hastened to huddle up a peace with France and
Holland at Breda.

But a new scheme was about to open. It had already been for some
time apparent to discerning observers, that England and Holland
were threatened by a common danger, much more formidable than any
which they had reason to apprehend from each other. The old enemy
of their independence and of their religion was no longer to be
dreaded. The sceptre had passed away from Spain. That mighty
empire, on which the sun never set, which had crushed the
liberties of Italy and Germany, which had occupied Paris with its
armies, and covered the British seas with its sails, was at the
mercy of every spoiler; and Europe observed with dismay the rapid
growth of a new and more formidable power. Men looked to Spain
and saw only weakness disguised and increased by pride, dominions
of vast bulk and little strength, tempting, unwieldy, and
defenceless, an empty treasury, a sullen and torpid nation, a
child on the throne, factions in the council, ministers who
served only themselves, and soldiers who were terrible only to
their countrymen. Men looked to France, and saw a large and
compact territory, a rich soil, a central situation, a bold,
alert, and ingenious people, large revenues, numerous and well-
disciplined troops, an active and ambitious prince, in the flower
of his age, surrounded by generals of unrivalled skill. The
projects of Lewis could be counteracted only by ability, vigour,
and union on the part of his neighbours. Ability and vigour had
hitherto been found in the councils of Holland alone, and of
union there was no appearance in Europe. The question of
Portuguese independence separated England from Spain. Old
grudges, recent hostilities, maritime pretensions, commercial
competition separated England as widely from the United
Provinces.

The great object of Lewis, from the beginning to the end of his
reign, was the acquisition of those large and valuable provinces
of the Spanish monarchy, which lay contiguous to the eastern
frontier of France. Already, before the conclusion of the treaty
of Breda, he had invaded those provinces. He now pushed on his
conquest with scarcely any resistance. Fortress after fortress
was taken. Brussels itself was in danger; and Temple thought it
wise to send his wife and children to England. But his sister,
Lady Giffard, who had been some time his inmate, and who seems to
have been a more important personage in his family than his wife,
still remained with him.

De Witt saw the progress of the French arms with painful anxiety.
But it was not in the power of Holland alone to save Flanders;
and the difficulty of forming an extensive coalition for that
purpose appeared almost insuperable. Lewis, indeed, affected
moderation. He declared himself willing to agree to a compromise
with Spain. But these offers were undoubtedly mere professions,
intended to quiet the apprehensions of the neighbouring powers;
and, as his position became every day more and more advantageous,
it was to be expected that he would rise in his demands.

Such was the state of affairs when Temple obtained from the
English Ministry permission to make a tour in Holland incognito.
In company with Lady Giffard he arrived at the Hague.

He was not charged with any public commission, but he availed
himself of this opportunity of introducing himself to De Witt.
"My only business, sir," he said, "is to see the things which are
most considerable in your country, and I should execute my design
very imperfectly if I went away without seeing you." De Witt, who
from report had formed a high opinion of Temple, was pleased by
the compliment, and replied with a frankness and cordiality which
at once led to intimacy. The two statesmen talked calmly over the
causes which had estranged England from Holland, congratulated
each other on the peace, and then began to discuss the new
dangers which menaced Europe. Temple, who had no authority to say
any thing on behalf of the English Government, expressed himself
very guardedly. De Witt, who was himself the Dutch Government,
had no reason to be reserved. He openly declared that his wish
was to see a general coalition formed for the preservation of
Flanders. His simplicity and openness amazed Temple, who had been
accustomed to the affected solemnity of his patron, the
Secretary, and to the eternal doublings and evasions which passed
for great feats of statesmanship among the Spanish politicians at
Brussels. "Whoever," he wrote to Arlington, "deals with M. de
Witt must go the same plain way that he pretends to in his
negotiations, without refining or colouring or offering shadow
for substance." Temple was scarcely less struck by the modest
dwelling and frugal table of the first citizen of the richest
state in the world. While Clarendon was amazing London with a
dwelling more sumptuous than the palace of his master, while
Arlington was lavishing his ill-gotten wealth on the decoys and
orange-gardens and interminable conservatories of Euston, the
great statesman who had frustrated all their plans of conquest,
and the roar of whose guns they had heard with terror even in the
galleries of Whitehall, kept only a single servant, walked about
the streets in the plainest garb, and never used a coach except
for visits of ceremony.

Temple sent a full account of his interview with De Witt to
Arlington, who, in consequence of the fall of the Chancellor, now
shared with the Duke of Buckingham the principal direction of
affairs. Arlington showed no disposition to meet the advances of
the Dutch minister. Indeed, as was amply proved a few years
later, both he and his masters were perfectly willing to purchase
the means of misgoverning England by giving up, not only
Flanders, but the whole Continent to France. Temple, who
distinctly saw that a moment had arrived at which it was possible
to reconcile his country with Holland, to reconcile Charles with
the Parliament, to bridle the power of Lewis, to efface the shame
of the late ignominious war, to restore England to the same place
in Europe which she had occupied under Cromwell, became more and
more urgent in his representations. Arlington's replies were for
some time couched in cold and ambiguous terms. But the events
which followed the meeting of Parliament, in the autumn of 1667,
appear to have produced an entire change in his views. The
discontent of the nation was deep and general. The administration
was attacked in all its parts. The King and the ministers
laboured, not unsuccessfully, to throw on Clarendon the blame of
past miscarriages; but though the Commons were resolved that the
late Chancellor should be the first victim, it was by no means
clear that he would be the last. The Secretary was personally
attacked with great bitterness in the course of the debates. One
of the resolutions of the Lower House against Clarendon was in
truth a censure of the foreign policy of the Government, as too
favourable to France. To these events chiefly we are inclined to
attribute the change which at this crisis took place in the
measures of England. The Ministry seem to have felt that, if they
wished to derive any advantage from Clarendon's downfall, it was
necessary for them to abandon what was supposed to be Clarendon's
system, and by some splendid and popular measure to win the
confidence of the nation. Accordingly, in December 1667, Temple
received a despatch containing instructions of the highest
importance. The plan which he had so strongly recommended was
approved; and he was directed to visit De Witt as speedily as
possible, and to ascertain whether the States were willing to
enter into an offensive and defensive league with England against
the projects of France. Temple, accompanied by his sister,
instantly set out for the Hague, and laid the propositions of the
English Government before the Grand Pensionary. The Dutch
statesman answered with characteristic straightforwardness, that
he was fully ready to agree to a defensive confederacy, but that
it was the fundamental principle of the foreign policy of the
States to make no offensive alliance under any circumstances
whatever. With this answer Temple hastened from the Hague to
London, had an audience of the King, related what had passed
between himself and De Witt, exerted himself to remove the
unfavourable opinion which had been conceived of the Grand
Pensionary at the English Court, and had the satisfaction of
succeeding in all his objects. On the evening of the first of
January, 1668, a council was held, at which Charles declared his
resolution to unite with the Dutch on their own terms. Temple and
his indefatigable sister immediately sailed again for the Hague,
and, after weathering a violent storm in which they were very
nearly lost, arrived in safety at the place of their destination.

On this occasion, as on every other, the dealings between Temple
and De Witt were singularly fair and open. When they met, Temple
began by recapitulating what had passed at their last interview.
De Witt, who was as little given to lying with his face as with
his tongue, marked his assent by his looks while the
recapitulation proceeded, and, when it was concluded, answered
that Temple's memory was perfectly correct, and thanked him for
proceeding in so exact and sincere a manner. Temple then informed
the Grand Pensionary that the King of England had determined to
close with the proposal of a defensive alliance. De Witt had not
expected so speedy a resolution, and his countenance indicated
surprise as well as pleasure. But he did not retract; and it was
speedily arranged that England and Holland should unite for the
purpose of compelling Lewis to abide by the compromise which he
had formerly offered. The next object of the two statesmen was to
induce another government to become a party to their league. The
victories of Gustavus and Torstenson, and the political talents
of Oxenstiern, had obtained for Sweden a consideration in Europe,
disproportioned to her real power: the princes of Northern
Germany stood in great awe of her; and De Witt and Temple agreed
that if she could be induced to accede to the league, "it would
be too strong a bar for France to venture on." Temple went that
same evening to Count Dona, the Swedish Minister at the Hague,
took a seat in the most unceremonious manner, and, with that air
of frankness and goodwill by which he often succeeded in
rendering his diplomatic overtures acceptable, explained the
scheme which was in agitation. Dona was greatly pleased and
flattered. He had not powers which would authorise him to
conclude a treaty of such importance. But he strongly advised
Temple and De Witt to do their part without delay, and seemed
confident that Sweden would accede. The ordinary course of public
business in Holland was too slow for the present emergency; and
De Witt appeared to have some scruples about breaking through the
established forms. But the urgency and dexterity of Temple
prevailed. The States-General took the responsibility of
executing the treaty with a celerity unprecedented in the annals
of the federation, and indeed inconsistent with its fundamental
laws. The state of public feeling was, however, such in all
the provinces, that this irregularity was not merely pardoned but
applauded. When the instrument had been formally signed, the Dutch
Commissioners embraced the English Plenipotentiary with the warmest
expressions of kindness and confidence. "At Breda," exclaimed
Temple, "we embraced as friends, here as brothers."

This memorable negotiation occupied only five days. De Witt
complimented Temple in high terms on having effected in so short
a time what must, under other management, have been the work of
months; and Temple, in his despatches, spoke in equally high
terms of De Witt.  "I must add these words, to do M. de Witt
right, that I found him as plain, as direct and square in the
course of this business as any man could be, though often stiff
in points where he thought any advantage could accrue to his
country; and have all the reason in the world to be satisfied
with him; and for his industry, no man had ever more I am sure.
For these five days at least, neither of us spent any idle hours,
neither day nor night."

Sweden willingly acceded to the league, which is known in history
by the name of the Triple Alliance; and, after some signs of ill-
humour on the part of France, a general pacification was the
result.

The Triple Alliance may be viewed in two lights; as a measure of
foreign policy, and as a measure of domestic policy; and under
both aspects it seems to us deserving of all the praise which has
been bestowed upon it.

Dr. Lingard, who is undoubtedly a very able and well-informed
writer, but whose great fundamental rule of judging seems to be
that the popular opinion on a historical question cannot possibly
be correct, speaks very slightingly of this celebrated treaty;
and Mr. Courtenay, who by no means regards Temple with that
profound veneration which is generally found in biographers, has
conceded, in our opinion, far too much to Dr. Lingard.

The reasoning of Dr. Lingard is simply this. The Triple Alliance
only compelled Lewis to make peace on the terms on which, before
the alliance was formed, he had offered to make peace. How can it
then be said that this alliance arrested his career, and
preserved Europe from his ambition? Now, this reasoning is
evidently of no force at all, except on the supposition that
Lewis would have held himself bound by his former offers, if the
alliance had not been formed; and, if Dr. Lingard thinks this is
a reasonable supposition, we should be disposed to say to him, in
the words of that, great politician, Mrs. Western: "Indeed,
brother, you would make a fine plenipo to negotiate with the
French. They would soon persuade you that they take towns out of
mere defensive principles." Our own impression is that Lewis made
his offer only in order to avert some such measure as the Triple
Alliance, and adhered to his offer only in consequence of that
alliance. He had refused to consent to an armistice. He had made
all his arrangements for a winter campaign. In the very week in
which Temple and the States concluded their agreement at the
Hague, Franche Comte was attacked by the French armies, and in
three weeks the whole province was conquered. This prey Lewis was
compelled to disgorge. And what compelled him? Did the object
seem to him small or contemptible? On the contrary, the
annexation of Franche Comte to his kingdom was one of the
favourite projects of his life. Was he withheld by regard for his
word? Did he, who never in any other transaction of his reign
showed the smallest respect for the most solemn obligations of
public faith, who violated the Treaty of the Pyrenees, who
violated the Treaty of Aix, who violated the Treaty of Nimeguen,
who violated the Partition Treaty, who violated the Treaty of
Utrecht, feel himself restrained by his word on this single
occasion? Can any person who is acquainted with his character and
with his whole policy doubt that, if the neighbouring powers
would have looked quietly on, he would instantly have risen in
his demands? How then stands the case? He wished to keep Franche
Comte It was not from regard to his word that he ceded Franche
Comte. Why then did he cede Franche Comte? We answer, as all
Europe answered at the time, from fear of the Triple Alliance.

But grant that Lewis was not really stopped in his progress by
this famous league; still it is certain that the world then, and
long after, believed that he was so stopped, and that this was
the prevailing impression in France as well as in other
countries. Temple, therefore, at the very least, succeeded in
raising the credit of his country, and in lowering the credit of
a rival power. Here there is no room for controversy. No
grubbing among old state-papers will ever bring to light any
document which will shake these facts; that Europe believed the
ambition of France to have been curbed by the three powers; that
England, a few months before the last among the nations, forced
to abandon her own seas, unable to defend the mouths of her own
rivers, regained almost as high a place in the estimation of her
neighbours as she had held in the times of Elizabeth and Oliver;
and that all this change of opinion was produced in five days by
wise and resolute counsels, without the firing of a single gun.
That the Triple Alliance effected this will hardly be disputed;
and therefore, even if it effected nothing else, it must still be
regarded as a masterpiece of diplomacy.

Considered as a measure of domestic policy, this treaty seems to
be equally deserving of approbation. It did much to allay
discontents, to reconcile the sovereign with a people who had,
under his wretched administration, become ashamed of him and of
themselves. It was a kind of pledge for internal good government.
The foreign relations of the kingdom had at that time the closest
connection with our domestic policy. From the Restoration to the
accession of the House of Hanover, Holland and France were to
England what the right-hand horseman and the left-hand horseman
in Burger's fine ballad were to the Wildgraf, the good and the
evil counsellor, the angel of light and the angel of darkness.
The ascendency of France was as inseparably connected with the
prevalence of tyranny in domestic affairs. The ascendency of
Holland was as inseparably connected with the prevalence of
political liberty and of mutual toleration among Protestant
sects. How fatal and degrading an influence Lewis was destined to
exercise on the British counsels, how great a deliverance our
country was destined to owe to the States, could not be foreseen
when the Triple Alliance was concluded. Yet even then all
discerning men considered it as a good omen for the English
constitution and the reformed religion, that the Government had
attached itself to Holland, and had assumed a firm and somewhat
hostile attitude towards France. The fame of this measure was the
greater, because it stood so entirely alone. It was the single
eminently good act performed by the Government during the
interval between the Restoration and the Revolution. ["The only
good public thing that bath been done since the King came into
England."--PEPYS'S Diary, February 14, 1667-8.] Every person who
had the smallest part in it, and some who had no part in it at
all, battled for a share of the credit. The most parsimonious
republicans were ready to grant money for the purpose of carrying
into effect the provisions of this popular alliance; and the
great Tory poet of that age, in his finest satires, repeatedly
spoke with reverence of the "triple bond."

This negotiation raised the fame of Temple both at home and
abroad to a great height, to such a height, indeed, as seems to
have excited the jealousy of his friend Arlington. While London
and Amsterdam resounded with acclamations of joy, the Secretary,
in very cold official language, communicated to his friend the
approbation of the King; and, lavish as the Government was of
titles and of money, its ablest servant was neither ennobled nor
enriched.

Temple's next mission was to Aix-la-Chapelle, where a general
congress met for the purpose of perfecting the work of the Triple
Alliance. On his road he received abundant proofs of the
estimation in which he was held. Salutes were fired from the
walls of the towns through which lie passed; the population
poured forth into the streets to see him; and the magistrates
entertained him with speeches and banquets. After the close of
the negotiations at Aix he was appointed Ambassador at the Hague.
But in both these missions he experienced much vexation from the
rigid, and, indeed, unjust parsimony of the Government. Profuse
to many unworthy applicants, the Ministers were niggardly to him
alone. They secretly disliked his politics; and they seem to have
indemnified themselves for the humiliation of adopting his
measures, by cutting down his salary and delaying the settlement
of his outfit.

At the Hague he was received with cordiality by De Witt, and with
the most signal marks of respect by the States-General. His
situation was in one point extremely delicate, The Prince of
Orange, the hereditary chief of the faction opposed to the
administration of De Witt, was the nephew of Charles. To preserve
the confidence of the ruling party, without showing any want of
respect to so near a relation of his own master, was no easy
task, But Temple acquitted himself so well that he appears to
have been in great favour, both with the Grand Pensionary and
with the Prince.

In the main, the years which he spent at the Hague seem, in spite
of some pecuniary difficulties occasioned by the ill-will of the
English Ministers, to have passed very agreeably. He enjoyed the
highest personal consideration. He was surrounded by objects
interesting in the highest degree to a man of his observant turn
of mind. He had no wearing labour, no heavy responsibility; and,
if he had no opportunity of adding to his high reputation, he ran
no risk of impairing it.

But evil times were at hand. Though Charles had for a moment
deviated into a wise and dignified policy, his heart had always
been with France; and France employed every means of seduction to
lure him back. His impatience of control, his greediness for
money, his passion for beauty, his family affections, all his
tastes, all his feelings, were practised on with the utmost
dexterity. His interior Cabinet was now composed of men such as
that generation, and that generation alone, produced; of men at
whose audacious profligacy the renegades and jobbers of our own
time look with the same sort of admiring despair with which our
sculptors contemplate the Theseus, and our painters the Cartoons.
To be a real, hearty, deadly enemy of the liberties and religion
of the nation was, in that dark conclave, an honourable
distinction, a distinction which belonged only to the daring and
impetuous Clifford. His associates were men to whom all creeds
and all constitutions were alike; who were equally ready to
profess the faith of Geneva, of Lambeth, and of Rome; who were
equally ready to be tools of power without any sense of loyalty,
and stirrers of sedition without any zeal for freedom.

It was hardly possible even for a man so penetrating as De Witt
to foresee to what depths of wickedness and infamy this execrable
administration would descend. Yet, many signs of the great woe
which was coming on Europe, the visit of the Duchess of Orleans
to her brother, the unexplained mission of Buckingham to Paris,
the sudden occupation of Lorraine by the French, made the Grand
Pensionary uneasy, and his alarm increased when he learned that
Temple had received orders to repair instantly to London. De Witt
earnestly pressed for an explanation. Temple very sincerely
replied that he hoped that the English Ministers would adhere to
the principles of the Triple Alliance. "I can answer," he said,
"only for myself. But that I can do. If a new system is to be
adopted, I will never have any part in it. I have told the King
so; and I will make my words good. If I return you will know
more: and if I do not return you will guess more." De Witt
smiled, and answered that he would hope the best, and would do
all in his power to prevent others from forming unfavourable
surmises.

In October 1670, Temple reached London; and all his worst
suspicions were immediately more than confirmed. He repaired to
the Secretary's house, and was kept an hour and a half waiting in
the ante-chamber, whilst Lord Ashley was closeted with Arlington.
When at length the doors were thrown open, Arlington was dry and
cold, asked trifling questions about the voyage, and then, in
order to escape from the necessity of discussing business, called
in his daughter, an engaging little girl of three years old, who
was long after described by poets "as dressed in all the bloom of
smiling nature," and whom Evelyn, one of the witnesses of her
inauspicious marriage, mournfully designated as "the sweetest,
hopefullest, most beautiful, child, and most virtuous too." Any
particular conversation was impossible: and Temple, who with all
his constitutional or philosophical indifference, was
sufficiently sensitive on the side of vanity, felt this treatment
keenly. The next day he offered himself to the notice of the
King, who was snuffing up the morning air and feeding his ducks
in the Mall. Charles was civil, but, like Arlington, carefully
avoided all conversation on politics. Temple found that all his
most respectable friends were entirely excluded from the secrets
of the inner council, and were awaiting in anxiety and dread for
what those mysterious deliberations might produce. At length he
obtained a glimpse of light. The bold spirit and fierce passions
of Clifford made him the most unfit of all men to be the keeper
of a momentous secret. He told Temple, with great vehemence, that
the States had behaved basely, that De Witt was a rogue and a
rascal, that it was below the King of England, or any other king,
to have anything to do with such wretches; that this ought to be
made known to all the world, and that it was the duty of the
Minister of the Hague to declare it publicly. Temple commanded
his temper as well as he could, and replied calmly and firmly,
that he should make no such declaration, and that, if he were
called upon to give his opinion of the States and their
Ministers, he would say exactly what he thought.

He now saw clearly that the tempest was gathering fast, that the
great alliance which he had formed and over which he had watched
with parental care was about to be dissolved, that times were at
hand when it would be necessary for him, if he continued in
public life, either to take part decidedly against the Court, or
to forfeit the high reputation which he enjoyed at home and
abroad. He began to make preparations for retiring altogether
from business. He enlarged a little garden which he had purchased
at Sheen, and laid out some money in ornamenting his house there.
He was still nominally ambassador to Holland; and the English
Ministers continued during some months to flatter the States with
the hope that he would speedily return. At length, in June 1671,
the designs of the Cabal were ripe. The infamous treaty with
France had been ratified. The season of deception was past, and
that of insolence and violence had arrived. Temple received his
formal dismission, kissed the King's hand, was repaid for his
services with some of those vague compliments and promises which
cost so little to the cold heart, the easy temper, and the ready
tongue of Charles, and quietly withdrew to his little nest, as he
called it, at Sheen.

There he amused himself with gardening, which he practised so
successfully that the fame of his fruit-trees soon spread far and
wide. But letters were his chief solace. He had, as we have
mentioned, been from his youth in the habit of diverting himself
with composition. The clear and agreeable language of his
despatches had early attracted the notice of his employers; and,
before the peace of Breda, he had, at the request of Arlington,
published a pamphlet on the war, of which nothing is now known,
except that it had some vogue at the time, and that Charles, not
a contemptible judge, pronounced it to be very well written.
Temple had also, a short time before he began to reside at the
Hague, written a treatise on the state of Ireland, in which he
showed all the feelings of a Cromwellian. He had gradually formed
a style singularly lucid and melodious, superficially deformed,
indeed, by Gallicisms and Hispanicisms, picked up in travel or
in negotiation, but at the bottom pure English, which generally
flowed along with careless simplicity, but occasionally rose even
into Ciceronian magnificence. The length of his sentences has
often been remarked. But in truth this length is only apparent. A
critic who considers as one sentence everything that lies between
two full stops will undoubtedly call Temple's sentences long. But
a critic who examines them carefully will find that they are not
swollen by parenthetical matter, that their structure is scarcely
ever intricate, that they are formed merely by accumulation, and
that, by the simple process of now and then leaving out a
conjunction, and now and then substituting a full stop for a
semicolon, they might, without any alteration in the order of the
words, be broken up into very short periods with no sacrifice
except that of euphony. The long sentences of Hooker and
Clarendon, on the contrary, are really long sentences, and cannot
be turned into short ones, without being entirely taken to
pieces.

The best known of the works which Temple composed during his
first retreat from official business are an Essay on Government,
which seems to us exceedingly childish, and an Account of the
United Provinces, which we value as a masterpiece in its kind.
Whoever compares these two treatises will probably agree with us
in thinking that Temple was not a very deep or accurate reasoner,
but was an excellent observer, that he had no call to
philosophical speculation, but that he was qualified to excel as
a writer of Memoirs and Travels.

While Temple was engaged in these pursuits, the great storm which
had long been brooding over Europe burst with such fury as for a
moment seemed to threaten ruin to all free governments and all
Protestant churches. France and England, without seeking for any
decent pretext, declared war against Holland. The immense armies
of Lewis poured across the Rhine, and invaded the territory of
the United Provinces. The Dutch seemed to be paralysed by terror.
Great towns opened their gates to straggling parties. Regiments
flung down their arms without seeing an enemy. Guelderland,
Overyssel, Utrecht were overrun by the conquerors. The fires of
the French camp were seen from the walls of Amsterdam. In the
first madness of despair the devoted people turned their rage
against the most illustrious of their fellow-citizens. De Ruyter
was saved with difficulty from assassins. De Witt was torn to
pieces by an infuriated rabble. No hope was left to the
Commonwealth, save in the dauntless, the ardent, the
indefatigable, the unconquerable spirit which glowed under the
frigid demeanour of the young Prince of Orange.

That great man rose at once to the full dignity of his part, and
approved himself a worthy descendant of the line of heroes who
had vindicated the liberties of Europe against the house of
Austria. Nothing could shake his fidelity to his country, not his
close connection with the royal family of England, not the most
earnest solicitations, not the most tempting offers. The spirit
of the nation, that spirit which had maintained the great
conflict against the gigantic power of Philip, revived in all
its strength. Counsels, such as are inspired by a generous
despair, and are almost always followed by a speedy dawn of hope,
were gravely concerted by the statesmen of Holland. To open their
dykes, to man their ships, to leave their country, with all its
miracles of art and industry, its cities, its canals, its villas,
its pastures, and its tulip gardens, buried under the waves of
the German ocean, to bear to a distant climate their Calvinistic
faith and their old Batavian liberties, to fix, perhaps with
happier auspices, the new Stadthouse of their Commonwealth, under
other stars, and amidst a strange vegetation, in the Spice
Islands of the Eastern seas; such were the plans which they had
the spirit to form; and it is seldom that men who have the spirit
to form such plans are reduced to the necessity of executing
them.

The Allies had, during a short period, obtained success beyond
their hopes. This was their auspicious moment. They neglected to
improve it. It passed away; and it returned no more. The Prince
of Orange arrested the progress of the French armies. Lewis
returned to be amused and flattered at Versailles. The country
was under water. The winter approached. The weather became
stormy. The fleets of the combined kings could no longer keep the
sea. The republic had obtained a respite; and the circumstances
were such that a respite was, in a military view, important, in a
political view almost decisive.

The alliance against Holland, formidable as it was, was yet of
such a nature that it could not succeed at all, unless it
succeeded at once. The English Ministers could not carry on the
war without money. They could legally obtain money only from the
Parliament and they were most unwilling to call the Parliament
together. The measures which Charles had adopted at home were
even more unpopular than his foreign policy. He had bound himself
by a treaty with Lewis to re-establish the Catholic religion in
England; and, in pursuance of this design, he had entered on the
same path which his brother afterwards trod with greater
obstinacy to a more fatal end. The King had annulled, by his own
sole authority, the laws against Catholics and other dissenters.
The matter of the Declaration of Indulgence exasperated one-half
of his subjects, and the manner the other half. Liberal men would
have rejoiced to see a toleration granted, at least to all
Protestant sects. Many High Churchmen had no objection to the
King's dispensing power. But a tolerant act done in an
unconstitutional way excited the opposition of all who were
zealous either for the Church or for the privileges of the
people, that is to say, of ninety-nine Englishmen out of a
hundred. The Ministers were, therefore, most unwilling to meet
the Houses. Lawless and desperate as their counsels were, the
boldest of them had too much value for his neck to think of
resorting to benevolences, privy-seals, ship-money, or any of the
other unlawful modes of extortion which had been familiar to the
preceding age. The audacious fraud of shutting up the Exchequer
furnished them with about twelve hundred thousand pounds, a sum
which, even in better hands than theirs, would not have sufficed
for the war-charges of a single year. And this was a step which
could never be repeated, a step which, like most breaches of
public faith, was speedily found to have caused pecuniary
difficulties greater than those which it removed. All the money
that could be raised was gone; Holland was not conquered; and the
King had no resource but in a Parliament.

Had a general election taken place at this crisis, it is probable
that the country would have sent up representatives as resolutely
hostile to the Court as those who met in November 1640; that the
whole domestic and foreign policy of the Government would have
been instantly changed; and that the members of the Cabal would
have expiated their crimes on Tower Hill. But the House of
Commons was still the same which had been elected twelve years
before, in the midst of the transports of joy, repentance, and
loyalty which followed the Restoration; and no pains had been
spared to attach it to the Court by places, pensions, and bribes.
To the great mass of the people it was scarcely less odious than
the Cabinet itself. Yet, though it did not immediately proceed to
those strong measures which a new House would in all probability
have adopted, it was sullen and unmanageable, and undid, slowly
indeed, and by degrees, but most effectually, all that the
Ministers had done. In one session it annihilated their system of
internal government. In a second session it gave a death-blow to
their foreign policy.

The dispensing power was the first object of attack. The Commons
would not expressly approve the war; but neither did they as yet
expressly condemn it; and they were even willing to grant the
King a supply for the purpose of continuing hostilities, on
condition that he would redress internal grievances, among which
the Declaration of Indulgence held the foremost place.

Shaftesbury, who was Chancellor, saw that the game was up, that
he had got all that was to be got by siding with despotism and
Popery, and that it was high time to think of being a demagogue
and a good Protestant. The Lord Treasurer Clifford was marked out
by his boldness, by his openness, by his zeal for the Catholic
religion, by something which, compared with the villainy of his
colleagues, might almost be called honesty, to be the scapegoat
of the whole conspiracy. The King came in person to the House of
Peers for the purpose of requesting their Lordships to mediate
between him and the Commons touching the Declaration of
Indulgence. He remained in the House while his speech was taken
into consideration; a common practice with him; for the debates
amused his sated mind, and were sometimes, he used to say, as
good as a comedy. A more sudden turn his Majesty had certainly
never seen in any comedy of intrigue, either at his own play-
house, or at the Duke's, than that which this memorable debate
produced. The Lord Treasurer spoke with characteristic ardour and
intrepidity in defence of the Declaration. When he sat down, the
Lord Chancellor rose from the woolsack, and, to the amazement of
the King and of the House, attacked Clifford, attacked the
Declaration for which he had himself spoken in Council, gave up
the whole policy of the Cabinet, and declared himself on the side
of the House of Commons. Even that age had not witnessed so
portentous a display of impudence.

The King, by the advice of the French Court, which cared much
more about the war on the Continent than about the conversion of
the English heretics, determined to save his foreign policy at
the expense of his plans in favour of the Catholic church. He
obtained a supply; and in return for this concession he cancelled
the Declaration of Indulgence, and made a formal renunciation of
the dispensing power before he prorogued the Houses.

But it was no more in his power to go on with the war than to
maintain his arbitrary system at home. His Ministry, betrayed
within, and fiercely assailed from without, went rapidly to
pieces. Clifford threw down the white staff, and retired to the
woods of Ugbrook, vowing, with bitter tears, that he would never
again see that turbulent city, and that perfidious Court.
Shaftesbury was ordered to deliver up the Great Seal, and
instantly carried over his front of brass and his tongue of
poison to the ranks of the Opposition. The remaining members of
the Cabal had neither the capacity of the late Chancellor, nor
the courage and enthusiasm of the late Treasurer. They were not
only unable to carry on their former projects, but began to
tremble for their own lands and heads. The Parliament, as soon as
it again met, began to murmur against the alliance with France
and the war with Holland; and the murmur gradually swelled into a
fierce and terrible clamour. Strong resolutions were adopted
against Lauderdale and Buckingham. Articles of impeachment were
exhibited against Arlington. The Triple Alliance was mentioned
with reverence in every debate; and the eyes of all men were
turned towards the quiet orchard, where the author of that great
league was amusing himself with reading and gardening.

Temple was ordered to attend the King, and was charged with the
office of negotiating a separate peace with Holland. The Spanish
Ambassador to the Court of London had been empowered by the
States-General to treat in their name. With him Temple came to a
speedy agreement; and in three days a treaty was concluded.

The highest honours of the State were now within Temple's reach.
After the retirement of Clifford, the white staff had been
delivered to Thomas Osborne, soon after created Earl of Danby,
who was related to Lady Temple, and had, many years earlier,
travelled and played tennis with Sir William. Danby was an
interested and dishonest man, but by no means destitute of
abilities or of judgment. He was, indeed, a far better adviser
than any in whom Charles had hitherto reposed confidence.
Clarendon was a man of another generation, and did not in the
least understand the society which he had to govern. The members
of the Cabal were ministers of a foreign power, and enemies of
the Established Church; and had in consequence raised against
themselves and their master an irresistible storm of national and
religious hatred. Danby wished to strengthen and extend the
prerogative; but he had the sense to see that this could be done
only by a complete change of system. He knew the English people
and the House of Commons; and he knew that the course which
Charles had recently taken, if obstinately pursued, might well
end before the windows of the Banqueting-House. He saw that the
true policy of the Crown was to ally itself, not with the feeble,
the hated, the downtrodden Catholics, but with the powerful, the
wealthy, the popular, the dominant Church of England; to trust
for aid not to a foreign Prince whose name was hateful to the
British nation, and whose succours could be obtained only on
terms of vassalage, but to the old Cavalier party, to the landed
gentry, the clergy, and the universities. By rallying round the
throne the whole strength of the Royalists and High Churchmen,
and by using without stint all the resources of corruption, he
flattered himself that he could manage the Parliament. That he
failed is to be attributed less to himself than to his master. Of
the disgraceful dealings which were still kept up with the French
Court, Danby deserved little or none of the blame, though he
suffered the whole punishment.

Danby, with great parliamentary talents, had paid little
attention to European politics, and wished for the help of some
person on whom he could rely in the foreign department. A plan
was accordingly arranged for making Temple Secretary of State.
Arlington was the only member of the Cabal who still held office
in England. The temper of the House of Commons made it necessary
to remove him, or rather to require him to sell out; for at that
time the great offices of State were bought and sold as
commissions in the army now are. Temple was informed that he
should have the Seals if he would pay Arlington six thousand
pounds. The transaction had nothing in it discreditable,
according to the notions of that age, and the investment would
have been a good one; for we imagine that at that time the gains
which a Secretary of State might make, without doing any thing
considered as improper, were very considerable. Temple's friends
offered to lend him the money; but lie was fully determined not
to take a post of so much responsibility in times so agitated,
and under a Prince on whom so little reliance could be placed,
and accepted the embassy to the Hague, leaving Arlington to find
another purchaser.

Before Temple left England he had a long audience of the King, to
whom he spoke with great severity of the measures adopted by the
late Ministry. The King owned that things had turned out ill.
"But," said he, "if I had been well served, I might have made a
good business of it." Temple was alarmed at this language, and
inferred from it that the system of the Cabal had not been
abandoned, but only suspended. He therefore thought it his duty
to go, as he expresses it, "to the bottom of the matter." He
strongly represented to the King the impossibility of
establishing either absolute government, or the Catholic religion
in England; and concluded by repeating an observation which he
had heard at Brussels from M. Gourville, a very intelligent
Frenchman well known to Charles: "A king of England," said
Gourville, "who is willing to be the man of his people, is the
greatest king in the world, but if he wishes to be more, by
heaven he is nothing at all!" The King betrayed some symptoms of
impatience during this lecture; but at last he laid his hand
kindly on Temple's shoulder, and said, "You are right, and so is
Gourville; and I will be the man of my people."

With this assurance Temple repaired to the Hague in July 1674.
Holland was now secure, and France was surrounded on every side
by enemies. Spain and the Empire were in arms for the purpose of
compelling Lewis to abandon all that he had acquired since the
treaty of the Pyrenees. A congress for the purpose of putting an
end to the war was opened at Nimeguen under the mediation of
England in 1675; and to that congress Temple was deputed. The
work of conciliation however, went on very slowly. The
belligerent powers were still sanguine, and the mediating power
was unsteady and insincere.

In the meantime the Opposition in England became more and more
formidable, and seemed fully determined to force the King into a
war with France. Charles was desirous of making some appointments
which might strengthen the administration and conciliate the
confidence of the public. No man was more esteemed by the nation
than Temple; yet he had never been concerned in any opposition to
any government. In July 1677, he was sent for from Nimeguen.
Charles received him with caresses, earnestly pressed him to
accept the seals of Secretary of State, and promised to bear half
the charge of buying out the present holder. Temple was charmed
by the kindness and politeness of the King's manner, and by the
liveliness of his Majesty's conversation; but his prudence was
not to be so laid asleep. He calmly and steadily excused himself.
The King affected to treat his excuses as mere jest, and gaily
said, "Go; get you gone to Sheen. We shall have no good of you
till you have been there; and when you have rested yourself, come
up again." Temple withdrew and stayed two days at his villa, but
returned to town in the same mind; and the King was forced to
consent at least to a delay.

But while Temple thus carefully shunned the responsibility of
bearing a part in the general direction of affairs, he gave a
signal proof of that never-failing sagacity which enabled him to
find out ways of distinguishing himself without risk. He had a
principal share in bringing about an event which was at the time
hailed with general satisfaction, and which subsequently produced
consequences of the highest importance. This was the marriage of
the Prince of Orange and the Lady Mary.

In the following year Temple returned to the Hague; and thence he
was ordered, in the close of 1678, to repair to Nimeguen, for the
purpose of signing the hollow and unsatisfactory treaty by which
the distractions of Europe were for a short time suspended. He
grumbled much at being required to affix his name to bad articles
which he had not framed, and still more at having to travel in
very cold weather. After all, a difficulty of etiquette prevented
him from signing, and he returned to the Hague. Scarcely had he
arrived there when he received intelligence that the King, whose
embarrassments were now far greater than ever, was fully resolved
immediately to appoint him Secretary of State. He a third time
declined that high post, and began to make preparations for a
journey to Italy; thinking, doubtless, that he should spend his
time much more pleasantly among pictures and ruins than in such
a whirlpool of political and religious frenzy as was then raging
in London.

But the King was in extreme necessity, and was no longer to be so
easily put off. Temple received positive orders to repair
instantly to England. He obeyed, and found the country in a state
even more fearful than that which he had pictured to himself.

Those are terrible conjunctures, when the discontents of a
nation, not light and capricious discontents, but discontents
which have been steadily increasing during a long series of
years, have attained their full maturity. The discerning few
predict the approach of these conjunctures, but predict in vain.
To the many, the evil season comes as a total eclipse of the sun
at noon comes to a people of savages. Society which, but a short
time before, was in a state of perfect repose, is on a sudden
agitated with the most fearful convulsions, and seems to be on
the verge of dissolution; and the rulers who, till the mischief
was beyond the reach of all ordinary remedies, had never bestowed
one thought on its existence, stand bewildered and panic-
stricken, without hope or resource, in the midst of the
confusion. One such conjuncture this generation has seen. God
grant that we may never see another! At such a conjuncture it was
that Temple landed on English ground in the beginning of 1679.

The Parliament had obtained a glimpse of the King's dealings with
France; and their anger had been unjustly directed against Danby,
whose conduct as to that matter had been, on the whole, deserving
rather of praise than of censure. The Popish plot, the murder of
Godfrey, the infamous inventions of Oates, the discovery of
Colman's letters, had excited the nation to madness. All the
disaffection which had been generated by eighteen years of
misgovernment had come to the birth together. At this moment the
King had been advised to dissolve that Parliament which had been
elected just after his restoration, and which, though its
composition had since that time been greatly altered, was still
far more deeply imbued with the old cavalier spirit than any that
had preceded, or that was likely to follow it. The general
election had commenced, and was proceeding with a degree of
excitement never before known. The tide ran furiously against the
Court. It was clear that a majority of the new House of Commons
would be, to use a word which came into fashion a few months
later, decided Whigs. Charles had found it necessary to yield to
the violence of the public feeling. The Duke of York was on the
point of retiring to Holland. "I never," says Temple, who had
seen the abolition of monarchy, the dissolution of the Long
Parliament, the fall of the Protectorate, the declaration of Monk
against the Rump, "I never saw greater disturbance in men's
minds."

The King now with the utmost urgency besought Temple to take the
seals. The pecuniary part of the arrangement no longer presented
any difficulty; and Sir William was not quite so decided in his
refusal as he had formerly been. He took three days to consider
the posture of affairs, and to examine his own feelings; and he
came to the conclusion that "the scene was unfit for such an
actor as he knew himself to be." Yet he felt that, by refusing
help to the King at such a crisis, he might give much offence and
incur much censure. He shaped his course with his usual
dexterity. He affected to be very desirous of a seat in
Parliament; yet he contrived to be an unsuccessful candidate;
and, when all the writs were returned, he represented that it
would be useless for him to take the seals till he could procure
admittance to the House of Commons; and in this manner he
succeeded in avoiding the greatness which others desired to
thrust upon him.

The Parliament met; and the violence of its proceedings surpassed
all expectation. The Long Parliament itself, with much greater
provocation, had at its commencement been less violent. The
Treasurer was instantly driven from office, impeached, sent to
the Tower. Sharp and vehement votes were passed on the subject of
the Popish Plot. The Commons were prepared to go much further, to
wrest from the King his prerogative of mercy in cases of high
political crimes, and to alter the succession to the Crown.
Charles was thoroughly perplexed and dismayed. Temple saw him
almost daily and thought him impressed with a deep sense of his
errors, and of the miserable state into which they had brought
him. Their conferences became longer and more confidential; and
Temple began to flatter himself with the hope that he might be
able to reconcile parties at home as he had reconciled hostile
States abroad; that he might be able to suggest a plan which
should allay all heats, efface the memory of all past grievances,
secure the nation from misgovernment, and protect the Crown
against the encroachments of Parliament.

Temple's plan was that the existing Privy Council, which
consisted of fifty members, should be dissolved, that there
should no longer be a small interior council, like that which is
now designated as the Cabinet, that a new Privy Council of thirty
members should be appointed, and that the King should pledge
himself to govern by the constant advice of this body, to suffer
all his affairs of every kind to be freely debated there, and not
to reserve any part of the public business for a secret
committee.

Fifteen of the members of this new council were to be great
officers of State. The other fifteen were to be independent
noblemen and gentlemen of the greatest weight in the country. In
appointing them particular regard was to be had to the amount of
their property. The whole annual income of the counsellors was
estimated at £300,000. The annual income of all the members of
the House of Commons was not supposed to exceed £400,000 The
appointment of wealthy counsellors Temple describes as "a chief
regard, necessary to this constitution."

This plan was the subject of frequent conversation between the
King and Temple. After a month passed in discussions to which no
third person appears to have been privy, Charles declared himself
satisfied of the expediency of the proposed measure, and resolved
to carry it into effect.

It is much to be regretted that Temple has left us no account of
these conferences. Historians have, therefore, been left to form
their own conjectures as to the object of this very extraordinary
plan, "this Constitution," as Temple himself calls it. And we
cannot say that any explanation which has yet been given seems to
us quite satisfactory. Indeed, almost all the writers whom we
have consulted appear to consider the change as merely a change
of administration, and so considering it, they generally applaud
it. Mr. Courtenay, who has evidently examined this subject with
more attention than has often been bestowed upon it, seems to
think Temple's scheme very strange, unintelligible, and absurd.
It is with very great diffidence that we offer our own solution
of what we have always thought one of the great riddles of
English history. We are strongly inclined to suspect that the
appointment of the new Privy Council was really a much more
remarkable event than has generally been supposed, and that what
Temple had in view was to effect, under colour of a change of
administration, a permanent change in the Constitution.

The plan, considered merely as a plan for the formation of a
Cabinet, is so obviously inconvenient, that we cannot easily
believe this to have been Temple's chief object. The number of
the new Council alone would be a most serious objection. The
largest Cabinets of modern times have not, we believe, consisted
of more than fifteen members. Even this number has generally been
thought too large. The Marquess Wellesley, whose judgment on a
question of executive administration is entitled to as much
respect as that of any statesman that England ever produced,
expressed, during the ministerial negotiations of the year 1812,
his conviction that even thirteen was an inconveniently large
number. But in a Cabinet of thirty members what chance could
there be of finding unity, secrecy, expedition, any of the
qualities which such a body ought to possess? If, indeed, the
members of such a Cabinet were closely bound together by
interest, if they all had a deep stake in the permanence of the
Administration, if the majority were dependent on a small number
of leading men, the thirty might perhaps act as a smaller number
would act, though more slowly, more awkwardly, and with more risk
of improper disclosures. But the Council which Temple proposed
was so framed that if, instead of thirty members, it had
contained only ten, it would still have been the most unwieldy
and discordant Cabinet that ever sat. One half of the members
were to be persons holding no office, persons who had no motive
to compromise their opinions, or to take any share of the
responsibility of an unpopular measure, persons, therefore, who
might be expected as often as there might be a crisis requiring
the most cordial co-operation, to draw off from the rest, and to
throw every difficulty in the way of the public business. The
circumstance that they were men of enormous private wealth only
made the matter worse. The House of Commons is a checking body;
and therefore it is desirable that it should, to a great extent,
consist of men of independent fortune, who receive nothing and
expect nothing from the Government. But with executive boards the
case is quite different. Their business is not to check, but to
act. The very same things, therefore, which are the virtues of
Parliaments may be vices in Cabinets. We can hardly conceive a
greater curse to the country than an Administration, the members
of which should be as perfectly independent of each other, and as
little under the necessity of making mutual concessions, as the
representatives of London and Devonshire in the House of Commons
are and ought to be. Now Temple's new Council was to contain
fifteen members who were to hold no offices, and the average
amount of whose private estates was ten thousand pounds a year,
an income which, in proportion to the wants of a man of rank of
that period, was at least equal to thirty thousand a year in our
time. Was it to be expected that such men would gratuitously take
on themselves the labour and responsibility of Ministers, and the
unpopularity which the best Ministers must sometimes be prepared
to brave? Could there be any doubt that an Opposition would soon
be formed within the Cabinet itself, and that the consequence
would be disunion, altercation, tardiness in operations, the
divulging of secrets, everything most alien from the nature of an
executive council?

Is it possible to imagine that considerations so grave and so
obvious should have altogether escaped the notice of a man of
Temple's sagacity and experience? One of two things appears to us
to be certain, either that his project has been misunderstood, or
that his talents for public affairs have been overrated.

We lean to the opinion that his project has been misunderstood.
His new Council, as we have shown, would have been an exceedingly
bad Cabinet. The inference which we are inclined to draw is this,
that he meant his Council to serve some other purpose than that
of a mere Cabinet. Barillon used four or five words which
contain, we think, the key of the whole mystery. Mr. Courtenay
calls them pithy words; but he does not, if we are right,
apprehend their whole force. "Ce sont," said Barillon, "des
Etats, non des conseils."

In order clearly to understand what we imagine to have been
Temple's views, the reader must remember that the Government of
England was at that moment, and had been during nearly eighty
years, in a state of transition. A change, not the less real or
the less extensive because disguised under ancient names and
forms, was in constant progress. The theory of the Constitution,
the fundamental laws which fix the powers of the three branches
of the legislature, underwent no material change between the time
of Elizabeth and the time of William the Third. The most
celebrated laws of the seventeenth century on those subjects, the
Petition of Right, the Declaration of Right, are purely
declaratory. They purport to be merely recitals of the old polity
of England. They do not establish free government as a salutary
improvement, but claim it as an undoubted and immemorial
inheritance. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that, during the
period of which we speak, all the mutual relations of all the
orders of the State did practically undergo an entire change. The
letter of the law might be unaltered; but, at the beginning of
the seventeenth century, the power of the Crown was, in fact,
decidedly predominant in the State; and at the end of that
century the power of Parliament, and especially of the Lower
House, had become, in fact, decidedly predominant. At the
beginning of the century, the sovereign perpetually violated,
with little or no opposition, the clear privileges of Parliament.
At the close of the century, the Parliament had virtually drawn
to itself just as much as it chose of the prerogative of the
Crown. The sovereign retained the shadow of that authority of
which the Tudors had held the substance. He had a legislative
veto which he never ventured to exercise, a power of appointing
Ministers, whom an address of the Commons could at any moment
force him to discard, a power of declaring war which, without
Parliamentary support, could not be carried on for a single day.
The Houses of Parliament were now not merely legislative
assemblies, not merely checking assemblies; they were great
Councils of State, whose voice, when loudly and firmly raised,
was decisive on all questions of foreign and domestic policy.
There was no part of the whole system of Government with which
they had not power to interfere by advice equivalent to command;
and, if they abstained from intermeddling with some departments
of the executive administration, they were withheld from doing so
only by their own moderation, and by the confidence which they
reposed in the Ministers of the Crown. There is perhaps no other
instance in history of a change so complete in the real
constitution of an empire, unaccompanied by any corresponding
change in the theoretical constitution. The disguised
transformation of the Roman commonwealth into a despotic
monarchy, under the long administration of Augustus, is perhaps
the nearest parallel.

This great alteration did not take place without strong and
constant resistance on the part of the kings of the house of
Stuart. Till 1642, that resistance was generally of an open,
violent, and lawless nature. If the Commons refused supplies, the
sovereign levied a benevolence. If the Commons impeached a
favourite minister, the sovereign threw the chiefs of the
Opposition into prison. Of these efforts to keep down the
Parliament by despotic force, without the pretext of law, the
last, the most celebrated, and the most wicked was the attempt to
seize the five members. That attempt was the signal for civil
war, and was followed by eighteen years of blood and confusion.

The days of trouble passed by; the exiles returned; the throne
was again set up in its high place; the peerage and the hierarchy
recovered their ancient splendour. The fundamental laws which had
been recited in the Petition of Right were again solemnly
recognised. The theory of the English constitution was the same
on the day when the hand of Charles the Second was kissed by the
kneeling Houses at Whitehall as on the day when his father set up
the royal standard at Nottingham. There was a short period of
doting fondness, a hysterica passio of loyal repentance and love.
But emotions of this sort are transitory; and the interests on
which depends the progress of great societies are permanent. The
transport of reconciliation was soon over; and the old struggle
recommenced.

The old struggle recommenced; but not precisely after the old
fashion. The Sovereign was not indeed a man whom any common
warning would have restrained from the grossest violations of
law. But it was no common warning that he had received. All
around him were the recent signs of the vengeance of an oppressed
nation, the fields on which the noblest blood of the island had
been poured forth, the castles shattered by the cannon of the
Parliamentary armies, the hall where sat the stern tribunal to
whose bar had been led, through lowering ranks of pikemen, the
captive heir of a hundred kings, the stately pilasters before
which the great execution had been so fearlessly done in the face
of heaven and earth. The restored Prince, admonished by the fate
of his father, never ventured to attack his Parliaments with open
and arbitrary violence. It was at one time by means of the
Parliament itself, at another time by means of the courts of law,
that he attempted to regain for the Crown its old predominance.
He began with great advantages. The Parliament of 1661 was called
while the nation was still full of joy and tenderness. The great
majority of the House of Commons were zealous royalists. All the
means of influence which the patronage of the Crown afforded were
used without limit. Bribery was reduced to a system. The King,
when he could spare money from his pleasures for nothing else,
could spare it for purposes of corruption. While the defence of
the coasts was neglected, while ships rotted, while arsenals lay
empty, while turbulent crowds of unpaid seamen swarmed in the
streets of the seaports, something could still be scraped
together in the Treasury for the members of the House of Commons.
The gold of France was largely employed for the same purpose. Yet
it was found, as indeed might have been foreseen, that there is a
natural limit to the effect which can be produced by means like
these. There is one thing which the most corrupt senates are
unwilling to sell; and that is the power which makes them worth
buying. The same selfish motives which induced them to take a
price for a particular vote induce them to oppose every measure
of which the effect would be to lower the importance, and
consequently the price, of their votes. About the income of their
power, so to speak, they are quite ready to make bargains. But
they are not easily persuaded to part with any fragment of the
principal. It is curious to observe how, during the long
continuance of this Parliament, the Pensionary Parliament, as it
was nicknamed by contemporaries, though every circumstance seemed
to be favourable to the Crown, the power of the Crown was
constantly sinking, and that of the Commons constantly rising.
The meetings of the Houses were more frequent than in former
reigns; their interference was more harassing to the Government
than in former reigns; they had begun to make peace, to make war;
to pull down, if they did not set up, administrations. Already a
new class of statesmen had appeared, unheard of before that time,
but common ever since. Under the Tudors and the earlier Stuarts,
it was generally by courtly arts, or by official skill and
knowledge, that a politician raised himself to power. From the
time of Charles the Second down to our own days a different
species of talent, parliamentary talent, has been the most
valuable of all the qualifications of an English statesman. It
has stood in the place of all other acquirements. It has covered
ignorance, weakness, rashness, the most fatal maladministration.
A great negotiator is nothing when compared with a great debater;
and a Minister who can make a successful speech need trouble
himself little about an unsuccessful expedition. This is the
talent which has made judges without law, and diplomatists
without French, which has sent to the Admiralty men who did not
know the stern of a ship from her bowsprit, and to the India
Board men who did not know the difference between a rupee and a
pagoda, which made a foreign secretary of Mr. Pitt, who, as
George the Second said, had never opened Vattel, and which was
very near making a Chancellor of the Exchequer of Mr. Sheridan,
who could not work a sum in long division. This was the sort of
talent which raised Clifford from obscurity to the head of
affairs. To this talent Osborne, by birth a simple country
gentleman, owed his white staff, his garter, and his dukedom. The
encroachment of the power of the Parliament on the power of the
Crown resembled a fatality, or the operation of some great law of
nature. The will of the individual on the throne, or of the
individuals in the two Houses, seemed to go for nothing. The King
might be eager to encroach; yet something constantly drove him
back. The Parliament might be loyal, even servile; yet something
constantly urged them forward.

These things were done in the green tree. What then was likely to
be done in the dry? The Popish Plot and the general election came
together, and found a people predisposed to the most violent
excitation. The composition of the House of Commons was changed.
The Legislature was filled with men who leaned to Republicanism
in politics, and to Presbyterianism in religion. They no sooner
met than they commenced an attack on the Government, which, if
successful, must have made them supreme in the State.

Where was this to end? To us who have seen the solution the
question presents few difficulties. But to a statesman of the age
of Charles the Second, to a statesman, who wished, without
depriving the Parliament of its privileges, to maintain the
monarch in his old supremacy, it must have appeared very
perplexing.

Clarendon had, when Minister, struggled honestly, perhaps, but,
as was his wont, obstinately, proudly, and offensively, against
the growing power of the Commons. He was for allowing them their
old authority, and not one atom more. He would never have claimed
for the Crown a right to levy taxes from the people without the
consent of Parliament. But when the Parliament, in the first
Dutch war, most properly insisted on knowing how it was that the
money which they had voted had produced so little effect, and
began to inquire through what hands it had passed, and on what
services it had been expended, Clarendon considered this as a
monstrous innovation. He told the King, as he himself says, "that
he could not be too indulgent in the defence of the privileges of
Parliament, and that he hoped he would never violate any of them;
but he desired him to be equally solicitous to prevent the
excesses in Parliament, and not to suffer them to extend their
jurisdiction to cases they have nothing to do with; and that to
restrain them within their proper bounds and limits is as
necessary as it is to preserve them from being invaded; and that
this was such a new encroachment as had no bottom." This is a
single instance. Others might easily be given.

The bigotry, the strong passions, the haughty and disdainful
temper, which made Clarendon's great abilities a source of almost
unmixed evil to himself and to the public, had no place in the
character of Temple. To Temple, however, as well as to Clarendon,
the rapid change which was taking place in the real working of
the Constitution gave great disquiet; particularly as Temple had
never sat in the English Parliament, and therefore regarded it
with none of the predilection which men naturally feel for a body
to which they belong, and for a theatre on which their own
talents have been advantageously displayed.

To wrest by force from the House of Commons its newly acquired
powers was impossible; nor was Temple a man to recommend such a
stroke, even if it had been possible. But was it possible that
the House of Commons might be induced to let those powers drop?
Was it possible that, as a great revolution had been effected
without any change in the outward form of the Government, so a
great counter-revolution might be effected in the same manner?
Was it possible that the Crown and the Parliament might be placed
in nearly the same relative position in which they had stood in
the reign of Elizabeth, and that this might be done without one
sword drawn, without one execution, and with the general
acquiescence of the nation?

The English people--it was probably thus that Temple argued--will
not bear to be governed by the unchecked power of the Sovereign,
nor ought they to be so governed. At present there is no check
but the Parliament. The limits which separate the power of
checking those who govern from the power of governing are not
easily to be defined. The Parliament, therefore, supported by the
nation, is rapidly drawing to itself all the powers of
Government. If it were possible to frame some other check on the
power of the Crown, some check which might be less galling to the
Sovereign than that by which he is now constantly tormented, and
yet which might appear to the people to be a tolerable security
against maladministration, Parliaments would probably meddle
less; and they would be less supported by public opinion in their
meddling. That the King's hands may not be rudely tied by others,
he must consent to tie them lightly himself. That the executive
administration may not be usurped by the checking body, something
of the character of a checking body must be given to the body
which conducts the executive administration. The Parliament is
now arrogating to itself every day a larger share of the
functions of the Privy Council. We must stop the evil by giving
to the Privy Council something of the constitution of a
Parliament. Let the nation see that all the King's measures are
directed by a Cabinet composed of representatives of every order
in the State, by a Cabinet which contains, not placemen alone,
but independent and popular noblemen and gentlemen who have large
estates and no salaries, and who are not likely to sacrifice the
public welfare in which they have a deep stake, and the credit
which they have obtained with the country, to the pleasure of a
Court from which they receive nothing. When the ordinary
administration is in such hands as these, the people will be
quite content to see the Parliament become, what it formerly was,
an extraordinary check. They will be quite willing that the House
of Commons should meet only once in three years for a short
session, and should take as little part in matters of state as it
did a hundred years ago.

Thus we believe that Temple reasoned: for on this hypothesis his
scheme is intelligible; and on any other hypothesis his scheme
appears to us, as it does to Mr. Courtenay, exceedingly absurd
and unmeaning. This Council was strictly what Barillon called it,
an Assembly of States. There are the representatives of all the
great sections of the community, of the Church, of the Law, of
the Peerage, of the Commons. The exclusion of one half of the
counsellors from office under the Crown, an exclusion which is
quite absurd when we consider the Council merely as an executive
board, becomes at once perfectly reasonable when we consider the
Council as a body intended to restrain the Crown as well as to
exercise the powers of the Crown, to perform some of the
functions of a Parliament as well as the functions of a Cabinet.
We see, too, why Temple dwelt so much on the private wealth of
the members, why he instituted a comparison between their united
incomes and the united incomes of the members of the House of
Commons. Such a parallel would have been idle in the case of a
mere Cabinet. It is extremely significant in the case of a body
intended to supersede the House of Commons in some very important
functions.

We can hardly help thinking that the notion of this Parliament on
a small scale was suggested to Temple by what he had himself seen
in the United Provinces. The original Assembly of the States-
General consisted, as he tells us, of above eight hundred
persons. But this great body was represented by a smaller Council
of about thirty, which bore the name and exercised the powers of
the States-General. At last the real States altogether ceased to
meet; and their power, though still a part of the theory of the
Constitution, became obsolete in practice. We do not, of course,
imagine that Temple either expected or wished that Parliaments
should be thus disused; but he did expect, we think, that
something like what had happened in Holland would happen in
England, and that a large portion of the functions lately assumed
by Parliament would be quietly transferred to the miniature
Parliament which he proposed to create.

Had this plan, with some modifications, been tried at an earlier
period, in a more composed state of the public mind, and by a
better sovereign, we are by no means certain that it might not
have effected the purpose for which it was designed. The
restraint imposed on the King by the Council of thirty, whom he
had himself chosen, would have been feeble indeed when compared
with the restraint imposed by Parliament. But it would have been
more constant. It would have acted every year, and all the year
round; and before the Revolution the sessions of Parliament were
short and the recesses long. The advice of the Council would
probably have prevented any very monstrous and scandalous
measures; and would consequently have prevented the discontents
which follow such measures, and the salutary laws which are the
fruit of such discontents. We believe, for example, that the
second Dutch war would never have been approved by such a Council
as that which Temple proposed. We are quite certain that the
shutting up of the Exchequer would never even have been mentioned
in such a Council. The people, pleased to think that Lord
Russell, Lord Cavendish, and Mr. Powle, unplaced and unpensioned,
were daily representing their grievances and defending their
rights in the Royal presence, would not have pined quite so much
for the meeting of Parliaments. The Parliament, when it met,
would have found fewer and less glaring abuses to attack. There
would have been less misgovernment and less reform. We should not
have been cursed with the Cabal, or blessed with the Habeas
Corpus Act. In the mean time the Council, considered as an
executive Council, would, unless some at least of its powers had
been delegated to a smaller body, have been feeble, dilatory,
divided, unfit for everything that requires secrecy and despatch,
and peculiarly unfit for the administration of war.

The Revolution put an end, in a very different way, to the long
contest between the King and the Parliament. From that time, the
House of Commons has been predominant in the State. The Cabinet
has really been, from that time, a committee nominated by the
Crown out of the prevailing party in Parliament. Though the
minority in the Commons are Constantly proposing to condemn
executive measures, or to call for papers which may enable the
House to sit in judgment on such measures, these propositions are
scarcely ever carried; and, if a proposition of this kind is
carried against the Government, a change of Ministry almost
necessarily follows. Growing and struggling power always gives
more annoyance and is more unmanageable than established power.
The House of Commons gave infinitely more trouble to the
Ministers of Charles the Second than to any Ministers of later
times; for, in the time of Charles the Second, the House was
checking Ministers in whom it did not confide. Now that its
ascendency is fully established, it either confides in Ministers
or turns them out. This is undoubtedly a far better state of
things than that which Temple wished to introduce. The modern
Cabinet is a far better Executive Council than his. The worst
House of Commons that has sate since the Revolution was a far
more efficient check on misgovernment than his fifteen
independent counsellors would have been. Yet, everything
considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an
observant, ingenious, and fertile mind.

On this occasion, as on every occasion on which he came
prominently forward, Temple had the rare good fortune to please
the public as well as the Sovereign. The general exultation was
great when it was known that the old Council, made up of the most
odious tools of power, was dismissed, that small interior
committees, rendered odious by the recent memory of the Cabal,
were to be disused, and that the King would adopt no measure till
it had been discussed and approved by a body, of which one half
consisted of independent gentlemen and noblemen, and in which
such persons as Russell, Cavendish, and Temple himself had seats.
Town and country were in a ferment of joy. The bells were rung;
bonfires were lighted; and the acclamations of England were
echoed by the Dutch, who considered the influence obtained by
Temple as a certain omen of good for Europe. It is, indeed, much
to the honour of his sagacity that every one of his great
measures should, in such times, have pleased every party which he
had any interest in pleasing. This was the case with the Triple
Alliance, with the treaty which concluded the second Dutch war,
with the marriage of the Prince of Orange, and, finally, with the
institution of this new Council.

The only people who grumbled were those popular leaders of the
House of Commons who were not among the Thirty; and, if our view
of the measure be correct, they were precisely the people who had
good reason to grumble. They were precisely the people whose
activity and whose influence the new Council was intended to
destroy.

But there was very soon an end of the bright hopes and loud
applauses with which the publication of this scheme had been
hailed. The perfidious levity of the King and the ambition of the
chiefs of parties produced the instant, entire, and irremediable
failure of a plan which nothing but firmness, public spirit, and
self-denial on the part of all concerned in it could conduct to a
happy issue. Even before the project was divulged, its author had
already found reason to apprehend that it would fail.
Considerable difficulty was experienced in framing the list of
counsellors. There were two men in particular about whom the King
and Temple could not agree, two men deeply tainted with the vices
common to the English statesman of that age, but unrivalled in
talents, address, and influence. These were the Earl of
Shaftesbury, and George Savile Viscount Halifax.

It was a favourite exercise among the Greek sophists to write
panegyrics on characters proverbial for depravity. One professor
of rhetoric sent to Isocrates a panegyric on Busiris; and
Isocrates himself wrote another which has come down to us. It is,
we presume, from an ambition of the same kind that some writers
have lately shown a disposition to eulogise Shaftesbury. But the
attempt is vain. The charges against him rest on evidence not to
be invalidated by any arguments which human wit can devise, or by
any information which may be found in old trunks and escritoires.

It is certain that, just before the Restoration, he declared to
the Regicides that he would be damned, body and soul, rather than
suffer a hair of their heads to be hurt, and that, just after the
Restoration, he was one of the judges who sentenced them to
death. It is certain that he was a principal member of the most
profligate Administration ever known, and that he was afterwards
a principal member oft the most profligate Opposition ever known.
It is certain that, in power, he did not scruple to violate the
great fundamental principle of the Constitution, in order to
exalt the Catholics, and that, out of power, he did not scruple
to violate every principle of justice, in order to destroy them.
There were in that age some honest men, such as William Penn, who
valued toleration so highly that they would willingly have seen
it established even by an illegal exertion of the prerogative.
There were many honest men who dreaded arbitrary power so much
that, on account of the alliance between Popery and arbitrary
power, they were disposed to grant no toleration to Papists. On
both those classes we look with indulgence, though we think both
in the wrong. But Shaftesbury belonged to neither class. He
united all that was worst in both. From the misguided friends
of toleration he borrowed their contempt for the Constitution,
and from the misguided friends of civil liberty their contempt for
the rights of conscience. We never can admit that his conduct as a
mmember of the Cabal was redeemed by his conduct as a leader of
Opposition. On the contrary, his life was such that every part of it,
as if by a skilful contrivance, reflects infamy on every other. We
should never have known how abandoned a prostitute he was in
place, if we had not known how desperate an incendiary he was out
of it. To judge of him fairly, we must bear in mind that the
Shaftesbury who, in office, was the chief author of the
Declaration of Indulgence, was the same Shaftesbury who, out of
office, excited and kept up the savage hatred of the rabble of
London against the very class to whom that Declaration of
Indulgence was intended to give illegal relief.

It is amusing to see the excuses that are made for him. We will
give two specimens. It is acknowledged that he was one of the
Ministry which made the alliance with France against Holland, and
that this alliance was most pernicious. What, then, is the
defence? Even this, that he betrayed his master's counsels to the
Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and tried to rouse all the
Protestant powers of Germany to defend the States. Again, it is
acknowledged that he was deeply concerned in the Declaration of
Indulgence, and that his conduct on this occasion was not only
unconstitutional, but quite inconsistent with the course which he
afterwards took respecting the professors of the Catholic faith.
What, then, is the defence? Even this, that he meant only to
allure concealed Papists to avow themselves, and thus to become
open marks for the vengeance of the public. As often as he is
charged with one treason, his advocates vindicate him by
confessing two. They had better leave him where they find him.
For him there is no escape upwards. Every outlet by which he can
creep out of his present position, is one which lets him down
into a still lower and fouler depth of infamy. To whitewash an
Ethiopian is a proverbially hopeless attempt; but to whitewash
an Ethiopian by giving him a new coat of blacking is an
enterprise more extraordinary still. That in the course of
Shaftesbury's dishonest and revengeful opposition to the Court he
rendered one or two most useful services to his country we admit.
And he is, we think, fairly entitled, if that be any glory, to
have his name eternally associated with the Habeas Corpus Act in
the same way in which the name of Henry the Eighth is associated
with the reformation of the Church, and that of Jack Wilkes with
the most sacred rights of electors.

While Shaftesbury was still living, his character was elaborately
drawn by two of the greatest writers of the age, by Butler, with
characteristic brilliancy of wit, by Dryden, with even more than
characteristic energy and loftiness, by both with all the
inspiration of hatred. The sparkling illustrations of Butler have
been thrown into the shade by the brighter glory of that gorgeous
satiric Muse, who comes sweeping by in sceptred pall, borrowed
from her most august sisters. But the descriptions well deserve
to be compared. The reader will at once perceive a considerable
difference between Butler's

                           "politician,
With more beads than a beast in vision,"

and the Achitophel of Dryden. Butler dwells on Shaftesbury's
unprincipled versatility; on his wonderful and almost instinctive
skill in discerning the approach of a change of fortune; and on
the dexterity with which he extricated himself from the snares in
which he left his associates to perish.

"Our state-artificer foresaw
Which way the world began to draw.
For as old sinners have all points
O' th' compass in their bones and joints,
Can by their pangs and aches find
All turns and changes of the wind,
And better than by Napier's bones
Feel in their own the age of moons:
So guilty sinners in a state
Can by their crimes prognosticate,
And in their consciences feel pain
Some days before a shower of rain.
He, therefore, wisely cast about
All ways he could to ensure his throat."

In Dryden's great portrait, on the contrary, violent passion,
implacable revenge, boldness amounting to temerity, are the most
striking features. Achitophel is one of the "great wits to
madness near allied." And again--

                   "A daring pilot in extremity,
Pleased with the danger when the waves went high,
He sought the storms; but, for a calm unfit,
Would steer too near the sands to boast his wit."

[It has never, we believe, been remarked, that two of the most
striking lines in the description of Achitophel are borrowed from
a most obscure quarter. In Knolles's History of the Turks,
printed more than sixty years before the appearance of Absalom
and Achitophel, are the following verses, under a portrait of the
Sultan Mustapha the First:

"Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand,
And leaves for Fortune's ice Vertue's firme land."

Dryden's words are

"But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand,
And Fortune's ice prefers to Virtue's land."

The circumstance is the more remarkable, because Dryden has
really no couplet which would seem to a good critic more
intensely Drydenian, both in thought and expression, than this,
of which the whole thought, and almost the whole expression, are
stolen.

As we are on this subject, we cannot refrain from observing that
Mr. Courtenay has done Dryden injustice by inadvertently
attributing to him some feeble lines which are in Tate's part of
Absalom and Achitophel.]

The dates of the two poems will, we think, explain this
discrepancy. The third part of Hudibras appeared in 1678, when
the character of Shaftesbury had as yet but imperfectly developed
itself. He had, indeed, been a traitor to every party in the
State; but his treasons had hitherto prospered. Whether it were
accident or sagacity, he had timed his desertions in such a
manner that fortune seemed to go to and fro with him from side to
side. The extent of his perfidy was known; but it was not till
the Popish Plot furnished him with a machinery which seemed
sufficiently powerful for all his purposes, that the audacity of
his spirit, and the fierceness of his malevolent passions, became
fully manifest. His subsequent conduct showed undoubtedly great
ability, but not ability of the sort for which he had formerly
been so eminent. He was now headstrong, sanguine, full of
impetuous confidence in his own wisdom and his own good luck. He,
whose fame as a political tactician had hitherto rested chiefly
on his skilful retreats, now set himself to break down all the
bridges behind him. His plans were castles in the air: his talk
was rhodomontade. He took no thought for the morrow: he treated
the Court as if the King were already a prisoner in his hands: he
built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not
proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were
discerned by men of far less sagacity than his, and scared from
his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be.
But on him they were lost. The counsel of Achitophel, that
counsel which was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God,
was turned into foolishness. He who had become a by-word, for the
certainty with which he foresaw and the suppleness with which he
evaded danger, now, when beset on every side with snares and
death, seemed to be smitten with a blindness as strange as his
former clear-sightedness, and, turning neither to the right nor
to the left, strode straight on with desperate hardihood to his
doom. Therefore, after having early acquired and long preserved
the reputation of infallible wisdom and invariable success, he
lived to see a mighty ruin wrought by his own ungovernable
passions, to see the great party which he had led vanquished, and
scattered, and trampled down, to see all his own devilish
enginery of lying witnesses, partial sheriffs, packed juries,
unjust judges, bloodthirsty mobs, ready to be employed against
himself and his most devoted followers, to fly from that proud
city whose favour had almost raised him to be Mayor of the
Palace, to hide himself in squalid retreats, to cover his grey
head with ignominious disguises; and he died in hopeless exile,
sheltered by the generosity of a State which he had cruelly
injured and insulted, from the vengeance of a master whose favour
he had purchased by one series of crimes, and forfeited by
another.

Halifax had, in common with Shaftesbury, and with almost all the
politicians of that age, a very loose morality where the public
was concerned; but in Halifax the prevailing infection was
modified by a very peculiar constitution both of heart and head,
by a temper singularly free from gall, and by a refining and
sceptical understanding. He changed his course as often as
Shaftesbury; but he did not change it to the same extent, or in
the same direction. Shaftesbury was the very reverse of a
trimmer. His disposition led him generally to do his utmost to
exalt the side which was up, and to depress the side which was
down. His transitions were from extreme to extreme. While he
stayed with a party he went all lengths for it: when he quitted
it he went all lengths against it. Halifax was emphatically a
trimmer; a trimmer both by intellect and by constitution. The
name was fixed on him by his contemporaries; and he was so far
from being ashamed of it that he assumed it as a badge of honour.
He passed from faction to faction. But instead of adopting and
inflaming the passions of those whom he joined, he tried to
diffuse among them something of the spirit of those whom he had
just left. While he acted with the Opposition he was suspected of
being a spy of the Court; and when he had joined the Court all
the Tories were dismayed by his Republican doctrines.

He wanted neither arguments nor eloquence to exhibit what was
commonly regarded as his wavering policy in the fairest light. He
trimmed, he said, as the temperate zone trims between intolerable
heat and intolerable cold, as a good government trims between
despotism and anarchy, as a pure church trims between the errors
of the Papist and those of the Anabaptist. Nor was this defence
by any means without weight; for though there is abundant proof
that his integrity was not of strength to withstand the
temptations by which his cupidity and vanity were sometimes
assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving and
compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him,
preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his
time. If both parties accused him of deserting them, both were
compelled to admit that they had great obligations to his
humanity, and that, though an uncertain friend, he was a placable
enemy. He voted in favour of Lord Stafford, the victim of the
Whigs; he did his utmost to save Lord Russell, the victim of the
Tories; and, on the whole, we are inclined to think that his
public life, though far indeed from faultless, has as few great
stains as that of any politician who took an active part in
affairs during the troubled and disastrous period of ten years
which elapsed between the fall of Lord Danby and the Revolution.

His mind was much less turned to particular observations, and
much more to general speculations, than that of Shaftesbury.
Shaftesbury knew the King, the Council, the Parliament, the City,
better than Halifax; but Halifax would have written a far better
treatise on political science than Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury shone
more in consultation, and Halifax in controversy: Shaftesbury was
more fertile in expedients, and Halifax in arguments. Nothing
that remains from the pen of Shaftesbury will bear a comparison
with the political tracts of Halifax. Indeed, very little of the
prose of that age is so well worth reading as the Character of a
Trimmer and the Anatomy of an Equvivalent. What particularly
strikes us in those works is the writer's passion for
generalisation. He was treating of the most exciting subjects in
the most agitated times he was himself placed in the very thick
of the civil conflict; yet there is no acrimony, nothing
inflammatory, nothing personal. He preserves an air of cold
superiority, a certain philosophical serenity, which is perfectly
marvellous. He treats every question as an abstract question,
begins with the widest propositions, argues those propositions on
general grounds, and often, when he has brought out his theorem,
leaves the reader to make the application, without adding an
allusion to particular men, or to passing events. This
speculative turn of mind rendered him a bad adviser in cases
which required celerity. He brought forward, with wonderful
readiness and copiousness, arguments, replies to those arguments,
rejoinders to those replies, general maxims of policy, and
analogous cases from history. But Shaftesbury was the man for a
prompt decision. Of the parliamentary eloquence of these
celebrated rivals, we can judge only by report; and, so judging,
we should be inclined to think that, though Shaftesbury was a
distinguished speaker, the superiority belonged to Halifax.
Indeed the readiness of Halifax in debate, the extent of his
knowledge, the ingenuity of his reasoning, the liveliness of his
expression, and the silver clearness and sweetness of his voice,
seems to have made the strongest impression on his
contemporaries. By Dryden he is described as

"of piercing wit and pregnant thought,
Endued by nature and by learning taught
To move assemblies."

His oratory is utterly and irretrievably lost to us, like that of
Somers, of Bolingbroke, of Charles Townshend, of many others who
were accustomed to rise amid the breathless expectation of
senates, and to sit down amidst reiterated bursts of applause.
But old men who lived to admire the eloquence of Pulteney in its
meridian, and that of Pitt in its splendid dawn, still murmured
that they had heard nothing like the great speeches of Lord
Halifax on the Exclusion Bill. The power of Shaftesbury over
large masses was unrivalled. Halifax was disqualified by his
whole character, moral and intellectual, for the part of a
demagogue. It was in small circles, and, above all, in the House
of Lords, that his ascendency was felt.

Shaftesbury seems to have troubled himself very little about
theories of government. Halifax was, in speculation, a strong
republican, and did not conceal it. He often made hereditary
monarchy and aristocracy the subjects of his keen pleasantry,
while he was fighting the battles of the Court, and obtaining for
himself step after step in the peerage. In this way, he tried to
gratify at once his intellectual vanity and his more vulgar
ambition. He shaped his life according to the opinion of the
multitude, and indemnified himself by talking according to his
own. His colloquial powers were great; his perception of the
ridiculous exquisitely fine; and he seems to have had the rare
art of preserving the reputation of good breeding and good
nature, while habitually indulging a strong propensity to
mockery.

Temple wished to put Halifax into the new Council, and leave out
Shaftesbury. The King objected strongly to Halifax, to whom he
had taken a great dislike, which is not accounted for, and which
did not last long. Temple replied that Halifax was a man eminent
both by his station and by his abilities, and would, if excluded,
do everything against the new arrangement that could be done by
eloquence, sarcasm, and intrigue. All who were consulted were of
the same mind; and the King yielded, but not till Temple had
almost gone on his knees. This point was no sooner settled than
his Majesty declared that he would have Shaftesbury too. Temple
again had recourse to entreaties and expostulations. Charles told
him that the enmity of Shaftesbury would be at least as
formidable as that of Halifax, and this was true; but Temple
might have replied that by giving power to Halifax they gained a
friend, and that by giving power to Shaftesbury they only
strengthened an enemy. It was vain to argue and protest. The King
only laughed and jested at Temple's anger; and Shaftesbury was
not only sworn of the Council, but appointed Lord President.

Temple was so bitterly mortified by this step that he had at one
time resolved to have nothing to do with the new Administration,
and seriously thought of disqualifying himself from sitting in
council by omitting to take the Sacrament. But the urgency of
Lady Temple and Lady Giffard induced him to abandon that
intention.

The Council was organised on the twenty-first of April, 1679;
and, within a few hours, one of the fundamental principles on
which it had been constructed was violated. A secret committee,
or, in the modern phrase, a cabinet of nine members, was formed.
But as this committee included Shaftesbury and Monmouth, it
contained within itself the elements of as much faction as would
have sufficed to impede all business. Accordingly there soon
arose a small interior cabinet, consisting of Essex, Sunderland,
Halifax, and Temple. For a time perfect harmony and confidence
subsisted between the four. But the meetings of the thirty were
stormy. Sharp retorts passed between Shaftesbury and Halifax, who
led the opposite parties, In the Council, Halifax generally had
the advantage. But it soon became apparent that Shaftesbury still
had at his back the majority of the House of Commons. The
discontents which the change of Ministry had for a moment quieted
broke forth again with redoubled violence; and the only effect
which the late measures appeared to have produced was that the
Lord President, with all the dignity and authority belonging to
his high place, stood at the head of the Opposition. The
impeachment of Lord Danby was eagerly prosecuted. The Commons
were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. All
offers of compromise were rejected. It must not be forgotten,
however, that, in the midst of the confusion, one inestimable
law, the only benefit which England has derived from the troubles
of that period, but a benefit which may well be set off against a
great mass of evil, the Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through the
Houses and received the royal assent.

The King, finding the Parliament as troublesome as ever,
determined to prorogue it; and he did so, without even mentioning
his intention to the Council by whose advice he had pledged
himself, only a month before, to conduct the Government. The
counsellors were generally dissatisfied; and Shaftesbury swore,
with great vehemence, that if he could find out who the secret
advisers were, he would have their heads.

The Parliament rose; London was deserted; and Temple retired to
his villa, whence, on council days, he went to Hampton Court. The
post of Secretary was again and again pressed on him by his
master and by his three colleagues of the inner Cabinet. Halifax,
in particular, threatened laughingly to burn down the house at
Sheen. But Temple was immovable. His short experience of English
politics had disgusted him; and he felt himself so much oppressed
by the responsibility under which he at present lay that he had
no inclination to add to the load.

When the term fixed for the prorogation had nearly expired, it
became necessary to consider what course should be taken. The
King and his four confidential advisers thought that a new
Parliament might possibly be more manageable, and could not
possibly be more refractory, than that which they now had, and
they therefore determined on a dissolution. But when the question
was proposed at council, the majority, jealous, it should seem,
of the small directing knot, and unwilling to bear the
unpopularity of the measures of Government, while excluded from
all power, joined Shaftesbury, and the members of the Cabinet
were left alone in the minority. The King, however, had made up
his mind, and ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved.
Temple's Council was now nothing more than an ordinary Privy
Council, if indeed it were not something less; and, though Temple
threw the blame of this on the King, on Lord Shaftesbury, on
everybody but himself, it is evident that the failure of his plan
is to be chiefly ascribed to its own inherent defects. His
Council was too large to transact business which required
expedition, secrecy, and cordial cooperation. A Cabinet was
therefore formed within the Council. The Cabinet and the majority
of the Council differed; and, as was to be expected, the Cabinet
carried their point. Four votes outweighed six-and-twenty. This
being the case, the meetings of the thirty were not only useless,
but positively noxious.

At the ensuing election, Temple was chosen for the University of
Cambridge. The only objection that was made to him by the members
of that learned body was that, in his little work on Holland, he
had expressed great approbation of the tolerant policy of the
States; and this blemish, however serious, was overlooked, in
consideration of his high reputation, and of the strong
recommendations with which he was furnished by the Court.

During the summer he remained at Sheen, and amused himself with
rearing melons, leaving to the three other members of the inner
Cabinet the whole direction of public affairs. Some unexplained
cause began about this time, to alienate them from him. They do
not appear to have been made angry by any part of his conduct, or
to have disliked him personally. But they had, we suspect, taken
the measure of his mind, and satisfied themselves that he was not
a man for that troubled time, and that he would be a mere
incumbrance to them. Living themselves for ambition, they
despised his love of ease. Accustomed to deep stakes in the game
of political hazard, they despised his piddling play. They looked
on his cautious measures with the sort of scorn with which the
gamblers at the ordinary, in Sir Walter Scott's novel, regarded
Nigel's practice of never touching a card but when he was certain
to win. He soon found that he was left out of their secrets. The
King had, about this time, a dangerous attack of illness. The
Duke of York, on receiving the news, returned from Holland. The
sudden appearance of the detested Popish successor excited
anxiety throughout the country. Temple was greatly amazed and
disturbed. He hastened up to London and visited Essex, who
professed to be astonished and mortified, but could not disguise
a sneering smile. Temple then saw Halifax, who talked to him much
about the pleasures of the country, the anxieties of office, and
the vanity of all human things, but carefully avoided politics
and when the Duke's return was mentioned, only sighed, shook his
head, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted up his eyes and hands.
In a short time Temple found that his two friends had been
laughing at him, and that they had themselves sent for the Duke,
in order that his Royal Highness might, if the King should die,
be on the spot to frustrate the designs of Monmouth.

He was soon convinced, by a still stronger proof, that, though he
had not exactly offended his master or his colleagues in the
Cabinet, he had ceased to enjoy their confidence. The result of
the general election had been decidedly unfavourable to the
Government; and Shaftesbury impatiently expected the day when the
Houses were to meet. The King, guided by the advice of the inner
Cabinet, determined on a step of the highest importance. He told
the Council that he had resolved to prorogue the new Parliament
for a year, and requested them not to object; for he had, he
said, considered the subject fully, and had made up his mind. All
who were not in the secret were thunderstruck, Temple as much as
any. Several members rose, and entreated to be heard against the
prorogation. But the King silenced them, and declared that his
resolution was unalterable. Temple, much hurt at the manner in
which both himself and the Council had been treated, spoke with
great spirit. He would not, he said, disobey the King by
objecting to a measure an which his Majesty was determined to
hear no argument; but he would most earnestly entreat his
Majesty, if the present Council was incompetent to give advice,
to dissolve it and select another; for it was absurd to have
counsellors who did not counsel, and who were summoned only to be
silent witnesses of the acts of others. The King listened
courteously. But the members of the Cabinet resented this reproof
highly; and from that day Temple was almost as much estranged
from them as from Shaftesbury.

He wished to retire altogether from business. But just at this
time Lord Russell, Lord Cavendish, and some other counsellors of
the popular party, waited on the King in a body, declared their
strong disapprobation of his measures, and requested to be
excused from attending any more at council. Temple feared that
if, at this moment, he also were to withdraw, he might be
supposed to act in concert with those decided opponents of the
Court, and to have determined on taking a course hostile to the
Government. He, therefore, continued to go occasionally to the
board; but he had no longer any real share in the direction of
public affairs.

At length the long term of the prorogation expired. In October
1680, the Houses met; and the great question of the Exclusion was
revived. Few parliamentary contests in our history appear to have
called forth a greater display of talent; none certainly ever
called forth more violent passions. The whole nation was
convulsed by party spirit. The gentlemen of every county, the
traders of every town, the boys of every public school, were
divided into exclusionists and abhorrers. The book-stalls were
covered with tracts on the sacredness of hereditary right, on the
omnipotence of Parliament, on the dangers of a disputed
succession, on the dangers of a Popish reign. It was in the midst
of this ferment that Temple took his seat, for the first time, in
the House of Commons.

The occasion was a very great one. His talents, his long
experience of affairs, his unspotted public character, the high
posts which he had filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on
whom much would depend. He acted like himself, He saw that, if he
supported the Exclusion, he made the King and the heir
presumptive his enemies, and that, if he opposed it, he made
himself an object of hatred to the unscrupulous and turbulent
Shaftesbury. He neither supported nor opposed it. He quietly
absented himself from the House. Nay, he took care, he tells us,
never to discuss the question in any society whatever. Lawrence
Hyde, afterwards Earl of Rochester, asked him why he did not
attend in his place. Temple replied that he acted according to
Solomon's advice, neither to oppose the mighty, nor to go about
to stop the current of a river. Hyde answered, "You are a wise
and a quiet man." And this might be true. But surely such wise
and quiet men have no call to be members of Parliament in
critical times.

A single session was quite enough for Temple. When the Parliament
was dissolved, and another summoned at Oxford, he obtained an
audience of the King, and begged to know whether his Majesty
wished him to continue in Parliament. Charles, who had a
singularly quick eye for the weaknesses of all who came near him,
had no doubt seen through Temple, and rated the parliamentary
support of so cool and guarded a friend at its proper value. He
answered good-naturedly, but we suspect a little contemptuously,
"I doubt, as things stand, your coming into the House will not do
much good. I think you may as well let it alone." Sir William
accordingly informed his constituents that he should not again
apply for their suffrages, and set off for Sheen, resolving never
again to meddle with public affairs. He soon found that the King
was displeased with him. Charles, indeed, in his usual easy way,
protested that he was not angry, not at all. But in a few days he
struck Temple's name out of the list of Privy Councillors.

Why this was done Temple declares himself unable to comprehend.
But surely it hardly required his long and extensive converse
with the world to teach him that there are conjunctures when men
think that all who are not with them are against them, that there
are conjunctures when a lukewarm friend, who will not put himself
the least out of his way, who will make no exertion, who will run
no risk, is more distasteful than an enemy. Charles had hoped
that the fair character of Temple would add credit to an
unpopular and suspected Government. But his Majesty soon found
that this fair character resembled pieces of furniture which we
have seen in the drawing-rooms of very precise old ladies, and
which are a great deal too white to be used. This exceeding
niceness was altogether out of season. Neither party wanted a man
who was afraid of taking a part, of incurring abuse, of making
enemies. There were probably many good and moderate men who would
have hailed the appearance of a respectable mediator. But Temple
was not a mediator. He was merely a neutral.

At last, however, he had escaped from public life, and found
himself at liberty to follow his favourite pursuits. His fortune
was easy. He had about fifteen hundred a year, besides the
Mastership of the Rolls in Ireland, an office in which he had
succeeded his father, and which was then a mere sinecure for
life, requiring no residence. His reputation both as a negotiator
and a writer stood high. He resolved to be safe, to enjoy
himself, and to let the world take its course; and he kept his
resolution.

Darker times followed. The Oxford Parliament was dissolved. The
Tories were triumphant. A terrible vengeance was inflicted on the
chiefs of the Opposition. Temple learned in his retreat the
disastrous fate of several of his old colleagues in council.
Shaftesbury fled to Holland. Russell died on the scaffold. Essex
added a yet sadder and more fearful story to the bloody
chronicles of the Tower. Monmouth clung in agonies of
supplication round the knees of the stern uncle whom he had
wronged, and tasted a bitterness worse than that of death, the
bitterness of knowing that he had humbled himself in vain. A
tyrant trampled on the liberties and religion of the realm. The
national spirit swelled high under the oppression. Disaffection
spread even to the strongholds of loyalty, to the Cloisters of
Westminster, to the schools of Oxford, to the guard-room of the
household troops, to the very hearth and bed-chamber of the
Sovereign. But the troubles which agitated the whole country
did not reach the quiet orangery in which Temple loitered away
several years without once seeing the smoke of London. He now
and then appeared in the circle at Richmond or Windsor. But
the only expressions which he is recorded to have used during
these perilous times were, that he would be a good subject,
but that he had done with politics.

The Revolution came: he remained strictly neutral during the
short struggle; and he then transferred to the new settlement the
same languid sort of loyalty which he had felt for his former
masters. He paid court to William at Windsor, and William dined
with him at Sheen. But, in spite of the most pressing
solicitations, Temple refused to become Secretary of State. The
refusal evidently proceeded only from his dislike of trouble and
danger; and not, as some of his admirers would have us believe,
from any scruple of conscience or honour. For he consented that
his son should take the office of Secretary at War under the new
Sovereign. This unfortunate young man destroyed himself within a
week after his appointment from vexation at finding that his
advice had led the King into some improper steps with regard to
Ireland. He seems to have inherited his father's extreme
sensibility to failure, without that singular prudence which kept
his father out of all situations in which any serious failure was
to be apprehended. The blow fell heavily on the family. They
retired in deep dejection to Moor Park, [Mr. Courtenay (vol. ii.
p. 160) confounds Moor Park in Surrey, where Temple resided, with
the Moor Park in Hertfordshire, which is praised in the Essay on
Gardening.] which they now preferred to Sheen, on account of the
greater distance from London. In that spot, then very secluded,
Temple passed the remainder of his life. The air agreed with him.
The soil was fruitful, and well suited to an experimental farmer
and gardener. The grounds were laid out with the angular
regularity which Sir William had admired in the flower-beds of
Haarlem and the Hague. A beautiful rivulet, flowing from the
hills of Surrey, bounded the domain. But a straight canal which,
bordered by a terrace, intersected the garden, was probably more
admired by the lovers of the picturesque in that age. The house
was small but neat, and well-furnished; the neighbourhood very
thinly peopled. Temple had no visitors, except a few friends who
were willing to travel twenty or thirty miles in order to see
him, and now and then a foreigner whom curiosity brought to have
a look at the author of the Triple Alliance.

Here, in May 1694, died Lady Temple. From the time of her
marriage we know little of her, except that her letters were
always greatly admired, and that she had the honour to correspond
constantly with Queen Mary. Lady Giffard, who, as far as appears,
had always been on the best terms with her sister-in-law, still
continued to live with Sir William.

But there were other inmates of Moor Park to whom a far higher
interest belongs. An eccentric, uncouth, disagreeable young
Irishman, who had narrowly escaped plucking at Dublin, attended
Sir William as an amanuensis, for board and twenty pounds a year,
dined at the second table, wrote bad verses in praise of his
employer, and made love to a very pretty, dark-eyed young girl,
who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple imagine that the
coarse exterior of his dependant concealed a genius equally
suited to politics and to letters, a genius destined to shake
great kingdoms, to stir the laughter and the rage of millions,
and to leave to posterity memorials which can perish only with
the English language. Little did he think that the flirtation in
his servants' hall, which he perhaps scarcely deigned to make the
subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long unprosperous love,
which was to be as widely famed as the passion of Petrarch or of
Abelard. Sir William's secretary was Jonathan Swift. Lady
Giffard's waiting-maid was poor Stella.

Swift retained no pleasing recollection of Moor Park. And we may
easily suppose a situation like his to have been intolerably
painful to a mind haughty, irascible, and conscious of pre-
eminent ability. Long after, when he stood in the Court of
Requests with a circle of gartered peers round him, or punned and
rhymed with Cabinet Ministers over Secretary St. John's Monte-
Pulciano, he remembered, with deep and sore feeling, how
miserable he used to be for days together when he suspected that
Sir William had taken something ill. He could hardly believe that
he, the Swift who chid the Lord Treasurer, rallied the Captain
General, and confronted the pride of the Duke of Buckinghamshire
with pride still more inflexible, could be the same being who had
passed nights of sleepless anxiety, in musing over a cross look
or a testy word of a patron. "Faith," he wrote to Stella, with
bitter levity, "Sir William spoiled a fine gentleman." Yet, in
justice to Temple, we must say that there is no reason to think
that Swift was more unhappy at Moor Park than he would have been
in a similar situation under any roof in England. We think also
that the obligations which the mind of Swift owed to that of
Temple were not inconsiderable. Every judicious reader must be
struck by the peculiarities which distinguish Swift's political
tracts from all similar works produced by mere men of letters.
Let any person compare, for example, the Conduct of the Allies,
or the Letter to the October Club, with Johnson's False Alarm, or
Taxation no Tyranny, and he will be at once struck by the
difference of which we speak. He may possibly think Johnson a
greater man than Swift. He may possibly prefer Johnson's style to
Swift's. But he will at once acknowledge that Johnson writes like
a man who has never been out of his study. Swift writes like a
man who has passed his whole life in the midst of public
business, and to whom the most important affairs of state are as
familiar as his weekly bills.

"Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter."

The difference, in short, between a political pamphlet by Johnson
and a political pamphlet by Swift, is as great as the difference
between an account of a battle by Mr. Southey, and the account of
the same battle by Colonel Napier. It is impossible to doubt that
the superiority of Swift is to be, in a great measure, attributed
to his long and close connection with Temple.

Indeed, remote as were the alleys and flower-pots of Moor Park
from the haunts of the busy and the ambitious, Swift had ample
opportunities of becoming acquainted with the hidden causes of
many great events. William was in the habit of consulting Temple,
and occasionally visited him. Of what passed between them very
little is known. It is certain, however, that when the Triennial
Bill had been carried through the two Houses, his Majesty, who
was exceedingly unwilling to pass it, sent the Earl of Portland
to learn Temple's opinion. Whether Temple thought the bill in
itself a good one does not appear; but he clearly saw how
imprudent it must be in a prince, situated as William was, to
engage in an altercation with his Parliament, and directed Swift
to draw up a paper on the subject, which, however, did not
convince the King.

The chief amusement of Temple's declining years was literature.
After his final retreat from business, he wrote his very
agreeable Memoirs, corrected and transcribed many of his letters,
and published several miscellaneous treatises, the best of which,
we think, is that on Gardening. The style of his essays is, on
the whole, excellent, almost always pleasing, and now and then
stately and splendid. The matter is generally of much less value;
as our readers will readily believe when we inform them that Mr.
Courtenay, a biographer, that is to say, a literary vassal, bound
by the immemorial law of his tenure to render homage, aids,
reliefs, and all other customary services to his lord, avows that
he cannot give an opinion about the essay on Heroic Virtue,
because he cannot read it without skipping; a circumstance which
strikes us as peculiarly strange, when we consider how long Mr.
Courtenay was at the India Board, and how many thousand
paragraphs of the copious official eloquence of the East he must
have perused.

One of Sir William's pieces, however, deserves notice, not,
indeed, on account of its intrinsic merit, but on account of the
light which it throws on some curious weaknesses of his
character, and on account of the extraordinary effects which it
produced in the republic of letters. A most idle and contemptible
controversy had  arisen in France touching the comparative merit
of the ancient and modern writers. It was certainly not to be
expected that, in that age, the question  would be tried
according to those large and philosophical principles of
criticism which guided the judgments of Lessing and of Herder.
But it might have been expected that those who undertook to
decide the point would at least take the trouble to read and
understand the authors on whose merits they were to pronounce.
Now, it is no exaggeration to say that, among the disputants who
clamoured, some for the ancients and some for the moderns, very
few were decently acquainted with either ancient or modern
literature, and hardly one was well acquainted with both. In
Racine's amusing preface to the Iphigenie the reader may find
noticed a most ridiculous mistake into which one of the champions
of the moderns fell about a passage in the Alcestis of Euripides.
Another writer is so inconceivably ignorant as to blame Homer for
mixing the four Greek dialects, Doric, Ionic, Aeolic, and Attic,
just, says he, as if a French poet were to put Gascon phrases and
Picard phrases into the midst of his pure Parisian writing. On
the other hand, it is no exaggeration to say that the defenders
of the ancients were entirely unacquainted with the greatest
productions of later times; nor, indeed, were the defenders of
the moderns better informed. The parallels which were instituted
in the course of this dispute are inexpressibly ridiculous.
Balzac was selected as the rival of Cicero. Corneille was said to
unite the merits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. We
should like to see a Prometheus after Corneille's fashion. The
Provincial Letters, masterpieces undoubtedly of reasoning, wit,
and eloquence, were pronounced to be superior to all the writings
of Plato, Cicero, and Lucian together, particularly in the art of
dialogue, an art in which, as it happens, Plato far excelled all
men, and in which Pascal, great and admirable in other respects,
is notoriously very deficient.

This childish controversy spread to England; and some mischievous
daemon suggested to Temple the thought of undertaking the defence
of the ancients. As to his qualifications for the task, it is
sufficient to say that he knew not a word of Greek. But his
vanity, which, when he was engaged in the conflicts of active
life and surrounded by rivals, had been kept in tolerable order
by his discretion, now, when he had long lived in seclusion, and
had become accustomed to regard himself as by far the first man
of his circle, rendered him blind to his own deficiencies. In an
evil hour he published an Essay on Ancient and Modern Learning.
The style of this treatise is very good, the matter ludicrous and
contemptible to the last degree. There we read how Lycurgus
travelled into India, and brought the Spartan laws from that
country; how Orpheus made voyages in search of knowledge, and
attained to a depth of learning which has made him renowned in
all succeeding ages; how Pythagoras passed twenty-two years in
Egypt, and, after graduating there, spent twelve years more at
Babylon, where the Magi admitted him ad eundem; how the ancient
Brahmins lived two hundred years; how the earliest Greek
philosophers foretold earthquakes and plagues, and put down riots
by magic; and how much Ninus surpassed in abilities any of his
successors on the throne of Assyria. The moderns, Sir William
owns, have found out the circulation of blood; but, on the other
hand, they have quite lost the art of conjuring; nor can any
modern fiddler enchant fishes, fowls, and serpents by his
performance. He tells us that "Thales, Pythagoras, Democritus,
Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus made greater
progresses in the several empires of science than any of their
successors have since been able to reach"; which is just as
absurd as if he had said that the greatest names in British
science are Merlin, Michael Scott, Dr. Sydenham, and Lord Bacon.
Indeed, the manner in which Temple mixes the historical and the
fabulous reminds us of those classical dictionaries, intended for
the use of schools, in which Narcissus the lover of himself and
Narcissus the freedman of Claudius, Pollux the son of Jupiter and
Leda and Pollux the author of the Onomasticon, are ranged under
the same headings, and treated as personages equally real.

The effect of this arrangement resembles that which would be
produced by a dictionary of modern names, consisting of such
articles as the following:-"Jones, William, an eminent
Orientalist, and one of the judges of the Supreme Court of
judicature in Bengal--Davy, a fiend, who destroys ships--Thomas,
a foundling, brought up by Mr. Allworthy." It is from such
sources as these that Temple seems to have learned all that he
knew about the ancients. He puts the story of Orpheus between the
Olympic games and the battle of Arbela; as if we had exactly the
same reasons for believing that Orpheus led beasts with his lyre,
which we have for believing that there were races at Pisa, or
that Alexander conquered Darius.

He manages little better when he comes to the moderns. He gives
us a catalogue of those whom he regards as the greatest writers
of later times. It is sufficient to say that, in his list of
Italians, he has omitted Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso; in
his list of Spaniards, Lope and Calderon; in his list of French,
Pascal, Bossuet, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau; and in
his list of English, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton.

In the midst of all this vast mass of absurdity one paragraph
stands out pre-eminent. The doctrine of Temple, not a very
comfortable doctrine, is that the human race is constantly
degenerating, and that the oldest books in every kind are the
best In confirmation of this notion, he remarks that the Fables
of Aesop are the best Fables, and the Letters of Phalaris the
best Letters in the world. On the merit of the Letters of
Phalaris he dwells with great warmth and with extraordinary
felicity of language. Indeed we could hardly select a more
favourable specimen of the graceful and easy majesty to which his
style sometimes rises than this unlucky passage. He knows, he
says, that some learned men, or men who pass for learned, such as
Politian, have doubted the genuineness of these letters; but of
such doubts he speaks with the greatest contempt. Now it is
perfectly certain, first, that the letters are very bad;
secondly, that they are spurious; and thirdly, that, whether they
be bad or good, spurious or genuine, Temple could know nothing of
the matter; inasmuch as he was no more able to construe a line of
them than to decipher an Egyptian obelisk.

This Essay, silly as it is, was exceedingly well received, both
in England and on the Continent. And the reason is evident. The
classical scholars who saw its absurdity were generally on the
side of the ancients, and were inclined rather to veil than to
expose the blunders of an ally; the champions of the moderns were
generally as ignorant as Temple himself; and the multitude was
charmed by his flowing and melodious diction. He was doomed,
however, to smart, as he well deserved, for his vanity and folly.

Christchurch at Oxford was then widely and justly celebrated as a
place where the lighter parts of classical learning were
cultivated with success. With the deeper mysteries of philology
neither the instructors nor the pupils had the smallest
acquaintance. They fancied themselves Scaligers, as Bentley
scornfully said, if they could write a copy of Latin verses with
only two or three small faults. From this College proceeded a new
edition of the Letters of Phalaris, which were rare, and had been
in request since the appearance of Temple's Essay. The nominal
editor was Charles Boyle, a young man of noble family and
promising parts; but some older members of the society lent their
assistance. While this work was in preparation, an idle quarrel,
occasioned, it should seem, by the negligence and
misrepresentations of a bookseller, arose between Boyle and the
King's Librarian, Richard Bentley. Boyle in the preface to his
edition, inserted a bitter reflection on Bentley. Bentley
revenged himself by proving that the Epistles of Phalaris were
forgeries, and in his remarks on this subject treated Temple, not
indecently, but with no great reverence.

Temple, who was quite unaccustomed to any but the most respectful
usage, who, even while engaged in politics, had always shrunk
from all rude collision, and had generally succeeded in avoiding
it, and whose sensitiveness had been increased by many years of
seclusion and flattery, was moved to most violent resentment,
complained, very unjustly, of Bentley's foul-mouthed raillery,
and declared that he had commenced an answer, but had laid it
aside, "having no mind to enter the lists with such a mean,
dull, unmannerly pedant" Whatever may be thought of the temper
which Sir William showed on this occasion, we cannot too highly
applaud his discretion in not finishing and publishing his
answer, which would certainly have been a most extraordinary
performance.

He was not, however, without defenders. Like Hector, when struck
down prostrate by Ajax, he was in an instant covered by a thick
crowd of shields.

                Outis edunesato poimena laou
Outasai oudi balein prin gar peribesan aristoi
Polubmas te, kai Aineias, kai dios Agenor,
Sarpedon t'archos Lukion, kai Glaukos amumon.

Christchurch was up in arms; and though that College seems then
to have been almost destitute of severe and accurate learning, no
academical society could show, a greater array of orators, wits,
politicians, bustling adventurers who united the superficial
accomplishments of the scholar with the manners and arts of the
man of the world; and this formidable body resolved to try how
far smart repartees, well-turned sentences, confidence, puffing,
and intrigue could, on the question whether a Greek book were or
were not genuine, supply the place of a little knowledge of
Greek.

Out came the Reply to Bentley, bearing the name of Boyle, but in
truth written by Atterbury with the assistance of Smalridge and
others. A most remarkable book it is, and often reminds us of
Goldsmith's observation, that the French would be the best cooks
in the world if they had any butcher's meat, for that they can
make ten dishes out of a nettle-top. It really deserves the
praise, whatever that praise may be worth, of being the best book
ever written by any man on the wrong side of a question of which
he was profoundly ignorant. The learning of the confederacy is
that of a schoolboy, and not of an extraordinary schoolboy; but
it is used with the skill and address of most able, artful, and
experienced men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, and
is disposed in such a way as to seem ten times larger than it is.
The dexterity with which the confederates avoid grappling with
those parts of the subject with which they know themselves to be
incompetent to deal is quite wonderful. Now and then, indeed,
they commit disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom
they had studied, would have whipped them all round. But this
circumstance only raises our opinion of the talents which made
such a fight with such scanty means. Let readers who are not
acquainted with the controversy imagine a Frenchman, who has
acquired just English enough to read the Spectator with a
dictionary, coming forward to defend the genuineness of Ireland's
Vortigern against Malone; and they will have some notion of the
feat which Atterbury had the audacity to undertake, and which,
for a time, it was really thought that he had performed.

The illusion was soon dispelled. Bentley's answer for ever
settled the question, and established his claim to the first
place amongst classical scholars. Nor do those do him justice
who represent the controversy as a battle between wit and
learning. For though there is a lamentable deficiency of learning
on the side of Boyle, there is no want of wit on the side of
Bentley. Other qualities, too, as valuable as either wit or
learning, appear conspicuously in Bentley's book, a rare
sagacity, an unrivalled power of combination, a perfect mastery
of all the weapons of logic. He was greatly indebted to the
furious outcry which the misrepresentations, sarcasms, and
intrigues of his opponents had raised against him, an outcry in
which fashionable and political circles joined, and which was
echoed by thousands who did not know whether Phalaris ruled in
Sicily or in Siam. His spirit, daring even to rashness, self-
confident even to negligence, and proud even to insolent
ferocity, was awed for the first and for the last time, awed, not
into meanness or cowardice, but into wariness and sobriety. For
once he ran no risks; he left no crevice unguarded; he wantoned
in no paradoxes; above all, he returned no railing for the
railing of his enemies. In almost everything that he has written
we can discover proofs of genius and learning. But it is only
here that his genius and learning appear to have been constantly
under the guidance of good sense and good temper. Here, we find
none of that besotted reliance on his own powers and on his own
luck, which he showed when he undertook to edit Milton; none of
that perverted ingenuity which deforms so many of his notes on
Horace; none of that disdainful carelessness by which he laid
himself open to the keen and dexterous thrust of Middleton; none
of that extravagant vaunting and savage scurrility by which he
afterwards dishonoured his studies and his profession, and
degraded himself almost to the level of De Pauw.

Temple did not live to witness the utter and irreparable defeat
of his champions. He died, indeed, at a fortunate moment, just
after the appearance of Boyle's book, and while all England was
laughing at the way in which the Christchurch men had handled the
pedant. In Boyle's book, Temple was praised in the highest terms,
and compared to Memmius: not a very happy comparison; for almost
the only particular information which we have about Memmius is
that, in agitated times, he thought it his duty to attend
exclusively to politics, and that his friends could not venture,
except when the Republic was quiet and prosperous, to intrude on
him with their philosophical and poetical productions. It is on
this account that Lucretius puts up the exquisitely beautiful
prayer for peace with which his poem opens.

"Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo
Possumus aequo animo, nec Memmi clara propago
Talibus in rebus communi de esse saluti."

This description is surely by no means applicable to a statesman
who had, through the whole course of his life, carefully avoided
exposing himself in seasons of trouble; who had repeatedly
refused, in most critical conjunctures, to be Secretary of State;
and, who now, in the midst of revolutions, plots, foreign and
domestic wars, was quietly writing nonsense about the visits of
Lycurgus to the Brahmins and the tunes which Arion played to the
Dolphin.

We must not omit to mention that, while the controversy about
Phalaris was raging, Swift, in order to show his zeal and
attachment, wrote the Battle of the Books, the earliest piece in
which his peculiar talents are discernible. We may observe that
the bitter dislike of Bentley, bequeathed by Temple to Swift,
seems to have been communicated by Swift to Pope, to Arbuthnot,
and to others, who continued to tease the great critic long after
he had shaken hands very cordially both with Boyle and with
Atterbury.

Sir William Temple died at Moor Park in January 1699. He appears
to have suffered no intellectual decay. His heart was buried
under a sundial which still stands in his favourite garden. His
body was laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of his wife; and a
place hard by was set apart for Lady Giffard, who long survived
him. Swift was his literary executor, superintended the
publication of his Letters and Memoirs, and, in the performance
of this office, had some acrimonious contests with the family.

Of Temple's character little more remains to be said. Burnet
accuses him of holding irreligious opinions, and corrupting
everybody who came near him. But the vague assertion of so rash
and partial a writer as Burnet, about a man with whom, as far as
we know, he never exchanged a word, is of little weight. It is,
indeed, by no means improbable that Temple may have been a
freethinker. The Osbornes thought him so when he was a very young
man. And it is certain that a large proportion of the gentlemen
of rank and fashion who made their entrance into society while
the Puritan party was at the height of power, and while the
memory of the reign of that party was still recent, conceived a
strong disgust for all religion. The imputation was common
between Temple and all the most distinguished courtiers of the
age. Rochester, and Buckingham were open scoffers, and Mulgrave
very little better. Shaftesbury, though more guarded, was
supposed to agree with them in opinion. All the three noblemen
who were Temple's colleagues during the short time of his sitting
in the Cabinet were of very indifferent repute as to orthodoxy.
Halifax, indeed, was generally considered as an atheist; but he
solemnly denied the charge; and, indeed, the truth seems to be
that he was more religiously disposed than most of the statesmen
of that age, though two impulses which were unusually strong in
him, a passion for ludicrous images, and a passion for subtle
speculations, sometimes prompted him to talk on serious subjects
in a manner which gave grave and just offence. It is not unlikely
that Temple, who seldom went below the surface of any question,
may have been infected with the prevailing scepticism. All that
we can say on the subject is, that there is no trace of impiety
in his works, and that the case with which he carried his
election for an university, where the majority of the voters were
clergymen, though it proves nothing as to his opinions, must, we
think, be considered as proving that he was not, as Burnet seems
to insinuate, in the habit of talking atheism to all who came
near him.

Temple, however, will scarcely carry with him any great accession
of authority to the side either of religion or of infidelity. He
was no profound thinker. He was merely a man of lively parts and
quick observation, a man of the world among men of letters, a man
of letters among men of the world. Mere scholars were dazzled by
the Ambassador and Cabinet counsellor; mere politicians by the
Essayist and Historian. But neither as a writer nor as a
statesman can we allot to him any very high place. As a man, he
seems to us to have been excessively selfish, but very sober,
wary, and far-sighted in his selfishness; to have known better
than most people what he really wanted in life; and to have
pursued what he wanted with much more than ordinary steadiness
and sagacity, never suffering himself to be drawn aside either by
bad or by good feelings. It was his constitution to dread failure
more than he desired success, to prefer security, comfort,
repose, leisure, to the turmoil and anxiety which are inseparable
from greatness; and this natural languor of mind, when contrasted
with the malignant energy of the keen and restless spirits among
whom his lot was cast, sometimes appears to resemble the
moderation of virtue. But we must own that he seems to us to sink
into littleness and meanness when we compare him, we do not say
with any high ideal standard of morality, but with many of those
frail men who, aiming at noble ends, but often drawn from the
right path by strong passions and strong temptations, have left
to posterity a doubtful and checkered fame.


SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH

(July 1835)

History of the Revolution in England, in 1688. Comprising a View
of the Reign of James the Second from his Accession to the
Enterprise of the Prince of Orange, by the late Right Honourable
Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH; and completed to the Settlement of the
Crown, by the Editor. To which is prefixed a Notice of the Life,
Writings, and Speeches of Sir James Mackintosh. 4to. London:
1834.

[In this review, as it originally stood, the editor of the
History of the Revolution was attacked with an asperity which
neither literary defects nor speculative differences can justify,
and which ought to be reserved for offences against the laws of
morality and honour. The reviewer was not  actuated by any
feeling of personal malevolence: for when he wrote this paper in
a distant country, he did not know, or even guess, whom he was
assailing. His only motive was regard for the memory of an
eminent man whom  he loved and honoured, and who appeared to him
to have been unworthily treated.

The editor is now dead; and, while living, declared that he had
been misunderstood, and that he had written in no spirit of
enmity to Sir James Mackintosh, for whom he professed the highest
respect.

Many passages have therefore been softened, and some wholly
omitted. The severe censure passed on the literary execution of
the "Memoir" and "Continuation" could not be retracted without a
violation of truth. But whatever could be construed into an
imputation on the moral character of the editor has been
carefully expunged.]

It is with unfeigned diffidence that we venture to give our
opinion of the last work of Sir James Mackintosh. We have in vain
tried to perform what ought to be to a critic an easy and
habitual act. We have in vain tried to separate the book from the
writer, and to judge of it as if it bore some unknown name. But
it is to no purpose. All the lines of that venerable countenance
are before us. All the little peculiar cadences of that voice
from which scholars and statesmen loved to receive the lessons of
a serene and benevolent wisdom are in our ears. We will attempt
to preserve strict impartiality. But we are not ashamed to own
that we approach this relic of a virtuous and most accomplished
man with feelings of respect and gratitude which may possibly
pervert our judgment.

It is hardly possible to avoid instituting a comparison between
this work and another celebrated Fragment. Our readers will
easily guess that we allude to Mr. Fox's History of James the
Second. The two books relate to the same subject. Both were
posthumously published. Neither had received the last corrections.
The authors belonged to the same political party, and held the
same opinions concerning the merits and defects of the English
constitution, and concerning most of the prominent characters
and events in English history. Both had thought much
on the principles of government; yet they were not mere
speculators. Both had ransacked the archives of rival kingdoms,
and pored on folios which had mouldered for ages in deserted
libraries; yet they were not mere antiquaries. They had one
eminent qualification for writing history: they had spoken
history, acted history, lived history. The turns of political
fortune, the ebb and flow of popular feeling, the hidden
mechanism by which parties are moved, all these things were the
subjects of their constant thought and of their most familiar
conversation. Gibbon has remarked that he owed part of his
success as a historian to the observations which he had made as
an officer in the militia and as a member of the House of
Commons. The remark is most just. We have not the smallest doubt
that his campaign, though he never saw an enemy, and his
parliamentary attendance, though he never made a speech, were of
far more use to him than years of retirement and study would have
been. If the time that he spent on parade and at mess in
Hampshire, or on the Treasury bench and at Brookes's during the
storms which overthrew Lord North and Lord Shelburne, had been
passed in the Bodleian Library, he might have avoided some
inaccuracies; he might have enriched his notes with a greater
number of references; but he would never have produced so lively
a picture of the court, the camp, and the senate-house. In this
respect Mr. Fox and Sir James Mackintosh had great advantages
over almost every English historian who has written since the
time of Burnet. Lord Lyttelton had indeed the same advantages;
but he was incapable of using them. Pedantry was so deeply fixed
in his nature that the hustings, the Treasury, the Exchequer, the
House of Commons, the House of Lords, left him the same dreaming
schoolboy that they found him.

When we compare the two interesting works of which we have been
speaking, we have little difficulty in giving the preference to
that of Sir James Mackintosh. Indeed, the superiority of Mr. Fox
to Sir James as an orator is hardly more clear than the
superiority of Sir James to Mr. Fox as a historian. Mr. Fox with
a pen in his hand, and Sir James on his legs in the House of
Commons, were, we think, each out of his proper element. They
were men, it is true, of far too much judgment and ability to
fail scandalously in any undertaking to which they brought the
whole power of their minds. The History of James the Second will
always keep its place in our libraries as a valuable book; and
Sir James Mackintosh succeeded in winning and maintaining a high
place among the parliamentary speakers of his time. Yet we could
never read a page of Mr. Fox's writing, we could never listen for
a quarter of an hour to the speaking of Sir James, without
feeling that there was a constant effort, a tug up hill. Nature,
or habit which had become nature, asserted its rights. Mr. Fox
wrote debates. Sir James Mackintosh spoke essays.

As far as mere diction was concerned, indeed, Mr. Fox did his
best to avoid those faults which the habit of public speaking is
likely to generate. He was so nervously apprehensive of sliding
into some colloquial incorrectness, of debasing his style by a
mixture of parliamentary slang, that he ran into the opposite
error, and purified his vocabulary with a scrupulosity unknown to
any purist. "Ciceronem Allobroga dixit." He would not allow
Addison, Bolingbroke, or Middleton to be a sufficient authority
for an expression. He declared that he would use no word which
was not to be found in Dryden. In any other person we should have
called this solicitude mere foppery; and, in spite of all our
admiration for Mr. Fox, we cannot but think that his extreme
attention to the petty niceties of language was hardly worthy of
so manly and so capacious an understanding. There were purists of
this kind at Rome; and their fastidiousness was censured by
Horace, with that perfect good sense and good taste which
characterise all his writings. There were purists of this kind at
the time of the revival of letters; and the two greatest scholars
of that time raised their voices, the one from within, the other
from without the Alps, against a scrupulosity so unreasonable.
"Carent," said Politian, "quae scribunt isti viribus et vita,
carent actu, carent effectu, carent indole . . . Nisi liber ille
praesto sit ex quo quid excerpant, colligere tria verba non
possunt . . . Horum semper igitur oratio tremula, vacillans,
infirma . . . Quaeso ne ista superstitione te alliges . . . Ut
bene currere non potest qui pedem ponere studet in alienis tantum
vestigiis, ita nec bene scribere qui tanquam de praetscripto non
audet egredi."--"Posthac," exclaims Erasmus, "non licebit
episcopos appellare patres reverendos, nec in calce literarum
scribere annum a Christo nato, quod id nusquam faciat Cicero.
Quid autem ineptius quam, toto seculo novato, religione,
imperiis, magistratibus, locorum vocabulis, aedificiis, cultu,
moribus, non aliter audere loqui quam locutus est Cicero? Si
revivisceret ipse Cicero, rideret hoc Ciceronianorum genus."

While Mr. Fox winnowed and sifted his phraseology with a care
which seems hardly consistent with the simplicity and elevation
of his mind, and of which the effect really was to debase and
enfeeble his style, he was little on his guard against those more
serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator who
undertakes to write history is in danger of falling. There is
about the whole book a vehement, contentious, replying manner.
Almost every argument is put in the form of an interrogation, an
ejaculation, or a sarcasm. The writer seems to be addressing
himself to some imaginary audience, to be tearing in pieces a
defence of the Stuarts which has just been pronounced by an
imaginary Tory. Take, for example, his answer to Hume's remarks
on the execution of Sydney; and substitute "the honourable
gentleman" or "the noble Lord" for the name of Hume. The whole
passage sounds like a powerful reply, thundered at three in the
morning from the Opposition Bench. While we read it, we can
almost fancy that we see and hear the great English debater, such
as he has been described to us by the few who can still remember
the Westminster scrutiny and the Oczakow Negotiations, in the
full paroxysm of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the
rushing multitude of his words.

It is true that the passage to which we have referred, and
several other passages which we could point out, are admirable
when considered merely as exhibitions of mental power. We at once
recognise in them that consummate master of the whole art of
intellectual gladiatorship, whose speeches, imperfectly as they
have been transmitted to us, should be studied day and night by
every man who wishes to learn the science of logical defence. We
find in several parts of the History of James the Second fine
specimens of that which we conceive to have been the great
characteristic Demosthenes among the Greeks, and of Fox among the
orators of England, reason penetrated, and, if we may venture on
the expression, made red-hot by passion. But this is not the kind
of excellence proper to history; and it is hardly too much to say
that whatever is strikingly good in Mr. Fox's Fragment is out of
place.

With Sir James Mackintosh the case was reversed. His proper place
was his library, a circle of men of letters, or a chair of moral
and political philosophy. He distinguished himself in Parliament.
But nevertheless Parliament was not exactly the sphere for him.
The effect of his most successful speeches was small when
compared with the quantity of ability and learning which was
expended on them. We could easily name men who, not possessing a
tenth part of his intellectual powers, hardly ever address the
House of Commons without producing a greater impression than was
produced by his most splendid and elaborate orations. His
luminous and philosophical disquisition on the Reform Bill was
spoken to empty benches. Those, indeed, who had the wit to keep
their seats, picked up hints which, skilfully used, made the
fortune of more than one speech. But "it was caviare to the
general." And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure
and admiration could not but acknowledge that he rather lectured
than debated. An artist who should waste on a panorama, or a
scene, or on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we
admire in some of the small Dutch interiors, would not squander
his powers more than this eminent man too often did. His audience
resembled the boy in the Heart of Midlothian, who pushes away the
lady's guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white
money. They preferred the silver with which they were familiar,
and which they were constantly passing about from hand to hand,
to the gold which they had never before seen, and with the value
of which they were unacquainted.

It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh
did not wholly devote his later years to philosophy and
literature. His talents were not those which enable a speaker to
produce with rapidity a series of striking but transitory
impressions, and to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at
midnight, without saying anything that any one of them will be
able to remember in the morning. His arguments were of a very
different texture from those which are produced in Parliament at
a moment's notice, which puzzle a plain man who, if he had them
before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which
the great debater who employs them forgets within half an hour,
and never thinks of again. Whatever was valuable in the
compositions of Sir James Mackintosh was the ripe fruit of study
and of meditation. It was the same with his conversation. In his
most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency, no
amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary
effect. His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged.
Everything was there; and everything was in its place. His
judgments on men, on sects, on books, had been often and
carefully tested and weighed, and had then been committed, each
to its proper receptacle, in the most capacious and accurately
constructed memory that any human being ever possessed. It would
have been strange indeed if you had asked for anything that was
not to be found in that immense storehouse. The article which you
required was not only there. It was ready. It was in its own
proper compartment. In a moment it was brought down, unpacked,
and displayed. If those who enjoyed the privilege--for a
privilege indeed it was--of listening to Sir James Mackintosh
had been disposed to find some fault in his conversation, they
might perhaps have observed that he yielded too little to the
impulse of the moment. He seemed to be recollecting, not
creating. He never appeared to catch a sudden glimpse of a
subject in a new light. You never saw his opinions in the making,
still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by
thought and discussion. They came forth, like the pillars of that
temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished,
rounded, and exactly suited to their places. What Mr. Charles
Lamb has said, with much humour and some truth, of the
conversation of Scotchmen in general, was certainly true of this
eminent Scotchman. He did not find, but bring. You could not cry
halves to anything that turned up while you were in his company.

The intellectual and moral qualities which are most important in
a historian, he possessed in a very high degree. He was
singularly mild, calm, and impartial in his judgments of men, and
of parties. Almost all the distinguished writers who have treated
of English history are advocates. Mr. Hallam and Sir James
Mackintosh alone are entitled to be called judges. But the
extreme austerity of Mr. Hallam takes away something from the
pleasure of reading his learned, eloquent, and judicious
writings. He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page or Buller
of the High Court of Literary justice. His black cap is in
constant requisition. In the long calendar of those whom he has
tried, there is hardly one who has not, in spite of evidence to
character and recommendations to mercy, been sentenced and left
for execution. Sir James, perhaps, erred a little on the other
side. He liked a maiden assize, and came away with white gloves,
after sitting in judgment on batches of the most notorious
offenders. He had a quick eye for the redeeming parts of a
character, and a large toleration for the infirmities of men
exposed to strong temptations. But this lenity did not arise from
ignorance or neglect of moral distinctions. Though he allowed
perhaps too much weight to every extenuating circumstance that
could be urged in favour of the transgressor, he never disputed
the authority of the law, or showed his ingenuity by refining
away its enactments. On every occasion he showed himself firm
where principles were in question, but full of charity towards
individuals.

We have no hesitation in pronouncing this Fragment decidedly the
best history now extant of the reign of James the Second. It
contains much new and curious information, of which excellent use
has been made. But we are not sure that the book is not in some
degree open to the charge which the idle citizen in the Spectator
brought against his pudding; "Mem. too many plums, and no suet."
There is perhaps too much disquisition and too little narrative;
and indeed this is the fault into which, judging from the habits
of Sir James's mind, we should have thought him most likely to
fall. What we assuredly did not anticipate was, that the
narrative would be better executed than the disquisitions. We
expected to find, and we have found, many just delineations of
character, and many digressions full of interest, such as the
account of the order of Jesuits, and of the state of prison
discipline in England a hundred and fifty years ago. We expected
to find, and we have found, many reflections breathing the spirit
of a calm and benignant philosophy. But we did not, we own,
expect to find that Sir James could tell a story as well as
Voltaire or Hume. Yet such is the fact; and if any person doubts
it, we would advise him to read the account of the events which
followed the issuing of King James's declaration, the meeting of
the clergy, the violent scene at the privy council, the
commitment, trial, and acquittal of the bishops. The most
superficial reader must be charmed, we think, by the liveliness
of the narrative. But no person who is not acquainted with that
vast mass of intractable materials of which the valuable and
interesting part has been extracted and condensed can fully
appreciate the skill of the writer. Here, and indeed throughout
the book, we find many harsh and careless expressions which the
author would probably have removed if he had lived to complete
his work. But, in spite of these blemishes, we must say that we
should find it difficult to point out, in any modern history, any
passage of equal length and at the same time of equal merit. We
find in it the diligence, the accuracy, and the judgment of
Hallam, united to the vivacity and the colouring of Southey. A
history of England, written throughout in this manner, would
be the most fascinating book in the language. It would be more in
request at the circulating libraries than the last novel.

Sir James was not, we think, gifted with poetical imagination.
But that lower kind of imagination which is necessary to the
historian he had in large measure. It is not the business of the
historian to create new worlds and to people them with new races
of beings. He is to Homer and Shakspeare, to Dante and Milton,
what Nollekens was to Canova, or Lawrence to Michael Angelo. The
object of the historian's imitation is not within him; it is
furnished from without. It is not a vision of beauty and grandeur
discernible only by the eye of his own mind, but a real model
which he did not make, and which he cannot alter. Yet his is not
a mere mechanical imitation. The triumph of his skill is to
select such parts as may produce the effect of the whole, to
bring out strongly all the characteristic features, and to throw
the light and shade in such a manner as may heighten the effect.
This skill, as far as we can judge from the unfinished work now
before us, Sir James Mackintosh possessed in an eminent degree.

The style of this Fragment is weighty, manly, and unaffected.
There are, as we have said, some expressions which seem to us
harsh, and some which we think inaccurate. These would probably
have been corrected, if Sir James had lived to superintend the
publication. We ought to add that the printer has by no means
done his duty. One misprint in particular is so serious as to
require notice. Sir James Mackintosh has paid a high and just
tribute to the genius, the integrity, and the courage of a good
and great man, a distinguished ornament of English literature, a
fearless champion of English liberty, Thomas Burnet, Master of
the Charter-House, and author of the most eloquent and
imaginative work, the Telluris Theoria Sacra. Wherever the name
of this celebrated man occurs, it is printed "Bennet," both in
the text and in the index. This cannot be mere negligence. It is
plain that Thomas Burnet and his writings were never heard of by
the gentleman who has been employed to edit this volume, and who,
not content with deforming Sir James Mackintosh's text by such
blunders, has prefixed to it a bad Memoir, has appended to it a
bad continuation, and has thus succeeded in expanding the volume
into one of the thickest, and debasing it into one of the worst
that we ever saw. Never did we fall in with so admirable an
illustration of the old Greek proverb, which tells us that half
is sometimes more than the whole. Never did we see a case in
which the increase of the bulk was so evidently a diminution of
the value.

Why such an artist was selected to deface so fine a Torso, we
cannot pretend to conjecture. We read that, when the Consul
Mummius, after the taking of Corinth, was preparing to send to
Rome some works of the greatest Grecian sculptors, he told the
packers that if they broke his Venus or his Apollo, he would
force them to restore the limbs which should be wanting. A head
by a hewer of milestones joined to a bosom by Praxiteles would
not surprise or shock us more than this supplement.

The "Memoir" contains much that is worth reading; for it contains
many extracts from the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh. But
when we pass from what the biographer has done with his scissors
to what he has done with his pen, we can find nothing to praise
in his work. Whatever may have been the intention with which he
wrote, the tendency of his narrative is to convey the impression
that Sir James Mackintosh, from interested motives, abandoned the
doctrines of the Vindiciae Gallicae. Had such charges appeared in
their natural place, we should leave them to their natural fate.
We would not stoop to defend Sir James Mackintosh from the
attacks of fourth-rate magazines and pothouse newspapers. But
here his own fame is turned against him. A book of which not one
copy would ever have been bought but for his name in the title-
page is made the vehicle of the imputation. Under such
circumstances we cannot help exclaiming, in the words of one of
the most amiable of Homer's heroes,

Nun tis enieies Patroklios deilio
Mnisastho pasin gar epistato meilichos einai
Zoos eun' nun d' au Thanatos kai Moira kichanei

We have no difficulty in admitting that during the ten or twelve
years which followed the appearance of the Vindicae Gallicae, the
opinions of Sir James Mackintosh underwent some change. But did
this change pass on him alone? Was it not common? Was it not
almost universal? Was there one honest friend of liberty in
Europe or in America whose ardour had not been damped, whose
faith in the high destinies of mankind had not been shaken? Was
there one observer to whom the French Revolution, or revolutions
in general, appeared in exactly the same light on the day when
the Bastile fell, and on the day when the Girondists were dragged
to the scaffold, the day when the Directory shipped off their
principal opponents for Guiana, or the day when the Legislative
Body was driven from its hall at the point of the bayonet? We do
not speak of light-minded and enthusiastic people, of wits like
Sheridan, or poets like Alfieri; but of the most virtuous and
intelligent practical statesmen, and of the deepest, the calmest,
the most impartial political speculators of that time. What was
the language and conduct of Lord Spencer, of Lord Fitzwilliam, or
Mr. Grattan? What is the tone of M. Dumont's Memoirs, written
just at the close of the eighteenth century? What Tory could have
spoken with greater disgust or contempt of the French Revolution
and its authors? Nay, this writer, a republican, and the most
upright and zealous of republicans, has gone so far as to say
that Mr. Burke's work on the Revolution had saved Europe. The
name of M. Dumont naturally suggests that of Mr. Bentham. He, we
presume, was not ratting for a place; and what language did he
hold at that time? Look at his little treatise entitled Sophismes
Anarchiques. In that treatise he says, that the atrocities of the
Revolution were the natural consequences of the absurd principles
on which it was commenced; that, while the chiefs of the
constituent assembly gloried in the thought that they were
pulling down aristocracy, they never saw that their doctrines
tended to produce an evil a hundred times more formidable,
anarchy; that the theory laid down in the Declaration of the
Rights of Man had, in a great measure, produced the crimes of the
Reign of Terror; that none but an eyewitness could imagine the
horrors of a state of society in which comments on that
Declaration were put forth by men with no food in their bellies,
with rags on their backs and pikes in their hands. He praises the
English Parliament for the dislike which it has always shown to
abstract reasonings, and to the affirming of general principles.
In M. Dumont's preface to the Treatise on the Principles of
Legislation, a preface written under the eye of Mr. Bentham, and
published with his sanction, are the following still more
remarkable expressions: "M. Bentham est bien loin d'attacher une
preference exclusive a aucune forme de gouvernement. Il pense que
la meilleure constitution pour un peuple est celle a laquelle il
est accoutume . . . Le vice fondamental des theories sur les
constitutions politiques, c'est de commencer par attaquer celles
qui existent, et d'exciter tout au moins des inquietudes et des
jalousies de pouvoir. Une telle disposition n'est point favorable
au perfectionnement des lois. La seule epoque ou l'on puisse
entreprendre avec succes des grandes reformes de legislation est
celle ou les passions publiques sont calmes, et ou le
gouvernement jouit de la stabilite la plus grande. L'objet de M.
Bentham, en cherchant dans le vice des lois la cause de la
plupart des maux, a ete constamment d'eloigner le plus grand de
tous, le bouleversement de l'autorite, les revolutions de
propriete et de pouvoir."

To so conservative a frame of mind had the excesses of the French
Revolution brought the most illustrious reformers of that time.
And why is one person to be singled out from among millions, and
arraigned before posterity as a traitor to his opinions only
because events produced on him the effect which they produced on
a whole generation? People who, like Mr. Brothers in the last
generation, and Mr. Percival in this, have been favoured with
revelations from heaven, may be quite independent of the vulgar
sources of knowledge. But such poor creatures as Mackintosh,
Dumont, and Bentham, had nothing but observation and reason to
guide them; and they obeyed the guidance of observation and of
reason. How is it in physics? A traveller falls in with a berry
which he has never before seen. He tastes it, and finds it sweet
and refreshing. He praises it, and resolves to introduce it into
his own country. But in a few minutes he is taken violently sick;
he is convulsed; he is at the point of death. He of course
changes his opinion, denounces this delicious food a poison,
blames his own folly in tasting it, and cautions his friends
against it. After a long and violent struggle he recovers, and
finds himself much exhausted by his sufferings, but free from
some chronic complaints which had been the torment of his life.
He then changes his opinion again, and pronounces this fruit a
very powerful remedy, which ought to be employed only in extreme
cases and with great caution, but which ought not to be
absolutely excluded from the Pharmacopoeia. And would it not be
the height of absurdity to call such a man fickle and
inconsistent, because he had repeatedly altered his judgment? If
he had not altered his judgment, would he have been a rational
being? It was exactly the same with the French Revolution. That
event was a new phaenomenon in politics. Nothing that had gone
before enabled any person to judge with certainty of the course
which affairs might take. At first the effect was the reform of
great abuses; and honest men rejoiced. Then came commotion,
proscription, confiscation, bankruptcy, the assignats, the
maximum, civil war, foreign war, revolutionary tribunals,
guillotinades, noyades, fusillades. Yet a little while, and a
military despotism rose out of the confusion, and menaced the
independence of every state in Europe.

And yet again a little while, and the old dynasty returned,
followed by a train of emigrants eager to restore the old abuses.
We have now, we think, the whole before us. We should therefore
be justly accused of levity or insincerity if our language
concerning those events were constantly changing. It is our
deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all
its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind. But it
was not only natural, but inevitable, that those who had only
seen the first act should be ignorant of the catastrophe, and
should be alternately elated and depressed as the plot went on
disclosing itself to them. A man who had held exactly the same
opinion about the Revolution in 1789, in 1794, in 1804, in 1814,
and in 1834, would have been either a divinely inspired prophet,
or an obstinate fool. Mackintosh was neither. He was simply a
wise and good man; and the change which passed on his mind was a
change which passed on the mind of almost every wise and good man
in Europe. In fact, few of his contemporaries changed so little.
The rare moderation and calmness of his temper preserved him
alike from extravagant elation and from extravagant despondency.
He was never a Jacobin. He was never an Anti-Jacobin. His mind
oscillated undoubtedly, but the extreme points of the oscillation
were not very remote. Herein he differed greatly from some
persons of distinguished talents who entered into life at nearly
the same time with him. Such persons we have seen rushing from
one wild extreme to another, out-Paining Paine, out-
Castlereaghing Castlereagh, Pantisocratists, Ultra-Tories,
heretics, persecutors, breaking the old laws against sedition,
calling for new and sharper laws against sedition, writing
democratic dramas, writing Laureate odes panegyrising Marten,
panegyrising Laud, consistent in nothing but an intolerance which
in any person would be censurable, but which is altogether
unpardonable in men who, by their own confession, have had such
ample experience of their own fallibility. We readily concede to
some of these persons the praise of eloquence and poetical
invention; nor are we by any means disposed, even where they have
been gainers by their conversion, to question their sincerity. It
would be most uncandid to attribute to sordid motives actions
which admit of a less discreditable explanation. We think that
the conduct of these persons has been precisely what was to be
expected from men who were gifted with strong imagination and
quick sensibility, but who were neither accurate observers nor
logical reasoners. It was natural that such men should see in the
victory of the third estate of France the dawn of a new Saturnian
age. It was natural that the rage of their disappointment should
be proportioned to the extravagance of their hopes. Though the
direction of their passions was altered, the violence of those
passions was the same. The force of the rebound was proportioned
to the force of the original impulse. The pendulum swung
furiously to the left, because it had been drawn too far to the
right.

We own that nothing gives us so high an idea of the judgment and
temper of Sir James Mackintosh as the manner in which he shaped
his course through those times. Exposed successively to two
opposite infections, he took both in their very mildest form. The
constitution of his mind was such that neither of the diseases
which wrought such havoc all round him could in any serious
degree, or for any great length of time, derange his intellectual
health. He, like every honest and enlightened man in Europe, saw
with delight the great awakening of the French nation. Yet he
never, in the season of his warmest enthusiasm, proclaimed
doctrines inconsistent with the safety of property and the just
authority of governments. He, like almost every other honest and
enlightened man, was discouraged and perplexed by the terrible
events which followed. Yet he never in the most gloomy times
abandoned the cause of peace, of liberty, and of toleration. In
that great convulsion which overset almost every other
understanding, he was indeed so much shaken that he leaned
sometimes in one direction and sometimes in the other; but he
never lost his balance. The opinions in which he at last reposed,
and to which, in spite of strong temptations, he adhered with a
firm, a disinterested, an ill-requited fidelity, were a just mean
between those which he had defended with youthful ardour and with
more than manly prowess against Mr. Burke, and those to which he
had inclined during the darkest and saddest years in the history
of modern Europe. We are much mistaken if this be the picture
either of a weak or of a dishonest mind.

What the political opinions of Sir James Mackintosh were in his
later years is written in the annals of his country. Those annals
will sufficiently refute what the Editor has ventured to assert
in the very advertisement to this work. "Sir James Mackintosh,"
says he, "was avowedly and emphatically a Whig of the Revolution:
and since the agitation of religious liberty and parliamentary
reform became a national movement, the great transaction of 1688
has been more dispassionately, more correctly, and less highly
estimated." If these words mean anything, they must mean that the
opinions of Sir James Mackintosh concerning religious liberty and
parliamentary reform went no further than those of the authors of
the Revolution; in other words, that Sir James Mackintosh opposed
Catholic Emancipation, and approved of the old constitution of
the House of Commons. The allegation is confuted by twenty
volumes of Parliamentary Debates, nay, by innumerable passages in
the very fragment which this writer has defaced. We will venture
to say that Sir James Mackintosh often did more for religious
liberty and for parliamentary reform in a quarter of an hour than
most of those zealots who are in the habit of depreciating him
have done or will do in the whole course of their lives.

Nothing in the "Memoir" or in the "Continuation of the History"
has struck us so much as the contempt with which the writer
thinks fit to speak of all things that were done before the
coming in of the very last fashions in politics. We think that we
have sometimes observed a leaning towards the same fault in
writers of a much higher order of intellect. We will therefore
take this opportunity of making a few remarks on an error which
is, we fear, becoming common, and which appears to us not only
absurd, but as pernicious as almost any error concerning the
transactions of a past age can possibly be.

We shall not, we hope, be suspected of a bigoted attachment to
the doctrines and practices of past generations. Our creed is
that the science of government is an experimental science, and
that, like all other experimental sciences, it is generally in a
state of progression. No man is so obstinate an admirer of the
old times as to deny that medicine, surgery, botany, chemistry,
engineering, navigation, are better understood now than in any
former age. We conceive that it is the same with political
science. Like those physical sciences which we have mentioned, it
has always been working itself clearer and clearer, and
depositing impurity after impurity. There was a time when the
most powerful of human intellects were deluded by the gibberish
of the astrologer and the alchemist; and just so there was a time
when the most enlightened and virtuous statesmen thought it the
first duty of a government to persecute heretics, to found
monasteries, to make war on Saracens. But time advances; facts
accumulate; doubts arise. Faint glimpses of truth begin to
appear, and shine more and more unto the perfect day. The highest
intellects, like the tops of mountains, are the first to catch
and to reflect the dawn. They are bright, while the level below
is still in darkness. But soon the light, which at first
illuminated only the loftiest eminences, descends on the plain
and penetrates to the deepest valley. First come hints, then
fragments of systems, then defective systems, then complete and
harmonious systems. The sound opinion, held for a time by one
bold speculator, becomes the opinion of a small minority, of a
strong minority, of a majority of mankind. Thus, the great
progress goes on, till schoolboys laugh at the jargon which
imposed on Bacon, till country rectors condemn the illiberality
and intolerance of Sir Thomas More.

Seeing these things, seeing that, by the confession of the most
obstinate enemies of innovation, our race has hitherto been
 almost constantly advancing in knowledge, and not seeing any
reason to believe that, precisely at the point of time at which
we came into the world, a change took place in the faculties of
the human mind, or in the mode of discovering truth, we are
reformers: we are on the side of progress. From the great
advances which European society has made during the last four
centuries, in every species of knowledge, we infer, not that
there is no more room for improvement, but that, in every science
which deserves the name, immense improvements may be confidently
expected.

But the very considerations which lead us to look forward with
sanguine hope to the future prevent us from looking back with
contempt on the past We do not flatter ourselves with the notion
that we have attained perfection, and that no more truth remains
to be found. We believe that we are wiser than our ancestors. We
believe, also, that our posterity will be wiser than we. It would
be gross injustice in our grandchildren to talk of us with
contempt, merely because they may have surpassed us; to call Watt
a fool, because mechanical powers may be discovered which may
supersede the use of steam; to deride the efforts which have been
made in our time to improve the discipline of prisons, and to
enlighten the minds of the poor, because future philanthropists
may devise better places of confinement than Mr. Bentham's
Panopticon, and better places of education than Mr. Lancaster's
Schools. As we would have our descendants judge us, so ought we
to judge our fathers. In order to form a correct estimate of
their merits, we ought to place ourselves in their situation, to
put out of our minds, for a time, all that knowledge which they,
however eager in the pursuit of truth, could not have, and which
we, however negligent we may have been, could not help having. It
was not merely difficult, but absolutely impossible, for the best
and greatest of men, two hundred years ago, to be what
a very commonplace person in our days may easily be, and indeed
must necessarily be. But it is too much that the benefactors of
mankind, after having been reviled by the dunces of their own
generation for going too far, should be reviled by the dunces of
the next generation for not going far enough.

The truth lies between two absurd extremes. On one side is the
bigot who pleads the wisdom of our ancestors as a reason for not
doing what they in our place would be the first to do; who
opposes the Reform Bill because Lord Somers did not see the
necessity of Parliamentary Reform; who would have opposed the
Revolution because Ridley and Cranmer professed boundless
submission to the royal prerogative; and who would have opposed
the Reformation because the Fitzwalters and Mareschals, whose
seals are set to the Great Charter, were devoted adherents to
the Church of Rome. On the other side is the sciolist who speaks
with scorn of the Great Charter because it did not reform the
Church of the Reformation, because it did not limit the
prerogative; and of the Revolution, because it did not purify the
House of Commons. The former of these errors we have often
combated, and shall always be ready to combat. The latter, though
rapidly spreading, has not, we think, yet come under our notice.
The former error bears directly on practical questions, and
obstructs useful reforms. It may, therefore, seem to be, and
probably is, the more mischievous of the two. But the latter is
equally absurd; it is at least equally symptomatic of a shallow
understanding and an unamiable temper: and, if it should ever
become general, it will, we are satisfied, produce very
prejudicial effects. Its tendency is to deprive the benefactors
of mankind of their honest fame, and to put the best and the
worst men of past times on the same level. The author of a great
reformation is almost always unpopular in his own age. He
generally passes his life in disquiet and danger. It is therefore
for the interest of the human race that the memory of such men
should be had in reverence, and that they should be supported
against the scorn and hatred of their contemporaries by the hope
of leaving a great and imperishable name. To go on the forlorn
hope of truth is a service of peril. Who will undertake it, if it
be not also a service of honour? It is easy enough, after the
ramparts are carried, to find men to plant the flag on the
highest tower. The difficulty is to find men who are ready to go
first into the breach; and it would be bad policy indeed to
insult their remains because they fell in the breach, and did not
live to penetrate to the citadel.

Now here we have a book which is by no means a favourable
specimen of the English literature of the nineteenth century, a
book indicating neither extensive knowledge nor great powers of
reasoning. And, if we were to judge by the pity with which the
writer speaks of the great statesmen and philosophers of a former
age, we should guess that he was the author of the most original
and important inventions in political science. Yet not so: for
men who are able to make discoveries are generally disposed to
make allowances. Men who are eagerly pressing forward in pursuit
of truth are grateful to every one who has cleared an inch of the
way for them. It is, for the most part, the man who has just
capacity enough to pick up and repeat the commonplaces which are
fashionable in his own time who looks with disdain on the very
intellects to which it is owing that those commonplaces are not
still considered as startling paradoxes or damnable heresies.
This writer is just the man who, if he had lived in the
seventeenth century, would have devoutly believed that the
Papists burned London, who would have swallowed the whole of
Oates's story about the forty thousand soldiers, disguised as
pilgrims, who were to meet in Gallicia, and sail thence to invade
England, who would have carried a Protestant flail under his
coat, and who would have been angry if the story of the warming-
pan had been questioned. It is quite natural that such a man
should speak with contempt of the great reformers of that time,
because they did not know some things which he never would have
known but for the salutary effects of their exertions. The men to
whom we owe it that we have a House of Commons are sneered at
because they did not suffer the debates of the House to be
published. The authors of the Toleration Act are treated as
bigots, because they did not go the whole length of Catholic
Emancipation. Just so we have heard a baby, mounted on the
shoulders of its father, cry out, "How much taller I am than
Papa!"

This gentleman can never want matter for pride, if he finds it so
easily. He may boast of an indisputable superiority to all the
greatest men of all past ages. He can read and write: Homer
probably did not know a letter. He has been taught that the earth
goes round the sun: Archimedes held that the sun went round the
earth. He is aware that there is a place called New Holland:
Columbus and Gama went to their graves in ignorance of the fact.
He has heard of the Georgium Sidus: Newton was ignorant of the
existence of such a planet. He is acquainted with the use of
gunpowder: Hannibal and Caesar won their victories with sword
and spear. We submit, however, that this is not the way in
which men are to be estimated. We submit that a wooden spoon of
our day would not be justified in calling Galileo and Napier
blockheads, because they never heard of the differential
calculus. We submit that Caxton's press in Westminster Abbey,
rude as it is, ought to be looked at with quite as much respect
as the best constructed machinery that ever, in our time,
impressed the clearest type on the finest paper. Sydenham
first discovered that the cool regimen succeeded best in cases
of small-pox. By this discovery he saved the lives of hundreds
of thousands; and we venerate his memory for it, though he
never heard of inoculation. Lady Mary Montague brought inoculation
into use; and we respect her for it, though she never heard
of vaccination. Jenner introduced vaccination; we admire
him for it, and we shall continue to admire him for it, although
some still safer and more agreeable preservative should be
discovered. It is thus that we ought to judge of the events and
the men of other times. They were behind us. It could not be
otherwise. But the question with respect to them is not where
they were, but which way they were going. Were their faces set in
the right or in the wrong direction? Were they in the front or in
the rear of their generation? Did they exert themselves to help
onward the great movement of the human race, or to stop it? This
is not charity, but simple justice and common sense. It is the
fundamental law of the world in which we live that truth shall
grow, first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in
the ear. A person who complains of the men of 1688 for not having
been men of 1835 might just as well complain of a projectile for
describing a parabola, or of quicksilver for being heavier than
water.

Undoubtedly we ought to look at ancient transactions by the light
of modern knowledge. Undoubtedly it is among the first duties of
a historian to point out the faults of the eminent men of former
generations. There are no errors which are so likely to be drawn
into precedent, and therefore none which it is so necessary to
expose, as the errors of persons who have a just title to the
gratitude and admiration of posterity. In politics, as in
religion, there are devotees who show their reverence for a
departed saint by converting his tomb into a sanctuary for crime.
Receptacles of wickedness are suffered to remain undisturbed in
the neighbourhood of the church which glories in the relics of
some martyred apostle. Because he was merciful, his bones give
security to assassins. Because he was chaste, the precinct of his
temple is filled with licensed stews. Privileges of an equally
absurd kind have been set up against the jurisdiction of
political philosophy. Vile abuses cluster thick round every
glorious event, round every venerable name; and this evil
assuredly calls for vigorous measures of literary police. But the
proper course is to abate the nuisance without defacing the
shrine, to drive out the gangs of thieves and prostitutes without
doing foul and cowardly wrong to the ashes of the illustrious
dead.

In this respect, two historians of our own time may be proposed
as models, Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Mill. Differing in most
things, in this they closely resemble each other. Sir James is
lenient. Mr. Mill is severe. But neither of them ever omits, in
the apportioning of praise and of censure, to make ample
allowance for the state of political science and political
morality in former ages. In the work before us, Sir James
Mackintosh speaks with just respect of the Whigs of the
Revolution, while he never fails to condemn the conduct of that
party towards the members of the Church of Rome. His doctrines
are the liberal and benevolent doctrines of the nineteenth
century. But he never forgets that the men whom he is describing
were men of the seventeenth century.

From Mr. Mill this indulgence, or, to speak more properly, this
justice, was less to be expected. That gentleman, in some of his
works, appears to consider politics not as an experimental, and
therefore a progressive science, but as a science of which all
the difficulties may be resolved by short synthetical arguments
drawn from truths of the most vulgar notoriety. Were this opinion
well founded, the people of one generation would have little or
no advantage over those of another generation. But though Mr.
Mill, in some of his Essays, has been thus misled, as we
conceive, by a fondness for neat and precise forms of
demonstration, it would be gross injustice not to admit that, in
his History, he has employed a very different method of
investigation with eminent ability and success. We know no writer
who takes so much pleasure in the truly useful, noble and
philosophical employment of tracing the progress of sound
opinions from their embryo state to their full maturity. He
eagerly culls from old despatches and minutes every expression in
which he can discern the imperfect germ of any great truth which
has since been fully developed. He never fails to bestow praise
on those who, though far from coming up to his standard of
perfection, yet rose in a small degree above the common level of
their contemporaries. It is thus that the annals of past times
ought to be written. It is thus, especially, that the annals of
our own country ought to be written.

The history of England is emphatically the history of progress.
It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, of a
constant change in the institutions of a great society. We see
that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state
more miserable than the state in which the most degraded nations
of the East now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a
handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste
separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We
see the great body of the population in a state of personal
slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel superstition
exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and
benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance,
and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did not deserve
the name of knowledge. In the course of seven centuries the
wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most
highly civilised people that ever the world saw, have spread
their dominion over every quarter of the globe, have scattered
the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents of
which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo, have
created a maritime power which would annihilate in a quarter of
an hour the navies of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa
together, have carried the science of healing, the means of
locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every
manufacture, everything that promotes the convenience of life, to
a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical, have
produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to
the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, have discovered
the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have
speculated with exquisite subtilty on the operations of the human
mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the
career of political improvement. The history of England is the
history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and
physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is
much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the
main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and
delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of
Domesday Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the
England of crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs,
outlaws, became the England which we know and love, the classic
ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge,
the mart of all trade. The Charter of Henry Beauclerk, the Great
Charter, the first assembling of the House of Commons, the
extinction of personal slavery, the separation from the See of
Rome, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, the
Revolution, the establishment of the liberty of unlicensed
printing, the abolition of religious disabilities, the reform of
the representative system, all these seem to us to be the
successive stages of one great revolution--nor can we fully
comprehend any one of these memorable events unless we look at it
in connection with those which preceded, and with those which
followed it. Each of those great and ever-memorable struggles,
Saxon against Norman, Villein against Lord, Protestant against
Papist, Roundhead against Cavalier, Dissenter against Churchman,
Manchester against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a
struggle, on the result of which were staked the dearest
interests of the human race; and every man who, in the contest
which, in his time, divided our country, distinguished himself on
the right side, is entitled to our gratitude and respect.

Whatever the editor of this book may think, those persons who
estimate most correctly the value of the improvements which have
recently been made in our institutions are precisely the persons
who are least disposed to speak slightingly of what was done in
1688. Such men consider the Revolution as a reform, imperfect
indeed, but still most beneficial to the English people and to
the human race, as a reform, which has been the fruitful parent
of reforms, as a reform, the happy effects of which are at this
moment felt, not only throughout Our own country, but in half the
monarchies of Europe, and in the depth of the forests of Ohio. We
shall be pardoned, we hope, if we call the attention of our
readers to the causes and to the consequences of that great
event.

We said that the history of England is the history of progress;
and, when we take a comprehensive view of it, it is so. But, when
examined in small separate portions, it way with more propriety
be called a history of actions and reactions. We have often
thought that the motion of the public mind in our country
resembles that of the sea when the tide is rising. Each
successive wave rushes forward, breaks, and rolls back; but the
great flood is steadily coming in. A person who looked on the
waters only for a moment might fancy that they were retiring. A
person who looked on them only for five minutes might fancy that
they were rushing capriciously to and fro. But when he keeps his
eye on them for a quarter of an hour, and sees one seamark
disappear after another, it is impossible for him to doubt of the
general direction in which the ocean is moved. Just such has been
the course of events in England. In the history of the national
mind, which is, in truth, the history of the nation, we must
carefully distinguish between that recoil which regularly follows
every advance and a great general ebb. If we take short
intervals, if we compare 1640 and 1660, 1680 and 1685, 1708 and
1712, 1782 and 1794, we find a retrogression. But if we take
centuries, if, for example, we compare 1794 with 1660 or with
1685, we cannot doubt in which direction society is proceeding.

The interval which elapsed between the Restoration and the
Revolution naturally divides itself into three periods. The first
extends from 1660 to 1678, the second from 1678 to 1681, the
third from 1681 to 1688.

In 1660 the whole nation was mad with loyal excitement. If we had
to choose a lot from among all the multitude of those which men
have drawn since the beginning of the world, we would select that
of Charles the Second on the day of his return. He was in a
situation in which the dictates of ambition coincided with those
of benevolence, in which it was easier to be virtuous than to be
wicked, to be loved than to be hated, to earn pure and
imperishable glory than to become infamous. For once the road of
goodness was a smooth descent. He had done nothing to merit the
affection of his people. But they had paid him in advance without
measure. Elizabeth, after the destruction of the Armada, or after
the abolition of monopolies, had not excited a thousandth part of
the enthusiasm with which the young exile was welcomed home. He
was not, like Lewis the Eighteenth, imposed on his subjects by
foreign conquerors; nor did he, like Lewis the Eighteenth, come
back to a country which had undergone a complete change. The
House of Bourbon was placed in Paris as a trophy of the victory
of the European confederation. The return of the ancient princes
was inseparably associated in the public mind with the cession of
extensive provinces, with the payment of an immense tribute, with
the devastation of flourishing departments, with the occupation
of the kingdom by hostile armies, with the emptiness of those
niches in which the gods of Athens and Rome had been the objects
of a new idolatry, with the nakedness of those walls on which the
Transfiguration had shone with light as glorious as that which
overhung Mount Tabor. They came back to a land in which they
could recognise nothing. The seven sleepers of the legend, who
closed their eyes when the Pagans were persecuting the
Christians, and woke when the Christians were persecuting each
other, did not find themselves in a world more completely new to
them. Twenty years had done the work of twenty generations.
Events had come thick. Men had lived fast. The old institutions
and the old feelings had been torn up by the roots. There was a
new Church founded and endowed by the usurper; a new nobility
whose titles were taken from fields of battle, disastrous to the
ancient line; a new chivalry whose crosses had been won by
exploits which had seemed likely to make the banishment of the
emigrants perpetual. A new code was administered by a new
magistracy. A new body of proprietors held the soil by a new
tenure. The most ancient local distinctions had been effaced. The
most familiar names had become obsolete. There was no longer a
Normandy or a Burgundy, a Brittany and a Guienne. The France of
Lewis the Sixteenth had passed away as completely as one of the
Preadamite worlds. Its fossil remains might now and then excite
curiosity. But it was as impossible to put life into the old
institutions as to animate the skeletons which are imbedded in
the depths of primeval strata. It was as absurd to think that
France could again be placed under the feudal system, as that our
globe could be overrun by Mammoths. The revolution in the laws
and in the form of government was but an outward sign of that
mightier revolution which had taken place in the heart and brain
of the people, and which affected every transaction of life,
trading, farming, studying, marrying, and giving in marriage. The
French whom the emigrant prince had to govern were no more like
the French of his youth, than the French of his youth were like
the French of the Jacquerie. He came back to a people who knew
not him nor his house, to a people to whom a Bourbon was no more
than a Carlovingian or a Merovingian. He might substitute the
white flag for the tricolor; he might put lilies in the place of
bees; he might order the initials of the Emperor to be carefully
effaced. But he could turn his eyes nowhere without meeting some
object which reminded him that he was a stranger in the palace of
his fathers. He returned to a country in which even the passing
traveller is every moment reminded that there has lately been a
great dissolution and reconstruction of the social system. To win
the hearts of a people under such circumstances would have been
no easy task even for Henry the Fourth.

In the English Revolution the case was altogether different.
Charles was not imposed on his countrymen, but sought by them.
His restoration was not attended by any circumstance which could
inflict a wound on their national pride. Insulated by our
geographical position, insulated by our character, we had fought
out our quarrels and effected our reconciliation among ourselves.
Our great internal questions had never been mixed up with the
still greater question of national independence. The political
doctrines of the Roundheads were not, like those of the French
philosophers, doctrines of universal application. Our ancestors,
for the most part, took their stand, not on a general theory, but
on the particular constitution of the realm. They asserted the
rights, not of men, but of Englishmen. Their doctrines therefore
were not contagious; and, had it been otherwise, no neighbouring
country was then susceptible of the contagion. The language in
which our discussions were generally conducted was scarcely known
even to a single man of letters out of the islands. Our local
situation made it almost impossible that we should effect great
conquests on the Continent. The kings of Europe had, therefore,
no reason to fear that their subjects would follow the example of
the English Puritans, and looked with indifference, perhaps with
complacency, on the death of the monarch and the abolition of the
monarchy. Clarendon complains bitterly of their apathy. But we
believe that this apathy was of the greatest service to the royal
cause. If a French or Spanish army had invaded England, and if
that army had been cut to pieces, as we have no doubt that it
would have been, on the first day on which it came face to face
with the soldiers of Preston and Dunbar, with Colonel Fight-the-
good-Fight, and Captain Smite-them-hip-and-thigh, the House of
Cromwell would probably now have been reigning in England. The
nation would have forgotten all the misdeeds of the man who had
cleared the soil of foreign invaders.

Happily for Charles, no European state, even when at war with the
Commonwealth, chose to bind up its cause with that of the
wanderers who were playing in the garrets of Paris and Cologne at
being princes and chancellors. Under the administration of
Cromwell, England was more respected and dreaded than any power
in Christendom and, even under the ephemeral governments which
followed his death, no foreign state ventured to treat her with
contempt. Thus Charles came back not as a mediator between his
people and a victorious enemy, but as a mediator between internal
factions. He found the Scotch Covenanters and the Irish Papists
alike subdued. He found Dunkirk and Jamaica added to the empire.
He was heir to the conquest and to the influence of the able
usurper who had excluded him.

The old government of England, as it had been far milder than the
old government of France, had been far less violently and
completely subverted. The national institutions had been spared,
or imperfectly eradicated. The laws had undergone little
alteration. The tenures of the soil were still to be learned from
Littleton and Coke. The Great Charter was mentioned with as much
reverence in the parliaments of the Commonwealth as in those of
any earlier or of any later age. A new Confession of Faith and a
new ritual had been introduced into the church. But the bulk of
the ecclesiastical property still remained. The colleges still
held their estates. The parson still received his tithes. The
Lords had, at a crisis of great excitement, been excluded by
military violence from their House; but they retained their
titles and an ample share of the public veneration. When a
nobleman made his appearance in the House of Commons he was
received with ceremonious respect. Those few Peers who consented
to assist at the inauguration of the Protector were placed next
to himself, and the most honourable offices of the day were
assigned to them. We learn from the debates of Richard's
Parliament how strong a hold the old aristocracy had on the
affections of the people. One member of the House of Commons went
so far as to say that, unless their Lordships were peaceably
restored, the country might soon be convulsed by a war of the
Barons. There was indeed no great party hostile to the Upper
House. There was nothing exclusive in the constitution of that
body. It was regularly recruited from among the most
distinguished of the country gentlemen, the lawyers, and the
clergy. The most powerful nobles of the century which preceded
the civil war, the Duke of Somerset, the Duke of Northumberland,
Lord Seymour of Sudeley, the Earl of Leicester, Lord Burleigh,
the Earl of Salisbury, the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of
Strafford, had all been commoners, and had all raised themselves,
by courtly arts or by parliamentary talents, not merely to seats
in the House of Lords, but to the first influence in that
assembly. Nor had the general conduct of the Peers been such as
to make them unpopular. They had not, indeed, in opposing
arbitrary measures, shown so much eagerness and pertinacity as the
Commons. But still they had opposed those measures. They had, at
the beginning of the discontents, a common interest with the people.
If Charles had succeeded in his scheme of governing without
parliaments, the consequence of the Peers would have been
grievously diminished. If he had been able to raise taxes by his
own authority, the estates of the Peers would have been as much
at his mercy as those of the merchants or the farmers. If he had
obtained the power of imprisoning his subjects at his pleasure, a
Peer ran far greater risk of incurring the royal displeasure, and
of being accommodated with apartments in the Tower, than any city
trader or country squire. Accordingly Charles found that the Great
Council of Peers which he convoked at York would do nothing for
him. In the most useful reforms which were made during the first
session of the Long Parliament, the Peers concurred heartily with
the Lower House; and a large minority of the English nobles stood
by the popular side through the first years of the war. At
Edgehill, Newbury, Marston, and Naseby, the armies of the
Parliament were commanded by members of the aristocracy. It was
not forgotten that a Peer had imitated the example of Hampden in
refusing the payment of the ship-money, or that a Peer had been
among the six members of the legislature whom Charles illegally
impeached.

Thus the old constitution of England was without difficulty re-
established; and of all the parts of the old constitution the
monarchical part was, at the time, dearest to the body of the
people. It had been injudiciously depressed, and it was in
consequence unduly exalted. From the day when Charles the First
became a prisoner had commenced a reaction in favour of his
person and of his office. From the day when the axe fell on his
neck before the windows of his palace, that reaction became rapid
and violent. At the Restoration it had attained such a point that
it could go no further. The people were ready to place at the
mercy of their Sovereign all their most ancient and precious
rights. The most servile doctrines were publicly avowed. The most
moderate and constitutional opposition was condemned. Resistance
was spoken of with more horror than any crime which a human being
can commit. The Commons were more eager than the King himself to
avenge the wrongs of the royal house; more desirous than the
bishops themselves to restore the church; more ready to give
money than the ministers to ask for it.

They abrogated the excellent law passed in the first session of
the Long Parliament, with the general consent of all honest men,
to insure the frequent meeting of the great council of the
nation. They might probably have been induced to go further, and
to restore the High Commission and the Star-Chamber. All the
contemporary accounts represent the nation as in a state of
hysterical excitement, of drunken joy. In the immense multitude
which crowded the beach at Dover, and bordered the road along
which the King travelled to London, there was not one who was not
weeping. Bonfires blazed. Bells jingled. The streets were
thronged at night by boon-companions, who forced all the passers-
by to swallow on bended knees brimming glasses to the health of
his Most Sacred Majesty, and the damnation of Red-nosed Noll.
That tenderness to the fallen which has, through many generation%
been a marked feature of the national character, was for a time
hardly discernible. All London crowded to shout and laugh round
the gibbet where hung the rotten remains of a prince who had made
England the dread of the world, who had been the chief founder of
her maritime greatness, and of her colonial empire, who had
conquered Scotland and Ireland, who had humbled Holland and
Spain, the terror of whose name had been as a guard round every
English traveller in remote countries, and round every Protestant
congregation in the heart of Catholic empires. When some of those
brave and honest though misguided men who had sate in judgment on
their King were dragged on hurdles to a death of prolonged
torture, their last prayers were interrupted by the hisses and
execrations of thousands.

Such was England in 1660. In 1678 the whole face of things had
changed. At the former of those epochs eighteen years of
commotion had made the majority of the people ready to buy repose
at any price. At the latter epoch eighteen years of misgovernment
had made the same majority desirous to obtain security for their
liberties at any risk. The fury of their returning loyalty had
spent itself in its first outbreak. In a very few months they had
hanged and half-hanged, quartered and embowelled enough to
satisfy them. The Roundhead party seemed to be not merely
overcome, but too much broken and scattered ever to rally again.
Then commenced the reflux of public opinion. The nation began to
find out to what a man it had intrusted, without conditions, all
its dearest interests, on what a man it had lavished all its
fondest affection. On the ignoble nature of the restored exile,
adversity had exhausted all her discipline in vain. He had one
immense advantage over most other princes. Though born in the
purple, he was no better acquainted with the vicissitudes of life
and the diversities of character than most of his subjects. He
had known restraint, danger, penury, and dependence. He had often
suffered from ingratitude, insolence, and treachery. He had
received many signal proofs of faithful and heroic attachment. He
had seen, if ever man saw, both sides of human nature. But only
one side remained in his memory. He had learned only to despise
and to distrust his species, to consider integrity in men, and
modesty in women, as mere acting; nor did he think it worth while
to keep his opinion to himself. He was incapable of friendship;
yet he was perpetually led by favourites without being in the
smallest degree duped by them. He knew that their regard to his
interests was all simulated; but, from a certain easiness which
had no connection with humanity, he submitted, half-laughing at
himself, to be made the tool of any woman whose person attracted
him, or of any man whose tattle diverted him. He thought little
and cared less about religion. He seems to have passed his life
in dawdling suspense between Hobbism and Popery. He was crowned
in his youth with the Covenant in his hand; he died at last with
the Host sticking in his throat; and during most of the
intermediate years, was occupied in persecuting both Covenanters
and Catholics. He was not a tyrant from the ordinary motives. He
valued power for its own sake little, and fame still less. He
does not appear to have been vindictive, or to have found any
pleasing excitement in cruelty. What he wanted was to be amused,
to get through the twenty-four hours pleasantly without sitting
down to dry business. Sauntering was, as Sheffield expresses it,
the true Sultana Queen of his Majesty's affections. A sitting in
council would have been insupportable to him if the Duke of
Buckingham had not been there to make mouths at the Chancellor.
It has been said, and is highly probable, that in his exile he
was quite disposed to sell his rights to Cromwell for a good
round sum. To the last his only quarrel with his Parliaments was
that they often gave him trouble and would not always give him
money. If there was a person for whom he felt a real regard,
that person was his brother. If there was a point about which he
really entertained a scruple of conscience or of honour, that
point was the descent of the crown. Yet he was willing to consent
to the Exclusion Bill for six hundred thousand pounds; and the
negotiation was broken off only because he insisted on being paid
beforehand. To do him justice, his temper was good; his manners
agreeable; his natural talents above mediocrity. But he was
sensual, frivolous, false, and cold-hearted, beyond almost any
prince of whom history makes mention.

Under the government of such a man, the English people could not
be long in recovering from the intoxication of loyalty. They were
then, as they are still, a brave, proud, and high-spirited race,
unaccustomed to defeat, to shame, or to servitude. The splendid
administration of Oliver had taught them to consider their
country as a match for the greatest empire of the earth, as the
first of maritime powers, as the head of the Protestant interest.
Though, in the day of their affectionate enthusiasm, they might
sometimes extol the royal prerogative in terms which would have
better become the courtiers of Aurungzebe, they were not men whom
it was quite safe to take at their word. They were much more
perfect in the theory than in the practice of passive obedience.
Though they might deride the austere manners and scriptural
phrases of the Puritans they were still at heart a religious
people. The majority saw no great sin in field-sports, stage-
plays, promiscuous dancing, cards, fairs, starch, or false hair.
But gross profaneness and licentiousness were regarded with
general horror; and the Catholic religion was held in utter
detestation by nine-tenths of the middle class.

Such was the nation which, awaking from its rapturous trance,
found itself sold to a foreign, a despotic, a Popish court,
defeated on its own seas and rivers by a state of far inferior
resources and placed under the rule of pandars and buffoons. Our
ancestors saw the best and ablest divines of the age turned out
of their benefices by hundreds. They saw the prisons filled with
men guilty of no other crime than that of worshipping God
according to the fashion generally prevailing throughout
Protestant Europe. They saw a Popish Queen on the throne, and a
Popish heir on the steps of the throne. They saw unjust
aggression followed by feeble war, and feeble war ending in
disgraceful peace. They saw a Dutch fleet riding triumphant in
the Thames. They saw the Triple Alliance broken, the Exchequer
shut up, the public credit shaken, the arms of England employed,
in shameful subordination to France, against a country which
seemed to be the last asylum of civil and religious liberty. They
saw Ireland discontented, and Scotland in rebellion. They saw,
meantime, Whitehall swarming with sharpers and courtesans.

They saw harlot after harlot, and bastard after bastard, not only
raised to the highest honours of the peerage, but supplied out of
the spoils of the honest, industrious, and ruined public
creditor, with ample means of supporting the new dignity. The
government became more odious every day. Even in the bosom of
that very House of Commons which had been elected by the nation
in the ecstasy of its penitence, of its joy, and of its hope, an
opposition sprang up and became powerful. Loyalty which had been
proof against all the disasters of the civil war, which had
survived the routs of Naseby and Worcester, which had never
flinched from sequestration and exile, which the Protector could
never intimidate or seduce, began to fail in this last and
hardest trial. The storm had long been gathering. At length it
burst with a fury which threatened the whole frame of society
with dissolution.

When the general election of January 1679 took place, the nation
had retraced the path which it had been describing from 1640 to
1660. It was again in the same mood in which it had been when,
after twelve years of misgovernment, the Long Parliament
assembled. In every part of the country, the name of courtier had
become a by-word of reproach. The old warriors of the Covenant
again ventured out of those retreats in which they had, at the
time of the Restoration, hidden themselves from the insults of
the triumphant Malignants, and in which, during twenty years,
they had preserved in full vigour

            "The unconquerable will
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
With courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome."

Then were again seen in the streets faces which called up strange
and terrible recollections of the days when the saints, with the
high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in
their hands, had bound kings with chains, and nobles with links
of iron. Then were again heard voices which had shouted
"Privilege" by the coach of Charles the First in the time of his
tyranny, and had called for "justice" in Westminister Hall on the
day of his trial. It has been the fashion to represent the
excitement of this period as the effect of the Popish plot. To us
it seems clear that the Popish plot was rather the effect than
the cause of the general agitation. It was not the disease, but a
symptom, though, like many other symptoms, it aggravated the
severity of the disease. In 1660 or 1661 it would have been
utterly out of the power of such men as Oates or Bedloe to give
any serious disturbance to the Government. They would have been
laughed at, pilloried, well pelted, soundly whipped, and speedily
forgotten. In 1678 or 1679 there would have been an outbreak if
those men had never been born. For years things had been steadily
tending to such a consummation. Society was one vast mass of
combustible matter. No mass so vast and so combustible ever waited
long for a spark.

Rational men, we suppose, are now fully agreed that by far the
greater part, if not the whole, of Oates's story was a pure
fabrication. It is indeed highly probable that, during his
intercourse with the Jesuits, he may have heard much wild talk
about the best means of re-establishing the Catholic religion in
England, and that from some of the absurd daydreams of the
zealots with whom he then associated he may have taken hints for
his narrative. But we do not believe that he was privy to
anything which deserved the name of conspiracy. And it is quite
certain that, if there be any small portion of the truth in his
evidence, that portion is so deeply buried in falsehood that no
human skill can now effect a separation. We must not, however,
forget, that we see his story by the light of much information
which his contemporaries did not at first possess. We have
nothing to say for the witnesses, but something in mitigation to
offer on behalf of the public. We own that the credulity which
the nation showed on that occasion seems to us, though censurable
indeed, yet not wholly inexcusable.

Our ancestors knew, from the experience of several generations at
home and abroad, how restless and encroaching was the disposition
of the Church of Rome. The heir-apparent of the crown was a
bigoted member of that church. The reigning King seemed far more
inclined to show favour to that church than to the Presbyterians.
He was the intimate ally, or rather the hired servant, of a
powerful King, who had already given proofs of his determination
to tolerate within his dominions no other religion than that of
Rome. The Catholics had begun to talk a bolder language than
formerly, and to anticipate the restoration of their worship in
all its ancient dignity and splendour. At this juncture, it is
rumoured that a Popish Plot has been discovered. A distinguished
Catholic is arrested on suspicion. It appears that he has
destroyed almost all his papers. A few letters, however, have
escaped the flames; and these letters are found to contain much
alarming matter, strange expressions about subsidies from France,
allusions to a vast scheme which would "give the greatest blow to
the Protestant religion that it had ever received," and which
"would utterly subdue a pestilent heresy." It was natural that
those who saw these expressions, in letters which had been
overlooked, should suspect that there was some horrible villainy
in those which had been carefully destroyed. Such was the feeling
of the House of Commons: "Question, question, Coleman's letters!"
was the cry which drowned the voices of the minority.

Just after the discovery of these papers, a magistrate who had
been distinguished by his independent spirit, and who had taken
the deposition of the informer, is found murdered, under
circumstances which make it almost incredible that he should have
fallen either by robbers or by his own hands. Many of our readers
can remember the state of London just after the murders of Mar
and Williamson, the terror which was on every face, the careful
barring of doors, the providing of blunderbusses and watchmen's
rattles. We know of a shopkeeper who on that occasion sold three
hundred rattles in about ten hours. Those who remember that panic
may be able to form some notion of the state of England after the
death of Godfrey. Indeed, we must say that, after having read and
weighed all the evidence now extant on that mysterious subject,
we incline to the opinion that he was assassinated, and
assassinated by Catholics, not assuredly by Catholics of the
least weight or note, but by some of those crazy and vindictive
fanatics who may be found in every large sect, and who are
peculiarly likely to be found in a persecuted sect. Some of the
violent Cameronians had recently, under similar exasperation,
committed similar crimes.

It was natural that there should be a panic; and it was natural
that the people should, in a panic, be unreasonable and
credulous. It must be remembered also that they had not at first,
as we have, the means of comparing the evidence which was given
on different trials. They were not aware of one tenth part of the
contradictions and absurdities which Oates had committed. The
blunders, for example, into which he fell before the Council, his
mistake about the person of Don John of Austria, and about the
situation of the Jesuits' College at Paris, were not publicly
known. He was a bad man; but the spies and deserters by whom
governments are informed of conspiracies axe generally bad men.
His story was strange and romantic; but it was not more strange
and romantic than a well-authenticated Popish plot, which some
few people then living might remember, the Gunpowder treason.
Oates's account of the burning of London was in itself not more
improbable than the project of blowing up King, Lords, and
Commons, a project which had not only been entertained by very
distinguished Catholics, but which had very narrowly missed of
success. As to the design on the King's person, all the world
knew that, within a century, two kings of France and a prince of
Orange had been murdered by Catholics, purely from religious
enthusiasm, that Elizabeth had been in constant danger of a
similar fate, and that such attempts, to say the least, had not
been discouraged by the highest authority of the Church of Rome.
The characters of some of the accused persons stood high; but so
did that of Anthony Babington, and that of Everard Digby. Those
who suffered denied their guilt to the last; but no persons
versed in criminal proceedings would attach any importance to
this circumstance. It was well known also that the most
distinguished Catholic casuists had written largely in defence of
regicide, of mental reservation, and of equivocation. It was not
quite impossible that men whose minds had been nourished with the
writings of such casuists might think themselves justified in
denying a charge which, if acknowledged, would bring great
scandal on the Church. The trials of the accused Catholics were
exactly like all the state trials of those days; that is to say,
as infamous as they could be. They were neither fairer nor less
fair than those of Algernon Sydney, of Rosewell, of Cornish, of
all the unhappy men, in short, whom a predominant party brought
to what was then facetiously called justice. Till the Revolution
purified our institutions and our manners, a state trial was
merely a murder preceded by the uttering of certain gibberish and
the performance of certain mummeries.

The Opposition had now the great body of the nation with them.
Thrice the King dissolved the Parliament; and thrice the
constituent body sent him back representatives fully determined
to keep strict watch on all his measures, and to exclude his
brother from the throne. Had the character of Charles resembled
that of his father, this intestine discord would infallibly have
ended in a civil war. Obstinacy and passion would have been his
ruin. His levity and apathy were his security. He resembled one
of those light Indian boats which are safe because they are
pliant, which yield to the impact of every wave, and which
therefore bound without danger through a surf in which a vessel
ribbed with heart of oak would inevitably perish. The only thing
about which his mind was unalterably made up was that, to use his
own phrase, he would not go on his travels again for anybody or
for anything. His easy, indolent behaviour produced all the
effects of the most artful policy. He suffered things to take
their course; and if Achitophel had been at one of his ears, and
Machiavel at the other, they could have given him no better
advice than to let things take their course. He gave way to the
violence of the movement, and waited for the corresponding
violence of the rebound. He exhibited himself to his subjects in
the interesting character of an oppressed king, who was ready to
do anything to please them, and who asked of them, in return,
only some consideration for his conscientious scruples and for
his feelings of natural affection, who was ready to accept any
ministers, to grant any guarantees to public liberty, but who
could not find it in his heart to take away his brother's
birthright. Nothing more was necessary. He had to deal with a
people whose noble weakness it has always been not to press too
hardly on the vanquished, with a people the lowest and most
brutal of whom cry "Shame!" if they see a man struck when he is
on the ground. The resentment which the nation bad felt towards
the Court began to abate as soon as the Court was manifestly
unable to offer any resistance. The panic which Godfrey's death
had excited gradually subsided. Every day brought to light some
new falsehood or contradiction in the stories of Oates and
Bedloe. The people were glutted with the blood of Papists, as
they had, twenty years before, been glutted with the blood of
regicides. When the first sufferers in the plot were brought to
the bar, the witnesses for the defence were in danger of being
torn in pieces by the mob. Judges, jurors, and spectators seemed
equally indifferent to justice, and equally eager for revenge.
Lord Stafford, the last sufferer, was pronounced not guilty by a
large minority of his peers; and when he protested his innocence
on the scaffold, the people cried out, "God bless you, my lord;
we believe you, my lord." The attempt to make a son of Lucy
Waters King of England was alike offensive to the pride of the
nobles and to the moral feeling of the middle class. The old
Cavalier party, the great majority of the landed gentry, the
clergy and the universities almost to a man, began to draw
together, and to form in close array round the throne.

A similar reaction had begun to take place in favour of Charles
the First during the second session of the Long Parliament; and,
if that prince had been honest or sagacious enough to keep
himself strictly within the limits of the law, we have not the
smallest doubt that he would in a few months have found himself
at least as powerful as his best friends, Lord Falkland,
Culpeper, or Hyde, would have wished to see him. By illegally
impeaching the leaders of the Opposition, and by making in person
a wicked attempt on the House of Commons, he stopped and turned
back that tide of loyal feeling which was just beginning to run
strongly. The son, quite as little restrained by law or by honour
as the father, was, luckily for himself, a man of a lounging,
careless temper, and, from temper, we believe, rather than from
policy, escaped that great error which cost the father so dear.
Instead of trying to pluck the fruit before it was ripe, he lay
still till it fell mellow into his very mouth. If he had arrested
Lord Shaftesbury and Lord Russell in a manner not warranted by
law, it is not improbable that he would have ended his life in
exile. He took the sure course. He employed only his legal
prerogatives, and he found them amply sufficient for his purpose.

During the first eighteen or nineteen years of his reign, he had
been playing the game of his enemies. From 1678 to 1681 his
enemies had played his game. They owed their power to his
misgovernment. He owed the recovery of his power to their
violence. The great body of the people came back to him after
their estrangement with impetuous affection. He had scarcely been
more popular when he landed on the coast of Kent than when, after
several years of restraint and humiliation, he dissolved his last
Parliament.

Nevertheless, while this flux and reflux of opinion went on, the
cause of public liberty was steadily gaining. There had been a
great reaction in favour of the throne at the Restoration. But
the Star-Chamber, the High Commission, the Ship-money, had for
ever disappeared. There was now another similar reaction. But the
Habeas Corpus Act had been passed during the short predominance
of the Opposition, and it was not repealed.

The King, however, supported as he was by the nation, was quite
strong enough to inflict a terrible revenge on the party which
had lately held him in bondage. In 1681 commenced the third of
those periods in which we have divided the history of England
from the Restoration to the Revolution. During this period a
third great reaction took place. The excesses of tyranny restored
to the cause of liberty the hearts which had been alienated from
that cause by the excesses of faction. In 1681, the King had
almost all his enemies at his feet. In 1688, the King was an
exile in a strange land.

The whole of that machinery which had lately been in motion
against the Papists was now put in motion against the Whigs,
browbeating judges, packed juries, lying witnesses, clamorous
spectators. The ablest chief of the party fled to a foreign
country and died there. The most virtuous man of the party was
beheaded. Another of its most distinguished members preferred a
voluntary death to the shame of a public execution. The boroughs
on which the Government could not depend were, by means of legal
quibbles, deprived of their charters; and their constitution was
remodelled in such a manner as almost to ensure the return of
representatives devoted to the Court. All parts of the kingdom
emulously sent up the most extravagant assurances of the love
which they bore to their sovereign, and of the abhorrence with
which they regarded those who questioned the divine origin or the
boundless extent of his power. It is scarcely necessary to say
that, in this hot competition of bigots and staves, the
University of Oxford had the unquestioned pre-eminence. The glory
of being further behind the age than any other portion of the
British people, is one which that learned body acquired early,
and has never lost.

Charles died, and his brother came to the throne; but, though the
person of the sovereign was changed, the love and awe with which
the office was regarded were undiminished. Indeed, it seems that,
of the two princes, James was, in spite of his religion, rather
the favourite of the High Church party. He had been specially
singled out as the mark of the Whigs; and this circumstance
sufficed to make him the idol of the Tories. He called a
parliament. The loyal gentry of the counties and the packed
voters of the remodelled boroughs gave him a parliament such as
England had not seen for a century, a parliament beyond all
comparison the most obsequious that ever sate under a prince of
the House of Stuart. One insurrectionary movement, indeed, took
place in England, and another in Scotland. Both were put down
with ease, and punished with tremendous severity. Even after that
bloody circuit, which will never be forgotten while the English
race exists in any part of the globe, no member of the House of
Commons ventured to whisper even the mildest censure on Jeffreys.
Edmund Waller, emboldened by his great age and his high
reputation, attacked the cruelty of the military chiefs; and this
is the brightest part of his long and checkered public life. But
even Waller did not venture to arraign the still more odious
cruelty of the Chief Justice. It is hardly too much to say that
James, at that time, had little reason to envy the extent of
authority possessed by Lewis the Fourteenth,

By what means this vast power was in three years broken down, by
what perverse and frantic misgovernment the tyrant revived the
spirit of the vanquished Whigs, turned to fixed hostility the
neutrality of the trimmers, and drove from him the landed gentry,
the Church, the army, his own creatures, his own children, is
well known to our readers. But we wish to say something about one
part of the question, which in our own time has a little puzzled
some very worthy men, and about which the author of the
"Continuation" before us has said much with which we can by no
means concur.

James, it is said, declared himself a supporter of toleration. If
he violated the constitution, he at least violated it for one of
the noblest ends that any statesman ever had in view. His object
was to free millions of his subjects from penal laws and
disabilities which hardly any person now considers as just. He
ought, therefore, to be regarded as blameless, or, at worst, as
guilty only of employing irregular means to effect a most
praiseworthy purpose. A very ingenious man, whom we believe to be
a Catholic, Mr. Banim, has written a historical novel, of the
literary merit of which we cannot speak very highly, for the
purpose of inculcating this opinion. The editor of Mackintosh's
Fragments assures us, that the standard of James bore the nobler
inscription, and so forth; the meaning of which is, that William
and the other authors of the Revolution were vile Whigs who drove
out James from being a Radical; that the crime of the King was
his going further in liberality than his subjects: that he was
the real champion of freedom; and that Somers, Locke, Newton, and
other narrow-minded people of the same sort, were the real bigots
and oppressors.

Now, we admit that if the premises can be made out, the
conclusion follows. If it can be shown that James did sincerely
wish to establish perfect freedom of conscience, we shall think
his conduct deserving of indulgence, if not of praise. We shall
not be inclined to censure harshly even his illegal acts. We
conceive that so noble and salutary an object would have
justified resistance on the part of subjects. We can therefore
scarcely deny that it would at least excuse encroachment on the
part of a king. But it can be proved, we think, by the strongest
evidence, that James had no such object in view, and that, under
the pretence of establishing perfect religious liberty, he was
trying to establish the ascendency and the exclusive dominion of
the Church of Rome.

It is true that he professed himself a supporter of toleration.
Every sect clamours for toleration when it is down. We have not
the smallest doubt that, when Bonner was in the Marshalsea, he
thought it a very hard thing that a man should be locked up in a
gaol for not being able to understand the words, "This is my
body," in the same way with the lords of the council. It would not
be very wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian
charity, because he assures you that God will reward you if you
give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane because he cries
out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat. The
doctrine which from the very first origin of religious
dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when
condensed into a few words, and stripped of rhetorical disguise
is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When
you are the stronger you ought to tolerate me; for it is your
duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall
persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error.

The Catholics lay under severe restraints in England. James
wished to remove those restraints; and therefore he held a
language favourable to liberty of conscience. But the whole
history of his life proves that this was a mere pretence. In 1679
he held similar language, in a conversation with the magistrates
of Amsterdam; and the author of the "Continuation" refers to the
circumstance as a proof that the King had long entertained a
strong feeling on the subject. Unhappily it proves only the utter
insincerity of all the King's later professions. If he had
pretended to be converted to the doctrines of toleration after
his accession to the throne, some credit might have been due to
him. But we know most certainly that, in 1679, and long after
that year, James was a most bloody and remorseless persecutor.
After 1679, he was placed at the head of the government of
Scotland. And what had been his conduct in that country? He had
hunted down the scattered remnant of the Covenanters with a
barbarity of which no other prince of modern times, Philip the
Second excepted, had ever shown himself capable. He had indulged
himself in the amusement of seeing the torture of the Boot
inflicted on the wretched enthusiasts whom persecution had driven
to resistance. After his accession, almost his first act was to
obtain from the servile parliament of Scotland a law for
inflicting death on preachers at conventicles held within houses,
and on both preachers and hearers at conventicles held in the
open air. All this he had done, for a religion which was not his
own. All this he had done, not in defence of truth against error,
but in defence of one damnable error against another, in defence
of the Episcopalian against the Presbyterian apostasy. Lewis the
Fourteenth is justly censured for trying to dragoon his subjects
to heaven. But it was reserved for James to torture and murder
for the difference between two roads to hell. And this man, so
deeply imbued with the poison of intolerance that, rather than
not persecute at all, he would persecute people out of one heresy
into another, this man is held up as the champion of religious
liberty. This man, who persecuted in the cause of the unclean
panther, would not, we are told, have persecuted for the sake of
the milk-white and immortal hind.

And what was the conduct of James at the very time when he was
professing zeal for the rights of conscience? Was he not even
then persecuting to the very best of his power? Was he not
employing all his legal prerogatives, and many prerogatives which
were not legal, for the purpose of forcing his subjects to
conform to his creed? While he pretended to abhor the laws which
excluded Dissenters from office, was he not himself dismissing
from office his ablest, his most experienced, his most faithful
servants, on account of their religious opinions? For what
offence was Lord Rochester driven from the Treasury? He was
closely connected with the Royal House. He was at the head of the
Tory party. He had stood firmly by James in the most trying
emergencies. But he would not change his religion, and he was
dismissed. That we may not be suspected of overstating the case,
Dr. Lingard, a very competent, and assuredly not a very willing
witness, shall speak for us. "The King," says that able but
partial writer, "was disappointed. He complained to Barillon of
the obstinacy and insincerity of the treasurer; and the latter
received from the French envoy a very intelligible hint that the
loss of office would result from his adhesion to his religious
creed. He was, however, inflexible; and James, after a long
delay, communicated to him, but with considerable embarrassment
and many tears, his final determination. He had hoped, he said,
that Rochester, by conforming to the Church of Rome, would have
spared him the unpleasant task; but kings must sacrifice their
feelings to their duty." And this was the King who wished to have
all men of all sects rendered alike capable of holding office.
These proceedings were alone sufficient to take away all credit
from his liberal professions; and such, as we learn from the
despatches of the Papal Nuncio, was really the effect. "Pare,"
says D'Adda, writing a few days after the retirement of
Rochester, "pare che gli animi sono inaspriti della voce che
corre tra il popolo, d'esser cacciato il detto ministro per non
essere Cattolico, percio tirarsi al esterminio de' Protestanti"
Was it ever denied that the favours of the Crown were constantly
bestowed and withheld purely on account of the religious opinions
of the claimants? And if these things were done in the green
tree, what would have been done in the dry? If James acted thus
when he had the strongest motives to court his Protestant
subjects, what course was he likely to follow when he had
obtained from them all that he asked?

Who again was his closest ally? And what was the policy of that
ally? The subjects of James, it is true, did not know half the
infamy of their sovereign. They did not know, as we know, that,
while he was lecturing them on the blessings of equal toleration,
he was constantly congratulating his good brother Lewis on the
success of that intolerant policy which had turned the fairest
tracts of France into deserts, and driven into exile myriads of
the most peaceable, industrious, and skilful artisans in the
world. But the English did know that the two princes were bound
together in the closest union. They saw their sovereign with
toleration on his lips, separating himself from those states
which had first set the example of toleration, and connecting
himself by the strongest ties with the most faithless and
merciless persecutor who could then be found on any continental
throne.

By what advice again was James guided? Who were the persons in
whom he placed the greatest confidence, and who took the warmest
interest in his schemes? The ambassador of France, the Nuncio of
Rome, and Father Petre the Jesuit. And is not this enough to
prove that the establishment of equal toleration was not his
plan? Was Lewis for toleration? Was the Vatican for toleration?
Was the order of Jesuits for toleration? We know that the liberal
professions of James were highly approved by those very
governments, by those very societies, whose theory and practice
it notoriously was to keep no faith with heretics and to give no
quarter to heretics. And are we, in order to save James's
reputation for sincerity, to believe that all at once those
governments and those societies had changed their nature, had
discovered the criminality of all their former conduct, had
adopted principles far more liberal than those of Locke, of
Leighton, or of Tillotson? Which is the more probable
supposition, that the King who had revoked the edict of Nantes,
the Pope under whose sanction the Inquisition was then
imprisoning and burning, the religious order which, in every
controversy in which it had ever been engaged, had called in the
aid either of the magistrate or of the assassin, should have
become as thorough-going friends to religious liberty as Dr.
Franklin and Mr. Jefferson, or that a Jesuit-ridden bigot should
be induced to dissemble for the good of the Church?

The game which the Jesuits were playing was no new game. A
hundred years before they had preached up political freedom, just
as they were now preaching up religious freedom. They had tried
to raise the republicans against Henry the Fourth and Elizabeth,
just as they were now trying to raise the Protestant Dissenters
against the Established Church. In the sixteenth century, the
tools of Philip the Second were constantly preaching doctrines
that bordered on Jacobinism, constantly insisting on the right of
the people to cashier kings, and of every private citizen to
plunge his dagger into the heart of a wicked ruler. In the
seventeenth century, the persecutors of the Huguenots were crying
out against the tyranny of the Established Church of England, and
vindicating with the utmost fervour the right of every man to
adore God after his own fashion. In both cases they were alike
insincere. In both cases the fool who had trusted them would have
found himself miserably duped. A good and wise man would
doubtless disapprove of the arbitrary measures of Elizabeth. But
would he have really served the interests of political liberty,
if he had put faith in the professions of the Romish Casuists,
joined their party, and taken a share in Northumberland's revolt,
or in Babington's conspiracy? Would he not have been assisting to
establish a far worse tyranny than that which he was trying to
put down? In the same manner, a good and wise man would doubtless
see very much to condemn in the conduct of the Church of England
under the Stuarts. But was he therefore to join the King and the
Catholics against that Church? And was it not plain that, by so
doing, he would assist in setting up a spiritual despotism,
compared with which the despotism of the Establishment was as a
little finger to the loins, as a rod of whips to a rod of
scorpions?

Lewis had a far stronger mind than James. He had at least an
equally high sense of honour. He was in a much less degree the
slave of his priests. His Protestant subjects had all
the security for their rights of conscience which law and
solemn compact could give. Had that security been found
sufficient? And was not one such instance enough for one
generation?

The plan of James seems to us perfectly intelligible. The
toleration which, with the concurrence and applause of all the
most cruel persecutors in Europe, he was offering to his people,
was meant simply to divide them. This is the most obvious and
vulgar of political artifices. We have seen it employed a hundred
times within our own memory. At this moment we see the Carlists
in France hallooing on the Extreme Left against the Centre Left.
Four years ago the same trick was practised in England. We heard
old buyers and sellers of boroughs, men who had been seated in
the House of Commons by the unsparing use of ejectments, and who
had, through their whole lives, opposed every measure which
tended to increase the power of the democracy, abusing the Reform
Bill as not democratic enough, appealing to the labouring
classes, execrating the tyranny of the ten-pound householders,
and exchanging compliments and caresses with the most noted
incendiaries of our time. The cry of universal toleration was
employed by James, just as the cry of universal suffrage was
lately employed by some veteran Tories. The object of the mock
democrats of our time was to produce a conflict between the
middle classes and the multitude, and thus to prevent all reform.
The object of James was to produce a conflict between the Church
and the Protestant Dissenters, and thus to facilitate the victory
of the Catholics over both.

We do not believe that he could have succeeded. But we do not
think his plan so utterly frantic and hopeless as it has
generally been thought; and we are sure that, if he had been
allowed to gain his first point, the people would have had no
remedy left but an appeal to physical force, which would have
been made under most unfavourable circumstances. He conceived
that the Tories, hampered by their professions of passive
obedience, would have submitted to his pleasure, and that the
Dissenters, seduced by his delusive promises of relief, would
have given him strenuous support. In this way he hoped to obtain
a law, nominally for the removal of all religious disabilities,
but really for the excluding of all Protestants from all offices.
It is never to be forgotten that a prince who has all the
patronage of the State in his hands can, without violating the
letter of the law, establish whatever test he chooses. And, from
the whole conduct of James, we have not the smallest doubt
that he would have availed himself of his power to the utmost.
The statute-book might declare all Englishmen equally capable of
holding office; but to what end, if all offices were in the gift
of a sovereign resolved not to employ a single heretic? We firmly
believe that not one post in the government, in the army, in the
navy, on the bench, or at the bar, not one peerage, nay not one
ecclesiastical benefice in the royal gift, would have been
bestowed on any Protestant of any persuasion. Even while the King
had still strong motives to dissemble, he had made a Catholic
Dean of Christ Church and a Catholic President of Magdalen
College. There seems to be no doubt that the See of York was kept
vacant for another Catholic. If James had been suffered to follow
this course for twenty years, every military man from a general
to a drummer, every officer of a ship, every judge, every King's
counsel, every lord-lieutenant of a county, every justice of the
peace, every ambassador, every minister of state, every person
employed in the royal household, in the custom-house, in the
post-office, in the excise, would have been a Catholic. The
Catholics would have had a majority in the House of Lords, even
if that majority had been made, as Sunderland threatened, by
bestowing coronets on a whole troop of the Guards. Catholics
would have had, we believe, the chief weight even in the
Convocation. Every bishop, every dean, every holder of a crown
living, every head of every college which was subject to the
royal power, would have belonged to the Church of Rome. Almost
all the places of liberal education would have been under the
direction of Catholics. The whole power of licensing books would
have been in the hands of Catholics. All this immense mass of
power would have been steadily supported by the arms and by the
gold of France, and would have descended to an heir whose whole
education would have been conducted with a view to one single
end, the complete re-establishment of the Catholic religion. The
House of Commons would have been the only legal obstacle. But the
rights of a great portion of the electors were at the mercy of
the courts of law; and the courts of law were absolutely
dependent on the Crown. We cannot therefore think it altogether
impossible that a House might have been packed which would have
restored the days of Mary.

We certainly do not believe that this would have been tamely
borne. But we do believe that, if the nation had been deluded by
the King's professions of toleration, all this would have been
attempted, and could have been averted only by a most bloody and
destructive contest, in which the whole Protestant
population would have been opposed to the Catholics. On the one
side would have been a vast numerical superiority. But on the
other side would have been the whole organization of government,
and two great disciplined armies, that of James, and that of
Lewis. We do not doubt that the nation would have achieved its
deliverance. But we believe that the struggle would have shaken
the whole fabric of society, and that the vengeance of the
conquerors would have been terrible and unsparing.

But James was stopped at the outset. He thought himself secure of
the Tories, because they professed to consider all resistance as
sinful, and of the Protestant Dissenters, because he offered them
relief. He was in the wrong as to both. The error into which he
fell about the Dissenters was very natural. But the confidence
which he placed in the loyal assurances of the High Church party,
was the most exquisitely ludicrous proof of folly that a
politician ever gave.

Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition
that all his neighbours believe all that they profess, and act up
to all that they believe. Imagine a man acting on the supposition
that he may safely offer the deadliest injuries and insults to
everybody who says that revenge is sinful; or that he may safely
intrust all his property without security to any person who says
that it is wrong to steal. Such a character would be too absurd
for the wildest farce. Yet the folly of James did not stop short
of this incredible extent. Because the clergy had declared that
resistance to oppression was in no case lawful, he conceived that
he might oppress them exactly as much as he chose, without the
smallest danger of resistance. He quite forgot that, when they
magnified the royal prerogative, the prerogative was exerted on
their side, that, when they preached endurance, they had nothing
to endure, that, when they declared it unlawful to resist evil,
none but Whigs and Dissenters suffered any evil. It had never
occurred to him that a man feels the calamities of his enemies
with one sort of sensibility, and his own with quite a different
sort. It had never occurred to him as possible that a reverend
divine might think it the duty of Baxter and Bunyan to bear
insults and to lie in dungeons without murmuring, and yet when he
saw the smallest chance that his own prebend might be transferred
to some sly Father from Italy or Flanders, might begin to
discover much matter for useful meditation in the texts touching
Ehud's knife and Jael's hammer. His majesty was not aware, it
should seem, that people do sometimes reconsider their opinions;
and that nothing more disposes a man to reconsider his opinions,
than a suspicion, that, if he adheres to them, he is very likely
to be a beggar or a martyr. Yet it seems strange that these
truths should have escaped the royal mind. Those Churchmen who
had signed the Oxford Declaration in favour of passive obedience
had also signed the thirty-nine Articles. And yet the very man
who confidently expected that, by a little coaxing and bullying,
he should induce them to renounce the Articles, was thunderstruck
when he found that they were disposed to soften down the
doctrines of the Declaration. Nor did it necessarily follow that,
even if the theory of the Tories had undergone no modification,
their practice would coincide with their theory. It might, one
should think, have crossed the mind of a man of fifty, who had
seen a great deal of the world, that people sometimes do what
they think wrong. Though a prelate might hold that Paul directs
us to obey even a Nero, it might not on that account be perfectly
safe to treat the Right Reverend Father in God after the fashion
of Nero, in the hope that he would continue to obey on the
principles of Paul. The King indeed had only to look at home. He
was at least as much attached to the Catholic Church as any Tory
gentleman or clergyman could be to the Church of England.
Adultery was at least as clearly and strongly condemned by his
Church as resistance by the Church of England. Yet his priests
could not keep him from Arabella Sedley. While he was risking his
crown for the sake of his soul, he was risking his soul for the
sake of an ugly, dirty mistress. There is something delightfully
grotesque in the spectacle of a man who, while living in the
habitual violation of his own known duties, is unable to believe
that any temptation can draw any other person aside from the path
of virtue.

James was disappointed in all his calculations. His hope was that
the Tories would follow their principles, and that the
Nonconformists would follow their interests. Exactly the reverse
took place. The great body of the Tories sacrificed the principle
of non-resistance to their interests; the great body of
Nonconformists rejected the delusive offers of the King, and
stood firmly by their principles. The two parties whose strife
had convulsed the empire during half a century were united for a
moment; and all that vast royal power which three years before
had seemed immovably fixed vanished at once like chaff in a
hurricane.

The very great length to which this article has already been
extended makes it impossible for us to discuss, as we had meant
to do, the characters and conduct of the leading English
statesmen at this crisis. But we must offer a few remarks on the
spirit and tendency of the Revolution of 1688.

The editor of this volume quotes the Declaration of Right, and
tells us that, by looking at it, we may "judge at a glance
whether the authors of the Revolution achieved all they might and
ought, in their position, to have achieved; whether the Commons
of England did their duty to their constituents, their country,
posterity, and universal freedom." We are at a loss to imagine
how he can have read and transcribed the Declaration of Right,
and yet have so utterly misconceived its nature. That famous
document is, as its very name imports, declaratory, and not
remedial. It was never meant to be a measure of reform. It
neither contained, nor was designed to contain, any allusion to
those innovations which the authors of the Revolution considered
as desirable, and which they speedily proceeded to make. The
Declaration was merely a recital of certain old and wholesome
laws which had been violated by the Stuarts, and a solemn protest
against the validity of any precedent which might be set up in
opposition to those laws. The words run thus: "They do claim,
demand, and insist upon all and singular the premises as their
undoubted rights and liberties." Before a man begins to make
improvements on his estate, he must know its boundaries. Before a
legislature sits down to reform a constitution, it is fit to
ascertain what that constitution really is. This is all that the
Declaration was intended to do; and to quarrel with it because it
did not directly introduce any beneficial changes is to quarrel
with meat for not being fuel.

The principle on which the authors of the Revolution acted cannot
be mistaken. They were perfectly aware that the English
institutions stood in need of reform. But they also knew that an
important point was gained if they could settle once for all, by
a solemn compact, the matters which had, during several
generations, been in controversy between Parliament and the
Crown. They therefore most judiciously abstained from mixing up
the irritating and perplexing question of what ought to be the
law with the plain question of what was the law. As to the claims
set forth in the Declaration of Right, there was little room for
debate, Whigs and Tories were generally agreed as to the
illegality of the dispensing power and of taxation imposed by the
royal prerogative. The articles were therefore adjusted in a very
few days. But if the Parliament had determined to revise the
whole constitution, and to provide new securities against
misgovernment, before proclaiming the new sovereign, months would
have been lost in disputes. The coalition which had delivered the
country would have been instantly dissolved. The Whigs would have
quarrelled with the Tories, the Lords with the Commons, the
Church with the Dissenters; and all this storm of conflicting
interests and conflicting theories would have been raging round a
vacant throne. In the meantime, the greatest power on the
Continent was attacking our allies, and meditating a descent on
our own territories. Dundee was preparing to raise the Highlands.
The authority of James was still owned by the Irish. If the
authors of the Revolution had been fools enough to take this
course, we have little doubt that Luxembourg would have been upon
them in the midst of their constitution-making. They might
probably have been interrupted in a debate on Filmer's and
Sydney's theories of government by the entrance of the
musqueteers of Lewis's household, and have been marched off, two
and two, to frame imaginary monarchies and commonwealths in the
Tower. We have had in our own time abundant experience of the
effects of such folly. We have seen nation after nation enslaved,
because the friends of liberty wasted in discussions upon
abstract questions the time which ought to have been employed in
preparing for vigorous national defence. This editor, apparently,
would have had the English Revolution of 1688 end as the
Revolutions of Spain and Naples ended in our days. Thank God, our
deliverers were men of a very different order from the Spanish
and Neapolitan legislators. They might on many subjects hold
opinions which, in the nineteenth century, would not be
considered as liberal. But they were not dreaming pedants. They
were statesmen accustomed to the management of great affairs.
Their plans of reform were not so extensive as those of the
lawgivers of Cadiz; but what they planned, that they effected;
and what they effected, that they maintained against the fiercest
hostility at home and abroad.

Their first object was to seat William on the throne; and they
were right. We say this without any reference to the eminent
personal qualities of William, or to the follies and crimes of
James. If the two princes had interchanged characters, our
opinions would still have been the same. It was even more
necessary to England at that time that her king should be a
usurper than that he should be a hero. There could be no security
for good government without a change of dynasty. The reverence
for hereditary right and the doctrine of passive obedience had
taken such a hold on the minds of the Tories, that, if James
had been restored to power on any conditions, their attachment
to him would in all probability have revived, as the indignation
which recent oppression had produced faded from their minds.
It had become indispensable to have a sovereign whose title
to his throne was strictly bound up with the title of the nation
to its liberties. In the compact between the Prince of Orange
and the Convention, there was one most important article which,
though not expressed, was perfectly understood by both parties,
and for the performance of which the country had securities far
better than all the engagements that Charles the First or
Ferdinand the Seventh ever took in the day of their weakness,
and broke in the day of their power. The article to which we
allude was this, that William would in all things conform
himself to what should appear to be the fixed and deliberate
sense of his Parliament. The security for the performance was
this, that he had no claim to the throne except the choice of
Parliament, and no means of maintaining himself on the throne
but the support of Parliament. All the great and inestimable
reforms which speedily followed the Revolution were implied
in those simple words; "The Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and
Commons, assembled at Westminster, do resolve that William and
Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared King
and Queen of England."

And what were the reforms of which we speak? We will shortly
recount some which we think the most important; and we will then
leave our readers to judge whether those who consider the
Revolution as a mere change of dynasty, beneficial to a few
aristocrats, but useless to the body of the people, or those who
consider it as a happy era in the history of the British nation
and of the human species, have judged more correctly of its
nature.

Foremost in the list of the benefits which our country owes to
the Revolution we place the Toleration Act. It is true that this
measure fell short of the wishes of the leading Whigs. It is true
also that, where Catholics were concerned, even the most
enlightened of the leading Whigs held opinions by no means so
liberal as those which are happily common at the present day.
Those distinguished statesmen did, however, make a noble, and, in
some respects, a successful struggle for the rights of
conscience. Their wish was to bring the great body of the
Protestant Dissenters within the pale of the Church by judicious
alterations in the Liturgy and the Articles, and to grant to
those who still remained without that pale the most ample
toleration. They framed a plan of comprehension which would have
satisfied a great majority of the seceders; and they proposed the
complete abolition of that absurd and odious test which, after
having been, during a century and a half, a scandal to the pious
and a laughing-stock to the profane, was at length removed in our
time. The immense power of the Clergy and of the Tory gentry
frustrated these excellent designs. The Whigs, however, did much.
They succeeded in obtaining a law in the provisions of which a
philosopher will doubtless find much to condemn, but which had
the practical effect of enabling almost every Protestant
Nonconformist to follow the dictates of his own conscience
without molestation. Scarcely a law in the statute-book is
theoretically more objectionable than the Toleration Act. But we
question whether in the whole of that vast mass of legislation,
from the Great Charter downwards, there be a single law which has
so much diminished the sum of human suffering, which has done so
much to allay bad passions, which has put an end to so much petty
tyranny and vexation, which has brought gladness, peace, and a
sense of security to so many private dwellings.

The second of those great reforms which the Revolution produced
was the final establishment of the Presbyterian Kirk in Scotland.
We shall not now inquire whether the Episcopal or the Calvinistic
form of church government be more agreeable to primitive
practice. Far be it from us to disturb with our doubts the repose
of any Oxonian Bachelor of Divinity who conceives that the
English prelates with their baronies and palaces, their purple
and their fine linen, their mitred carriages and their sumptuous
tables, are the true successors of those ancient bishops who
lived by catching fish and mending tents. We say only that the
Scotch, doubtless from their own inveterate stupidity and malice,
were not Episcopalians; that they could not be made
Episcopalians; that the whole power of government had been in
vain employed for the purpose of converting them; that the
fullest instruction on the mysterious questions of the
Apostolical succession and the imposition of hands had been
imparted by the very logical process of putting the legs of the
students into wooden boots, and driving two or more wedges
between their knees; that a course of divinity lectures, of the
most edifying kind, had been given in the Grassmarket of
Edinburgh; yet that, in spite of all the exertions of those great
theological professors, Lauderdale and Dundee, the Covenanters
were as obstinate as ever. To the contest between the Scotch
nation and the Anglican Church are to be ascribed near thirty
years of the most frightful misgovernment ever seen in any part
of Great Britain. If the Revolution had produced no other effect
than that of freeing the Scotch from the yoke of an establishment
which they detested, and giving them one to which they were
attached, it would have been one of the happiest events in our
history.

The third great benefit which the country derived from the
Revolution was the alteration in the mode of granting the
supplies. It had been the practice to settle on every prince, at
the commencement of his reign, the produce of certain taxes
which, it was supposed, would yield a sum sufficient to defray
the ordinary expenses of government. The distribution of the
revenue was left wholly to the sovereign. He might be forced by a
war, or by his own profusion, to ask for an extraordinary grant.
But, if his policy were economical and pacific, he might reign
many years without once being under the necessity of summoning
his Parliament, or of taking their advice when he had summoned
them. This was not all. The natural tendency of every society in
which property enjoys tolerable security is to increase in
wealth. With the national wealth, the produce of the customs, of
the excise, and of the post-office, would of course increase; and
thus it might well happen that taxes which, at the beginning of a
long reign, were barely sufficient to support a frugal government
in time of peace, might, before the end of that reign, enable the
sovereign to imitate the extravagance of Nero or Heliogabalus, to
raise great armies, to carry on expensive wars. Something of this
sort had actually happened under Charles the Second, though his
reign, reckoned from the Restoration, lasted only twenty-five
years. His first Parliament settled on him taxes estimated to
produce twelve hundred thousand pounds a year. This they thought
sufficient, as they allowed nothing for a standing army in time
of peace. At the time of Charles's death, the annual produce of
these taxes considerably exceeded a million and a half; and the
King who, during the years which immediately followed his
accession, was perpetually in distress, and perpetually asking
his Parliaments for money, was at last able to keep a body of
regular troops without any assistance from the House of Commons.
If his reign had been as long as that of George the Third, he
would probably, before the close of it, have been in the annual
receipt of several millions over and above what the ordinary
expenses of civil government required; and of those millions
he would have been as absolutely master as the King now is of
the sum allotted for his privy-purse. He might have spent them
in luxury, in corruption, in paying troops to overawe his people,
or in carrying into effect wild schemes of foreign conquest.
The authors of the Revolution applied a remedy to this great
abuse. They settled on the King, not the fluctuating produce of
certain fixed taxes, but a fixed sum sufficient for the support
of his own royal state. They established it as a rule that all
the expenses of the army, the navy, and the ordnance should be
brought annually under the review of the House of Commons, and
that every sum voted should be applied to the service specified
in the vote. The direct effect of this change was important.
The indirect effect has been more important still. From that
time the House of Commons has been really the paramount power
in the State. It has, in truth, appointed and removed ministers,
declared war, and concluded peace. No combination of the King
and the Lords has ever been able to effect anything against
the Lower House, backed by its constituents. Three or four
times, indeed, the sovereign has been able to break the force
of an opposition by dissolving the Parliament. But if that
experiment should fail, if the people should be of the same
mind with their representatives, he would clearly have no course
left but to yield, to abdicate, or to fight.

The next great blessing which we owe to the Revolution is the
purification of the administration of justice in political cases.
Of the importance of this change no person can judge who is not
well acquainted with the earlier volumes of the State Trials.
Those volumes are, we do not hesitate to say, the most frightful
record of baseness and depravity that is extant in the world. Our
hatred is altogether turned away from the crimes and the
criminals, and directed against the law and its ministers. We see
villanies as black as ever were imputed to any prisoner at any
bar daily committed on the bench and in the jury-box. The worst
of the bad acts which brought discredit on the old parliaments of
France, the condemnation of Lally, for example, or even that of
Calas, may seem praiseworthy when compared with the atrocities
which follow each other in endless succession as we turn over
that huge chronicle of the shame of England. The magistrates of
Paris and Toulouse were blinded by prejudice, passion, or
bigotry. But the abandoned judges of our own country committed
murder with their eyes open. The cause of this is plain. In
France there was no constitutional opposition. If a man held
language offensive to the Government, he was at once sent to the
Bastile or to Vincennes. But in England, at least after the days
of the Long Parliament, the King could not, by a mere act of his
prerogative, rid himself of a troublesome politician. He was
forced to remove those who thwarted him by means of perjured
witnesses, packed juries, and corrupt, hardhearted, browbeating
judges. The Opposition naturally retaliated whenever they had the
upper hand. Every time that the power passed from one party to
the other, there was a proscription and a massacre, thinly
disguised under the forms of judicial procedure. The tribunals
ought to be sacred places of refuge, where, in all the
vicissitudes of public affairs, the innocent of all parties may
find shelter. They were, before the Revolution, an unclean public
shambles, to which each party in its turn dragged its opponents,
and where each found the same venal and ferocious butchers
waiting for its custom. Papist or Protestant, Tory or Whig,
Priest or Alderman, all was one to those greedy and savage
natures, provided only there was money to earn, and blood to
shed.

Of course, these worthless judges soon created around them, as
was natural, a breed of informers more wicked, if possible, than
themselves. The trial by jury afforded little or no protection to
the innocent. The juries were nominated by the sheriffs. The
sheriffs were in most parts of England nominated by the Crown. In
London, the great scene of political contention, those officers
were chosen by the people. The fiercest parliamentary election of
our time will give but a faint notion of the storm which raged in
the city on the day when two infuriated parties, each bearing its
badge, met to select the men in whose hands were to be the issues
of life and death for the coming year. On that day, nobles of the
highest descent did not think it beneath them to canvass and
marshal the livery, to head the procession, and to watch the
poll. On that day, the great chiefs of parties waited in an
agony of suspense for the messenger who was to bring from
Guildhall the news whether their lives and estates were, for the
next twelve months, to be at the mercy of a friend or of a foe.
In 1681, Whig sheriffs were chosen; and Shaftesbury defied the
whole power of the Government. In 1682 the sheriffs were Tories.
Shaftesbury fled to Holland. The other chiefs of the party broke
up their councils, and retired in haste to their country seats.
Sydney on the scaffold told those sheriffs that his blood was on
their heads. Neither of them could deny the charge; and one of
them wept with shame and remorse.

Thus every man who then meddled with public affairs took his life
in his hand. The consequence was that men of gentle natures stood
aloof from contests in which they could not engage without
hazarding their own necks and the fortunes of their children.
This was the course adopted by Sir William Temple, by Evelyn, and
by many other men who were, in every respect, admirably qualified
to serve the State. On the other hand, those resolute and
enterprising men who put their heads and lands to hazard in the
game of politics naturally acquired, from the habit of playing
for so deep a stake, a reckless and desperate turn of mind. It
was, we seriously believe, as safe to be a highwayman as to be a
distinguished leader of Opposition. This may serve to explain,
and in some degree to excuse, the violence with which the
factions of that age are justly reproached. They were fighting,
not merely for office, but for life. If they reposed for a moment
from the work of agitation, if they suffered the public
excitement to flag, they were lost men. Hume, in describing this
state of things, has employed an image which seems hardly to suit
the general simplicity of his style, but which is by no means too
strong for the occasion. "Thus," says he, "the two parties
actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the narrow limits
of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most deadly blows
against each other's breast, and buried in their factious
divisions all, regard to truth, honour, and humanity."

From this terrible evil the Revolution set us free. The law which
secured to the judges their seats during life or good behaviour
did something. The law subsequently passed for regulating trials
in cases of treason did much more. The provisions of that law
show, indeed, very little legislative skill. It is not framed on
the principle of securing the innocent, but on the principle of
giving a great chance of escape to the accused, whether innocent
or guilty. This, however, is decidedly a fault on the right side.
The evil produced by the occasional escape of a bad citizen is
not to be compared with the evils of that Reign of Terror, for
such it was, which preceded the Revolution. Since the passing of
this law scarcely one single person has suffered death in England
as a traitor, who had not been convicted on overwhelming
evidence, to the satisfaction of all parties, of the highest
crime against the State. Attempts have been made in times of
great excitement, to bring in persons guilty of high treason for
acts which, though sometimes highly blamable, did not necessarily
imply a design falling within the legal definition of treason.
All those attempts have failed. During a hundred and forty years
no statesman, while engaged in constitutional opposition to a
government, has had the axe before his eyes. The smallest
minorities, struggling against the most powerful majorities, in
the most agitated times, have felt themselves perfectly secure.
Pulteney and Fox wore the two most distinguished leaders of
Opposition, since the Revolution. Both were personally obnoxious
to the Court. But the utmost harm that the utmost anger of the
Court could do to them was to strike off the "Right Honourable"
from before their names.

But of all the reforms produced by the Revolution, perhaps the
most important was the full establishment of the liberty of
unlicensed printing. The Censorship which, under some form or
other, had existed, with rare and short intermissions, under
every government, monarchical or republican, from the time of
Henry the Eighth downwards, expired, and has never since been
renewed.

We are aware that the great improvements which we have
recapitulated were, in many respects, imperfectly and unskilfully
executed. The authors of those improvements sometimes, while they
removed or mitigated a great practical evil, continued to
recognise the erroneous principle from which that evil had
sprung. Sometimes, when they had adopted a sound principle, they
shrank from following it to all the conclusions to which it would
have led them. Sometimes they failed to perceive that the
remedies which they applied to one disease of the State were
certain to generate another disease, and to render another remedy
necessary. Their knowledge was inferior to ours: nor were they
always able to act up to their knowledge. The pressure of
circumstances, the necessity of compromising differences of
opinion, the power and violence of the party which was altogether
hostile to the new settlement, must be taken into the account.
When these things are fairly weighed, there will, we think, be
little difference of opinion among liberal and right-minded men
as to the real value of what the great events of 1688 did for
this country.

We have recounted what appear to us the most important of those
changes which the Revolution produced in our laws. The changes
which it produced in our laws, however, were not more important
than the change which it indirectly produced in the public mind,
The Whig party had, during seventy years, an almost uninterrupted
possession of power. It had always been the fundamental doctrine
of that party, that power is a trust for the people; that it is
given to magistrates, not for their own, but for the public
advantage--that, where it is abused by magistrates, even by the
highest of all, it may lawfully be withdrawn. It is perfectly
true, that the Whigs were not more exempt than other men from the
vices and infirmities of our nature, and that, when they had
power, they sometimes abused it. But still they stood firm to
their theory. That theory was the badge of their party. It was
something more. It was the foundation on which rested the power
of the houses of Nassau and Brunswick. Thus, there was a
government interested in propagating a class of opinions which
most governments are interested in discouraging, a government
which looked with complacency on all speculations favourable to
public liberty, and with extreme aversion on all speculations
favourable to arbitrary power. There was a King who decidedly
preferred a republican to a believer in the divine right of
kings; who considered every attempt to exalt his prerogative as
an attack on his title; and who reserved all his favours for
those who declaimed on the natural equality of men, and the
popular origin of government. This was the state of things from
the Revolution till the death of George the Second. The effect
was what might have been expected. Even in that profession which
has generally been most disposed to magnify the prerogative, a
great change took place. Bishopric after bishopric and deanery
after deanery were bestowed on Whigs and Latitudinarians. The
consequence was that Whiggism and Latitudinarianism were
professed by the ablest and most aspiring churchmen.

Hume complained bitterly of this at the close of his history.
"The Whig party," says he, "for a course of near seventy years,
has almost without interruption enjoyed the whole authority of
government, and no honours or offices could be obtained but by
their countenance and protection. But this event, which in some
particulars has been advantageous to the State, has proved
destructive to the truth of history, and has established many
gross falsehoods, which it is unaccountable how any civilised
nation could have embraced, with regard to its domestic
occurrences. Compositions the most despicable, both for style and
matter,"--in a note he instances the writings of Locke, Sydney,
Hoadley, and Rapin,--"have been extolled and propagated and read
as if they had equalled the most celebrated remains of antiquity.
And forgetting that a regard to liberty, though a laudable
passion, ought commonly to be subservient to a reverence for
established government, the prevailing faction has celebrated
only the  partisans of the former." We will not here enter into
an argument about the merit of Rapin's History or Locke's
political speculations. We call Hume merely as evidence to a fact
well known to all reading men, that the literature patronised by
the English Court and the English ministry, during the first half
of the eighteenth century, was of that kind which courtiers and
ministers generally do all in their power to discountenance, and
tended to inspire zeal for the liberties of the people rather
than respect for the authority of the Government.

There was still a very strong Tory party in England. But that
party was in opposition. Many of its members still held the
doctrine of passive obedience. But they did not admit that the
existing dynasty had any claim to such obedience. They condemned
resistance. But by resistance they meant the keeping out of James
the Third, and not the turning out of George the Second. No
radical of our times could grumble more at the expenses of the
royal household, could exert himself more strenuously to reduce
the military establishment, could oppose with more earnestness
every proposition for arming the executive with extraordinary
powers, or could pour more unmitigated abuse on placemen and
courtiers. If a writer were now, in a massive Dictionary, to
define a Pensioner as a traitor and a slave, the Excise as a
hateful tax, the Commissioners of the Excise as wretches, if he
were to write a satire full of reflections on men who receive
"the price of boroughs and of souls," who "explain their
country's dear-bought rights away," or

               "whom pensions can incite,
To vote a patriot black, a courtier white,"

we should set him down for something more democratic than a Whig.
Yet this was the language which Johnson, the most bigoted of
Tories and High Churchmen held under the administration of
Walpole and Pelham.

Thus doctrines favourable to public liberty were inculcated alike
by those who were in power and by those who were in opposition.
It was by means of these doctrines alone that the former could
prove that they had a King de jure. The servile theories of the
latter did not prevent them from offering every molestation to
one whom they considered as merely a King de facto. The attachment
of one party to the House of Hanover, of the other to that of
Stuart, induced both to talk a language much more favourable to
popular rights than to monarchical power. What took place at the
first representation of Cato is no bad illustration of the way in
which the two great sections of the community almost invariably
acted. A play, the whole merit of which consists in its stately
rhetoric sometimes not unworthy of Lucan, about hating tyrants
and dying for freedom, is brought on the stage in a time of great
political excitement. Both parties crowd to the theatre. Each
affects to consider every line as a compliment to itself, and an
attack on its opponents. The curtain falls amidst an unanimous
roar of applause. The Whigs of the Kit Cat embrace the author,
and assure him that he has rendered an inestimable service to
liberty. The Tory secretary of state presents a purse to the
chief actor for defending the cause of liberty so well. The
history of that night was, in miniature, the history of two
generations.

We well know how much sophistry there was in the reasonings, and
how much exaggeration in the declamations of both parties. But
when we compare the state in which political science was at the
close of the reign of George the Second with the state in which
it had been when James the Second came to the throne, it is
impossible not to admit that a prodigious improvement had taken
place. We are no admirers of the political doctrines laid down in
Blackstone's Commentaries. But if we consider that those
Commentaries were read with great applause in the very schools
where, seventy or eighty years before, books had been publicly
burned by order of the University of Oxford for containing the
damnable doctrine that the English monarchy is limited and mixed,
we cannot deny that a salutary change had taken place. "The
Jesuits," says Pascal, in the last of his incomparable letters,
"have obtained a Papal decree, condemning Galileo's doctrine
about the motion of the earth. It is all in vain. If the world is
really turning round, all mankind together will not be able to
keep it from turning, or to keep themselves from turning with
it." The decrees of Oxford were as ineffectual to stay the great
moral and political revolution as those of the Vatican to stay
the motion of our globe. That learned University found itself not
only unable to keep the mass from moving, but unable to keep
itself from moving along with the mass. Nor was the effect of the
discussions and speculations of that period confined to our own
country. While the Jacobite party was in the last dotage and
weakness of its paralytic old age, the political philosophy of
England began to produce a mighty effect on France, and, through
France, on Europe.

Here another vast field opens itself before us. But we must
resolutely turn away from it. We will conclude by advising all
our readers to study Sir James Mackintosh's valuable Fragment,
and by expressing our hope that they will soon be able to study
it without those accompaniments which have hitherto impeded its
circulation.


HORACE WALPOLE

(October 1833)

Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann,
British Envoy at the Court of Tuscany. Now first published from
the Originals in the Possession of the EARL OF WALDEGRAVE. Edited
by LORD DOVER 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1833.

We cannot transcribe this title-page without strong feelings of
regret. The editing of these volumes was the last of the useful
and modest services rendered to literature by a nobleman of
amiable manners, of untarnished public and private character, and
of cultivated mind. On this, as on other occasions, Lord Dover
performed his part diligently, judiciously, and without the
slightest ostentation. He had two merits which are rarely found
together in a commentator, he was content to be merely a
commentator, to keep in the background, and to leave the
foreground to the author whom he had undertaken to illustrate.
Yet, though willing to be an attendant, he was by no means a
slave; nor did he consider it as part of his duty to see no
faults in the writer to whom he faithfully and assiduously
rendered the humblest literary offices.

The faults of Horace Walpole's head and heart are indeed
sufficiently glaring. His writings, it is true, rank as high
among the delicacies of intellectual epicures as the Strasburg
pies among the dishes described in the Almanach des Gourmands.
But as the pate-de-foie-gras owes its excellence to the diseases
of the wretched animal which furnishes it, and would be good for
nothing if it were not made of livers preternaturally swollen, so
none but an unhealthy and disorganised mind could have produced
such literary luxuries as the works of Walpole.

He was, unless we have formed a very erroneous judgment of his
character, the most eccentric, the most artificial, the most
fastidious, the most capricious of men. His mind was a bundle of
inconsistent whims and affectations. His features were covered by
mask within mask. When the outer disguise of obvious affectation
was removed, you were still as far as ever from seeing the real
man. He played innumerable parts and over-acted them all. When he
talked misanthropy, he out-Timoned Timon. When he talked
philanthropy, he left Howard at an immeasurable distance. He
scoffed at courts, and kept a chronicle of their most trifling
scandal; at society, and was blown about by its slightest
veerings of opinion; at literary fame, and left fair copies of
his private letters, with copious notes, to be published after
his decease; at rank, and never for a moment forgot that he was
an Honourable; at the practice of entail, and tasked the
ingenuity of conveyancers to tie up his villa in the strictest
settlement.

The conformation of his mind was such that whatever was little
seemed to him great, and whatever was great seemed to him little.
Serious business was a trifle to him, and trifles were his
serious business. To chat with blue-stockings, to write little
copies of complimentary verses on little occasions, to
superintend a private press, to preserve from natural decay the
perishable topics of Ranelagh and White's, to record divorces and
bets, Miss Chudleigh's absurdities and George Selwyn's good
sayings, to decorate a grotesque house with pie-crust
battlements, to procure rare engravings and antique chimney-
boards, to match odd gauntlets, to lay out a maze of walks within
five acres of ground, these were the grave employments of his
long life. From these he turned to politics as to an amusement.
After the labours of the print-shop and the auction-room, he
unbent his mind in the House of Commons. And, having indulged in
the recreation of making laws and voting millions, he returned to
more important pursuits, to researches after Queen Mary's comb,
Wolsey's red hat, the pipe which Van Tromp smoked during his last
sea-fight, and the spur which King William struck into the flank
of Sorrel.

In everything in which Walpole busied himself, in the fine arts,
in literature, in public affairs, he was drawn by some strange
attraction from the great to the little, and from the useful to
the odd. The politics in which he took the keenest interests,
were politics scarcely deserving of the name. The growlings of
George the Second, the flirtations of Princess Emily with the
Duke of Grafton, the amours of Prince Frederic and Lady
Middlesex, the squabbles between Gold Stick in waiting and the
Master of the Buckhounds, the disagreements between the tutors of
Prince George, these matters engaged almost all the attention
which Walpole could spare from matters more important still, from
bidding for Zinckes and Petitots, from cheapening fragments of
tapestry and handles of old lances, from joining bits of painted
glass, and from setting up memorials of departed cats and dogs.
While he was fetching and carrying the gossip of Kensington
Palace and Carlton House, he fancied that he was engaged in
politics, and when he recorded that gossip, he fancied that he
was writing history.

He was, as he has himself told us, fond of faction as an
amusement. He loved mischief: but he loved quiet; and he was
constantly on the watch for opportunities of gratifying both his
tastes at once. He sometimes contrived, without showing himself,
to disturb the course of ministerial negotiations, and to spread
confusion through the political circles. He does not himself
pretend that, on these occasions, he was actuated by public
spirit; nor does he appear to have had any private advantage in
view. He thought it a good practical joke to set public men
together by the ears; and he enjoyed their perplexities, their
accusations, and their recriminations, as a malicious boy enjoys
the embarrassment of a misdirected traveller.

About politics, in the high sense of the word, he knew nothing,
and cared nothing. He called himself a Whig. His father's son
could scarcely assume any other name. It pleased him also to
affect a foolish dislike of kings as kings, and a foolish love
and admiration of rebels as rebels; and perhaps, while kings were
not in danger, and while rebels were not in being, he really
believed that he held the doctrines which he professed. To go no
further than the letters now before us, he is perpetually
boasting to his friend Mann of his aversion to royalty and to
royal persons. He calls the crime of Damien "that least bad of
murders, the murder of a king." He hung up in his villa an
engraving of the death-warrant of Charles, with the inscription
"Major Charta." Yet the most superficial knowledge of history
might have taught him that the Restoration, and the crimes and
follies of the twenty-eight years which followed the Restoration,
were the effects of this Greater Charter. Nor was there much in
the means by which that instrument was obtained that could
gratify a judicious lover of liberty. A man must hate kings very
bitterly, before he can think it desirable that the
representatives of the people should be turned out of doors by
dragoons, in order to get at a king's head. Walpole's Whiggism,
however, was of a very harmless kind. He kept it, as he kept the
old spears and helmets at Strawberry Hill, merely for show. He
would just as soon have thought of taking down the arms of the
ancient Templars and Hospitallers from the walls of his hall, and
setting off on a crusade to the Holy Land, as of acting in the
spirit of those daring warriors and statesmen, great even in
their errors, whose names and seals were affixed to the warrant
which he prized so highly. He liked revolution and regicide only
when they were a hundred years old. His republicanism, like the
courage of a bully, or the love of a fribble, was strong and
ardent when there was no occasion for it, and subsided when he
had an opportunity of bringing it to the proof. As soon as the
revolutionary spirit really began to stir in Europe, as soon as
the hatred of kings became something more than a sonorous phrase,
he was frightened into a fanatical royalist, and became one of
the most extravagant alarmists of those wretched times. In truth,
his talk about liberty, whether he knew it or not, was from the
beginning a mere cant, the remains of a phraseology which had
meant something in the mouths of those from whom he had learned
it, but which, in his mouth, meant about as much as the oath by
which the Knights of some modern orders bind themselves to
redress the wrongs of all injured ladies. He had been fed in his
boyhood with Whig speculations on government. He must often have
seen, at Houghton or in Downing Street, men who had been Whigs
when it was as dangerous to be a Whig as to be a highwayman, men
who had voted for the Exclusion Bill, who had been concealed in
garrets and cellars after the battle of Sedgemoor, and who had
set their names to the declaration that they would live and die
with the Prince of Orange. He had acquired the language of these
men, and he repeated it by rote, though it was at variance with
all his tastes and feelings; just as some old Jacobite families
persisted in praying for the Pretender, and in passing their
glasses over the water decanter when they drank the King's
health, long after they had become loyal supporters of the
government of George the Third. He was a Whig by the accident of
hereditary connection; but he was essentially a courtier; and
not the less a courtier because he pretended to sneer at the
objects which excited his admiration and envy. His real tastes
perpetually show themselves through the thin disguise. While
professing all the contempt of Bradshaw or Ludlow for crowned
heads, he took the trouble to write a book concerning Royal
Authors. He pryed with the utmost anxiety into the most minute
particulars relating to the Royal family. When, he was a child,
he was haunted with a longing to see George the First, and gave
his mother no peace till she had found a way of gratifying his
curiosity. The same feeling, covered with a thousand disguises,
attended him to the grave. No observation that dropped from the
lips of Majesty seemed to him too trifling to be recorded. The
French songs of Prince Frederic, compositions certainly not
deserving of preservation on account of their intrinsic merit,
have been carefully preserved for us by this contemner of
royalty. In truth, every page of Walpole's works betrays him.
This Diogenes, who would be thought to prefer his tub to a
palace, and who has nothing to ask of the masters of Windsor and
Versailles but that they will stand out of his light, is a
gentleman-usher at heart.

He had, it is plain, an uneasy consciousness of the frivolity of
his favourite pursuits; and this consciousness produced one of
the most diverting of his ten thousand affectations. His busy
idleness, his indifference to matters which the world generally
regards as important, his passion for trifles, he thought fit to
dignify with the name of philosophy. He spoke of himself as of a
man whose equanimity was proof to ambitious hopes and fears, who
had learned to rate power, wealth, and fame at their true value,
and whom the conflict of parties, the rise and fall of statesmen,
the ebb and flow of public opinion, moved only to a smile of
mingled compassion and disdain. It was owing to the peculiar
elevation of his character that he cared about a pinnacle of lath
and plaster more than about the Middlesex election, and about a
miniature of Grammont more than about the American Revolution.
Pitt and Murray might talk themselves hoarse about trifles. But
questions of government and war were too insignificant to detain
a mind which was occupied in recording the scandal of club-rooms
and the whispers of the back-stairs, and which was even capable
of selecting and disposing chairs of ebony and shields of
rhinoceros-skin.

One of his innumerable whims was an extreme unwillingness to be
considered a man of letters. Not that he was indifferent to
literary fame. Far from it. Scarcely any writer has ever troubled
himself so much about the appearance which his works were to make
before posterity. But he had set his heart on incompatible
objects. He wished to be a celebrated author, and yet to be a
mere idle gentleman, one of those Epicurean gods of the earth who
do nothing at all, and who pass their existence in the
contemplation of their own perfections. He did not like to have
anything in common with the wretches who lodged in the little
courts behind St. Martin's Church, and stole out on Sundays to
dine with their bookseller. He avoided the society of authors. He
spoke with lordly contempt of the most distinguished among them.
He tried to find out some way of writing books, as M. Jourdain's
father sold cloth, without derogating from his character of
Gentilhomme. "Lui, marchand? C'est pure medisance: il ne l'a
jamais ete. Tout ce qu'il faisait, c'est qu'il etait fort
obligeant, fort officieux; et comme il se connaissait fort bien
en etoffes, il en allait choisir de tons les cotes, les faisait
apporter chez lui, et en donnait a ses amis pour de l'argent."
There are several amusing instances of Walpole's feeling on this
subject in the letters now before us. Mann had complimented him
on the learning which appeared in the Catalogue of Royal and
Noble Authors; and it is curious to see how impatiently Walpole
bore the imputation of having attended to anything so
unfashionable as the improvement of his mind. "I know nothing.
How should I? I who have always lived in the big busy world; who
lie a-bed all the morning, calling it morning as long as you
please; who sup in company; who have played at faro half my life,
and now at loo till two and three in the morning; who have always
loved pleasure; haunted auctions. . . . How I have laughed when
some of the Magazines have called me the learned gentleman. Pray
don't be like the Magazines." This folly might be pardoned in a
boy. But a man between forty and fifty years old, as Walpole then
was, ought to be quite as much ashamed of playing at loo till
three every morning as of being that vulgar thing, a learned
gentleman.

The literary character has undoubtedly its full share of faults,
and of very serious and offensive faults. If Walpole had avoided
those faults, we could have pardoned the fastidiousness with
which he declined all fellowship with men of learning. But from
those faults Walpole was not one jot more free than the
garreteers from whose contact he shrank. Of literary meannesses
and literary vices, his life and his works contain as many
instances as the life and the works of any member of Johnson's
club. The fact is, that Walpole had the faults of Grub Street,
with a large addition from St. James's Street, the vanity, the
jealousy, and the irritability of a man of letters, the affected
superciliousness and apathy of a man of ton.

His judgment of literature, of contemporary literature
especially, was altogether perverted by his aristocratical
feelings. No writer surely was ever guilty of so much false and
absurd criticism. He almost invariably speaks with contempt of
those books which are now universally allowed to be the best that
appeared in his time; and, on the other hand, he speaks of
writers of rank and fashion as if they were entitled to the same
precedence in literature which would have been allowed to them in
a drawing-room. In these letters, for example, he says that he
would rather have written the most absurd lines in Lee than
Thomson's Seasons. The periodical paper called The World, on the
other hand, was by "our first writers." Who, then, were the first
writers of England in the year 1750? Walpole has told us in a
note. Our readers will probably guess that Hume, Fielding,
Smollett, Richardson, Johnson, Warburton, Collins, Akenside,
Gray, Dyer, Young, Warton, Mason, or some of those distinguished
men, were in the list. Not one of them. Our first writers, it
seems, were Lord Chesterfield, Lord Bath, Mr. W. Whithed, Sir
Charles Williams, Mr. Soame Jenyns, Mr. Cambridge, Mr. Coventry.
Of these seven personages, Whithed was the lowest in station, but
was the most accomplished tuft-hunter of his time. Coventry was
of a noble family. The other five had among them two seats in the
House of Lords, two seats in the House of Commons, three seats in
the Privy Council, a baronetcy, a blue riband, a red riband,
about a hundred thousand pounds a year, and not ten pages that
are worth reading. The writings of Whithed, Cambridge, Coventry,
and Lord Bath are forgotten. Soame Jenyns is remembered chiefly
by Johnson's review of the foolish Essay on the Origin of Evil.
Lord Chesterfield stands much lower in the estimation of
posterity than he would have done if his letters had never been
published. The lampoons of Sir Charles Williams are now read only
by the curious, and, though not without occasional flashes of
wit, have always seemed to us, we must own, very poor
performances.

Walpole judged of French literature after the same fashion. He
understood and loved the French language. Indeed, he loved it too
well. His style is more deeply tainted with Gallicism than that
of any other English writer with whom we are acquainted. His
composition often reads, for a page together, like a rude
translation from the French. We meet every minute with such
sentences as these, "One knows what temperaments Annibal Caracci
painted." "The impertinent personage!" "She is dead rich." "Lord
Dalkeith is dead of the small-pox in three days." "It will now be
seen whether he or they are most patriot."

His love of the French language was of a peculiar kind. He loved
it as having been for a century the vehicle of all the polite
nothings of Europe, as the sign by which the freemasons of
fashion recognised each other in every capital from Petersburgh
to Naples, as the language of raillery, as the language of
anecdote, as the language of memoirs, as the language of
correspondence. Its higher uses he altogether disregarded. The
literature of France has been to ours what Aaron was to Moses,
the expositor of great truths which would else have perished for
want of a voice to utter them with distinctness. The relation
which existed between Mr. Bentham and M. Dumont is an exact
illustration of the intellectual relation in which the two
countries stand to each other. The great discoveries in physics,
in metaphysics, in political science, are ours. But scarcely any
foreign nation except France has received them from us by direct
communication. Isolated by our situation, isolated by our
manners, we found truth, but we did not impart it. France has
been the interpreter between England and mankind.

In the time of Walpole, this process of interpretation was in
full activity. The great French writers were busy in proclaiming
through Europe the names of Bacon, of Newton, and of Locke. The
English principles of toleration, the English respect for
personal liberty, the English doctrine that all power is a trust
for the public good, were making rapid progress. There is
scarcely anything in history so interesting as that great
stirring up of the mind of France, that shaking of the
foundations of all established opinions, that uprooting of old
truth and old error. It was plain that mighty principles were at
work whether for evil or for good. It was plain that a great
change in the whole social system was at hand. Fanatics of one
kind might anticipate a golden age, in which men should live
under the simple dominion of reason, in perfect equality and
perfect amity, without property, or marriage, or king, or God. A
fanatic of another kind might see nothing in the doctrines of the
philosophers but anarchy and atheism, might cling more closely to
every old abuse, and might regret the good old days when St.
Dominic and Simon de Montfort put down the growing heresies of
Provence. A wise man would have seen with regret the excesses
into which the reformers were running; but he would have done
justice to their genius and to their philanthropy. He would have
censured their errors; but he would have remembered that, as
Milton has said, error is but opinion in the making. While he
condemned their hostility to religion, he would have acknowledged
that it was the natural effect of a system under which religion
had been constantly exhibited to them in forms which common sense
rejected and at which humanity shuddered. While he condemned some
of their political doctrines as incompatible with all law, all
property, and all civilisation, he would have acknowledged that
the subjects of Lewis the Fifteenth had every excuse which men
could have for being eager to pull down, and for being ignorant
of the far higher art of setting up. While anticipating a fierce
conflict, a great and wide-wasting destruction, he would yet have
looked forward to the final close with a good hope for France
and for mankind.

Walpole had neither hopes nor fears. Though the most Frenchified
English writer of the eighteenth century, he troubled himself
little about the portents which were daily to be discerned in the
French literature of his time. While the most eminent Frenchmen
were studying with enthusiastic delight English politics and
English philosophy, he was studying as intently the gossip of the
old court of France. The fashions and scandal of Versailles and
Marli, fashions and scandal a hundred years old, occupied him
infinitely more than a great moral revolution which was taking
place in his sight. He took a prodigious interest in every noble
sharper whose vast volume of wig and infinite length of riband
had figured at the dressing or at the tucking up of Lewis the
Fourteenth, and of every profligate woman of quality who had
carried her train of lovers backward and forward from king to
parliament, and from parliament to king, during the wars of the
Fronde. These were the people of whom he treasured up the
smallest memorial, of whom he loved to hear the most trifling
anecdote, and for whose likenesses he would have given any price.
Of the great French writers of his own time, Montesquieu is the
only one of whom he speaks with enthusiasm. And even of
Montesquieu he speaks with less enthusiasm than of that abject
thing, Crebillon the younger, a scribbler as licentious as Louvet
and as dull as Rapin. A man must be strangely constituted who can
take interest in pedantic journals of the blockades laid by the
Duke of A. to the hearts of the Marquise de B. and the Comtesse
de C. This trash Walpole extols in language sufficiently high for
the merits of Don Quixote. He wished to possess a likeness of
Crebillon; and Liotard, the first painter of miniatures then
living, was employed to preserve the features of the profligate
dunce. The admirer of the Sopha and of the Lettres Atheniennes
had little respect to spare for the men who were then at the head
of French literature. He kept carefully out of their way. He
tried to keep other People from paying them any attention. He
could not deny that Voltaire and Rousseau were clever men; but he
took every opportunity of depreciating them. Of D'Alembert he
spoke with a contempt which, when the intellectual powers of the
two men are compared, seems exquisitely ridiculous. D'Alembert
complained that he was accused of having written Walpole's squib
against Rousseau. "I hope," says Walpole, "that nobody will
attribute D'Alembert's works to me." He was in little danger.

It is impossible to deny, however, that Walpole's writings have
real merit, and merit of a very rare, though not of a very high
kind. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say that, though nobody would
for a moment compare Claude to Raphael, there would be another
Raphael before there was another Claude. And we own that we
expect to see fresh Humes and fresh Burkes before we again fall
in with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual
qualities to which the writings of Walpole owe their
extraordinary popularity.

It is easy to describe him by negatives. He had not a creative
imagination. He had not a pure taste. He was not a great
reasoner. There is indeed scarcely any writer in whose works it
would be possible to find so many contradictory judgments, so
many sentences of extravagant nonsense. Nor was it only in his
familiar correspondence that he wrote in this flighty and
inconsistent manner, but in long and elaborate books, in books
repeatedly transcribed and intended for the public eye. We will
give an instance or two; for without instances readers not very
familiar with his works will scarcely understand our meaning. In
the Anecdotes of Painting, he states, very truly, that the art
declined after the commencement of the civil wars. He proceeds to
inquire why this happened. The explanation, we should have
thought, would have been easily found. He might have mentioned
the loss of a king who was the most munificent and judicious
patron that the fine arts have ever had in England, the troubled
state of the country, the distressed condition of many of the
aristocracy, perhaps also the austerity of the victorious party.
These circumstances, we conceive, fully account for the
phaenomenon. But this solution was not odd enough to satisfy
Walpole. He discovers another cause for the decline of the art,
the want of models. Nothing worth painting, it seems, was left to
paint. "How picturesque," he exclaims, "was the figure of an
Anabaptist!"--as if puritanism had put out the sun and withered
the trees; as if the civil wars had blotted out the expression of
character and passion from the human lip and brow; as if many of
the men whom Vandyke painted had not been living in the time of
the Commonwealth, with faces little the worse for wear; as if
many of the beauties afterwards portrayed by Lely were not in
their prime before the Restoration; as if the garb or the
features of Cromwell and Milton were less picturesque than those
of the round-faced peers, as like each other as eggs to eggs, who
look out from the middle of the periwigs of Kneller. In the
Memoirs, again, Walpole sneers at the Prince of Wales, afterwards
George the Third, for presenting a collection of books to one of
the American colleges during the Seven Years' War, and says that,
instead of books, his Royal Highness ought to have sent arms and
ammunition, as if a war ought to suspend all study and all
education; or as if it were the business of the Prince of Wales
to supply the colonies with military stores out of his own
pocket. We have perhaps dwelt too long on these passages; but we
have done so because they are specimens of Walpole's manner.
Everybody who reads his works with attention will find that they
swarm with loose and foolish observations like those which we
have cited; observations which might pass in conversation or in a
hasty letter, but which are unpardonable in books deliberately
written and repeatedly corrected.

He appears to have thought that he saw very far into men; but we
are under the necessity of altogether dissenting from his
opinion. We do not conceive that he had any power of discerning
the finer shades of character. He practised an art, however,
which, though easy and even vulgar, obtains for those who
practise it the reputation of discernment with ninety-nine people
out of a hundred. He sneered at everybody, put on every action
the worst construction which it would bear, "spelt every man
backward," to borrow the Lady Hero's phrase,

"Turned every man the wrong side out,
And never gave to truth and virtue that
Which simpleness and merit purchaseth."

In this way any man may, with little sagacity and little trouble,
be considered by those whose good opinion is not worth having as
a great judge of character.

It is said that the hasty and rapacious Kneller used to send away
the ladies who sate to him as soon as he had sketched their
faces, and to paint the figure and hands from his housemaid. It
was in much the same way that Walpole portrayed the minds oft
others. He copied from the life only those glaring and obvious
peculiarities which could not escape the most superficial
observation. The rest of the canvas he filled up, in a careless
dashing way, with knave and fool, mixed in such proportions as
pleased Heaven. What a difference between these daubs and the
masterly portraits of Clarendon!

There are contradictions without end in the sketches of character
which abound in Walpole's works. But if we were to form our
opinion of his eminent contemporaries from a general survey of
what he has written concerning them, we should say that Pitt was
a strutting, ranting, mouthing actor, Charles Townshend an
impudent and voluble jack-pudding, Murray a demure, cold-blooded,
cowardly hypocrite, Hardwicke an insolent upstart, with the
understanding of a pettifogger and the heart of a hangman, Temple
an impertinent poltroon, Egmont a solemn coxcomb, Lyttelton a
poor creature whose only wish was to go to heaven in a coronet,
Onslow a pompous proser, Washington a braggart, Lord Camden
sullen, Lord Townshend malevolent, Secker an atheist who had
shammed Christian for a mitre, Whitefield an impostor who
swindled his converts out of their watches. The Walpoles fare
little better than their neighbours. Old Horace is constantly
represented as a coarse, brutal, niggardly buffoon, and his son
as worthy of such a father. In short, if we are to trust this
discerning judge of human nature, England in his time contained
little sense and no virtue, except what was distributed between
himself, Lord Waldegrave, and Marshal Conway.

Of such a writer it is scarcely necessary to say, that his works
are destitute of every charm which is derived from elevation, or
from tenderness of sentiment. When he chose to be humane and
magnanimous,--for he sometimes, by way of variety, tried this
affectation,--he overdid his part most ludicrously. None of his
many disguises sat so awkwardly upon him. For example, he tells
us that he did not choose to be intimate with Mr. Pitt. And why?
Because Mr. Pitt had been among the persecutors of his father? Or
because, as he repeatedly assures us, Mr. Pitt was a disagreeable
man in private? Not at all; but because Mr. Pitt was too fond of
war, and was great with too little reluctance. Strange that a
habitual scoffer like Walpole should imagine that this cant could
impose on the dullest reader! If Moliere had put such a speech
into the mouth of Tartuffe, we should have said that the fiction
was unskilful, and that Orgon could not have been such a fool as
to be taken in by it. Of the twenty-six years during which
Walpole sat in Parliament, thirteen were years of war. Yet he did
not, during all those thirteen years, utter a single word or give
a single vote tending to peace. His most intimate friend, the
only friend, indeed, to whom he appears to have been sincerely
attached, Conway, was a soldier, was fond of his profession, and
was perpetually entreating Mr. Pitt to give him employment. In
this Walpole saw nothing but what was admirable. Conway was a
hero for soliciting the command of expeditions which Mr. Pitt was
a monster for sending out.

What then is the charm, the irresistible charm, of Walpole's
writings? It consists, we think, in the art of amusing without
exciting. He never convinces the reason or fills the imagination,
or touches the heart; but he keeps the mind of the reader
constantly attentive and constantly entertained. He had a strange
ingenuity peculiarly his own, an ingenuity which appeared in all
that he did, in his building, in his gardening, in his
upholstery, in the matter and in the manner of his writings. If
we were to adopt the classification, not a very accurate
classification, which Akenside has given of the pleasures of the
imagination, we should say that with the Sublime and the
Beautiful Walpole had nothing to do, but that the third province,
the Odd, was his peculiar domain. The motto which he prefixed to
his Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors might have been
inscribed with perfect propriety over the door of every room in
his house, and on the title-page of every one of his books; "Dove
Diavolo, Messer Ludovico, avete pigliate tante coglionerie?" In
his villa, every apartment is a museum; every piece of furniture
is a curiosity; there is something strange in the form of the
shovel; there is a long story belonging to the bell-rope. We
wander among a profusion of rarities, of trifling intrinsic
value, but so quaint in fashion, or connected with such
remarkable names and events, that they may well detain our
attention for a moment. A moment is enough. Some new relic, some
new unique, some new carved work, some new enamel, is forthcoming
in an instant. One cabinet of trinkets is no sooner closed than
another is opened. It is the same with Walpole's writings. It is
not in their utility, it is not in their beauty, that their
attraction lies. They are to the works of great historians and
poets, what Strawberry Hill is to the Museum of Sir Hans Sloane
or to the Gallery of Florence. Walpole is constantly showing us
things, not of very great value indeed, yet things which we are
pleased to see, and which we can see nowhere else. They are
baubles; but they are made curiosities either by his grotesque
workmanship or by some association belonging to them. His style
is one of those peculiar styles by which everybody is attracted,
and which nobody can safely venture to imitate. He is a mannerist
whose manner has become perfectly easy to him, His affectation is
so habitual and so universal that it can hardly be called
affectation. The affectation is the essence of the man. It
pervades all his thoughts and all his expressions. If it were
taken away, nothing would be left. He coins new words, distorts
the senses of old words, and twists sentences into forms which
make grammarians stare. But all this he does, not only with an
air of ease, but as if he could not help doing it. His wit was,
in its essential properties, of the same kind with that of Cowley
and Donne. Like theirs, it consisted in an exquisite perception
of points of analogy and points of contrast too subtile for
common observation. Like them, Walpole perpetually startles us by
the ease with which he yokes together ideas between which there
would seem, at first sight, to be no connection. But he did not,
like them, affect the gravity of a lecture, and draw his
illustrations from the laboratory and from the schools. His tone
was light and fleering; his topics were the topics of the club
and the ballroom; and therefore his strange combinations and far-
fetched allusions, though very closely resembling those which
tire us to death in the poems of the time of Charles the First,
are read with pleasure constantly new.

No man who has written so much is so seldom tiresome. In his
books there are scarcely any of those passages which, in our
school-days, we used to call skip. Yet he often wrote on subjects
which are generally considered as dull, on subjects which men of
great talents have in vain endeavoured to render popular. When we
compare the Historic Doubts about Richard the Third with
Whitaker's and Chalmers's books on a far more interesting
question, the character of Mary Queen of Scots; when we compare
the Anecdotes of Painting with the works of Anthony Wood, of
Nichols, of Granger, we at once see Walpole's superiority, not in
industry, not in learning, not in accuracy, not in logical power,
but in the art of writing what people will like to read. He
rejects all but the attractive parts of his subject. He keeps
only what is in itself amusing or what can be made so by the
artifice of his diction. The coarser morsels of antiquarian
learning he abandons to others, and sets out an entertainment
worthy of a Roman epicure, an entertainment consisting of nothing
but delicacies, the brains of singing birds, the roe of mullets,
the sunny halves of peaches. This, we think, is the great merit
of his romance. There is little skill in the delineation of the
characters. Manfred is as commonplace a tyrant, Jerome as
commonplace a confessor, Theodore as commonplace a young
gentleman, Isabella and Matilda as commonplace a pair of young
ladies, as are to be found in any of the thousand Italian castles
in which condottieri have revelled or in which imprisoned
duchesses have pined. We cannot say that we much admire the big
man whose sword is dug up in one quarter of the globe, whose
helmet drops from the clouds in another, and who, after
clattering and rustling for some days, ends by kicking the house
down. But the story, whatever its value may be, never flags for a
single moment. There are no digressions, or unseasonable
descriptions, or long speeches. Every sentence carries the action
forward. The excitement is constantly renewed. Absurd as is the
machinery, insipid as are the human actors, no reader probably
ever thought the book dull.

Walpole's Letters are generally considered as his best
performances, and, we think, with reason. His faults are far less
offensive to us in his correspondence than in his books. His
wild, absurd, and ever-changing opinions about men and things are
easily pardoned in familiar letters. His bitter, scoffing,
depreciating disposition does not show itself in so unmitigated a
manner as in his Memoirs. A writer of letters must in general be
civil and friendly to his correspondent at least, if to no other
person.

He loved letter-writing, and had evidently, studied it as an art.
It was, in truth, the very kind of writing for such a man, for a
man very ambitious to rank among wits, yet nervously afraid that,
while obtaining the reputation of a wit, he might lose caste as a
gentleman. There was nothing vulgar in writing a letter. Not even
Ensign Northerton, not even the Captain described in Hamilton's
Bawn,--and Walpole, though the author of many quartos, had some
feelings in common with those gallant officers,--would have
denied that a gentleman might sometimes correspond with a friend.
Whether Walpole bestowed much labour on the composition of his
letters, it is impossible to judge from internal evidence. There
are passages which seem perfectly unstudied. But the appearance
of ease may be the effect of labour. There are passages which
have a very artificial air. But they may have been produced
without effort by a mind of which the natural ingenuity had been
improved into morbid quickness by constant exercise. We are never
sure that we see him as he was. We are never sure that what
appears to be nature is not disguised art. We are never sure that
what appears to be art is not merely habit which has become
second nature.

In wit and animation the present collection is not superior to
those which have preceded it. But it has one great advantage over
them all. It forms a connected whole, a regular journal of what
appeared to Walpole the most important transactions of the last
twenty years of George the Second's reign. It furnishes much new
information concerning the history of that time, the portion of
English history of which common readers know the least.

The earlier letters contain the most lively and interesting
account which we possess of that "great Walpolean battle," to use
the words of Junius, which terminated in the retirement of Sir
Robert. Horace entered the House of Commons just in time to
witness the last desperate struggle which his father, surrounded
by enemies and traitors, maintained, with a spirit as brave as
that of the column of Fontenoy, first for victory, and then for
honourable retreat. Horace was, of course, on the side of his
family. Lord Dover seems to have been enthusiastic on the same
side, and goes so far as to call Sir Robert "the glory of the
Whigs."

Sir Robert deserved this high eulogium, we think, as little as he
deserved the abusive epithets which have often been coupled with
his name. A fair character of him still remains to be drawn; and,
whenever it shall be drawn, it will be equally unlike the
portrait by Coxe and the portrait by Smollett.

He had, undoubtedly, great talents and great virtues. He was not,
indeed, like the leaders of the party which opposed his
government, a brilliant orator. He was not a profound scholar,
like Carteret, or a wit and a fine gentleman, like Chesterfield.
In all these respects his deficiencies were remarkable. His
literature consisted of a scrap or two of Horace and an anecdote
or two from the end of the Dictionary. His knowledge of history
was so limited that, in the great debate on the Excise Bill, he
was forced to ask Attorney-General Yorke who Empson and Dudley
were. His manners were a little too coarse and boisterous even
for that age of Westerns and Topehalls. When he ceased to talk of
politics, he could talk of nothing but women and he dilated on
his favourite theme with a freedom which shocked even that plain-
spoken generation, and which was quite unsuited to his age and
station. The noisy revelry of his summer festivities at Houghton
gave much scandal to grave people, and annually drove his kinsman
and colleague, Lord Townshend, from the neighbouring mansion of
Rainham.

But, however ignorant Walpole might be of general history and of
general literature, he was better acquainted than any man of his
day with what it concerned him most to know, mankind, the English
nation, the Court, the House of Commons, and the Treasury. Of
foreign affairs he knew little; but his judgment was so good
that his little knowledge went very far. He was an excellent
parliamentary debater, an excellent parliamentary tactician, an
excellent man of business. No man ever brought more industry or
more method to the transacting of affairs. No minister in his
time did so much; yet no minister had so much leisure.

He was a good-natured man who had during thirty years seen
nothing but the worst parts of human nature in other men. He was
familiar with the malice of kind people, and the perfidy of
honourable people. Proud men had licked the dust before him.
Patriots had begged him to come up to the price of their puffed
and advertised integrity. He said after his fall that it was a
dangerous thing to be a minister, that there were few minds which
would not be injured by the constant spectacle of meanness and
depravity. To his honour it must be confessed that few minds have
come out of such a trial so little damaged in the most important
parts. He retired, after more than twenty years of supreme power,
with a temper not soured, with a heart not hardened, with simple
tastes, with frank manners, and with a capacity for friendship.
No stain of treachery, of ingratitude, or of cruelty rests on his
memory. Factious hatred, while flinging on his name every other
foul aspersion, was compelled to own that he was not a man of
blood. This would scarcely seem a high eulogium on a statesman of
our times. It was then a rare and honourable distinction. The
contests of parties in England had long been carried on with a
ferocity unworthy of a civilised people. Sir Robert Walpole was
the minister who gave to our Government that character of lenity
which it has since generally preserved. It was perfectly known to
him that many of his opponents had dealings with the Pretender.
The lives of some were at his mercy. He wanted neither Whig nor
Tory precedents for using his advantage unsparingly. But with a
clemency to which posterity has never done justice, he suffered
himself to be thwarted, vilified, and at last overthrown, by a
party which included many men whose necks were in his power.

That he practised corruption on a large scale, is, we think,
indisputable. But whether he deserves all the invectives which
have been uttered against him on that account may be questioned.
No man ought to be severely censured for not being beyond
his age in virtue. To buy the votes of constituents is as immoral
as to buy the votes of representatives. The candidate who gives
five guineas to the freeman is as culpable as the man who gives
three hundred guineas to the member. Yet we know that, in our own
time, no man is thought wicked or dishonourable, no man is cut,
no man is black-balled, because, under the old system of
election, he was returned in the only way in which he could be
returned, for East Redford, for Liverpool, or for Stafford.
Walpole governed by corruption, because, in his time, it was
impossible to govern otherwise. Corruption was unnecessary to the
Tudors, for their Parliaments were feeble. The publicity which
has of late years been given to parliamentary proceedings has
raised the standard of morality among public men. The power of
public opinion is so great that, even before the reform of the
representation, a faint suspicion that a minister had given
pecuniary gratifications to Members of Parliament in return for
their votes would have been enough to ruin him. But, during the
century which followed the Restoration, the House of Commons was
in that situation in which assemblies must be managed by
corruption, or cannot be managed at all. It was not held in awe,
as in the sixteenth century, by the throne. It was not held in
awe as in the nineteenth century, by the opinion of the people.
Its constitution was oligarchical. Its deliberations were secret.
Its power in the State was immense. The Government had every
conceivable motive to offer bribes. Many of the members, if they
were not men of strict honour and probity, had no conceivable
motive to refuse what the Government offered. In the reign of
Charles the Second, accordingly, the practice of buying votes in
the House of Commons was commenced by the daring Clifford, and
carried to a great extent by the crafty and shameless Danby. The
Revolution, great and manifold as were the blessings of which it
was directly or remotely the cause, at first aggravated this
evil. The importance of the House of Commons was now greater than
ever. The prerogatives of the Crown were more strictly limited
than ever; and those associations in which, more than in its
legal prerogatives, its power had consisted, were completely
broken. No prince was ever in so helpless and distressing a
situation as William the Third. The party which defended his
title was, on general grounds, disposed to curtail his
prerogative. The party which was, on general grounds, friendly to
prerogative, was adverse to his title. There was no quarter in
which both his office and his person could find favour. But while
the influence of the House of Commons in the Government was
becoming paramount, the influence of the people over the House of
Commons was declining. It mattered little in the time of Charles
the First whether that House were or were not chosen by the
people; it was certain to act for the people, because it would
have been at the mercy of the Court but for the support of the
people. Now that the Court was at the mercy of the House of
Commons, those members who were not returned by popular election
had nobody to please but themselves. Even those who were returned
by popular election did not live, as now, under a constant sense
of responsibility. The constituents were not, as now, daily
apprised of the votes and speeches of their representatives. The
privileges which had in old times been indispensably necessary to
the security and efficiency of Parliaments were now superfluous.
But they were still carefully maintained, by honest legislators
from superstitious veneration, by dishonest legislators for their
own selfish ends. They had been an useful defence to the Commons
during a long and doubtful conflict with powerful sovereigns.
They were now no longer necessary for that purpose; and they
became a defence to the members against their constituents. That
secrecy which had been absolutely necessary in times when the
Privy Council was in the habit of sending the leaders of
Opposition to the Tower was preserved in times when a vote of the
House of Commons was sufficient to hurl the most powerful
minister from his post.

The Government could not go on unless the Parliament could be
kept in order. And how was the Parliament to be kept in order?
Three hundred years ago it would have been enough for the
statesman to have the support of the Crown. It would now, we hope
and believe, be enough for him to enjoy the confidence and
approbation of the great body of the middle class. A hundred
years ago it would not have been enough to have both Crown and
people on his side. The Parliament had shaken off the control of
the Royal prerogative. It had not yet fallen under the control of
public opinion. A large proportion of the members had absolutely
no motive to support any administration except their own
interest, in the lowest sense of the word. Under these
circumstances, the country could be governed only by corruption.
Bolingbroke, who was the ablest and the most vehement of those
who raised the clamour against corruption, had no better remedy
to propose than that the Royal prerogative should be
strengthened. The remedy would no doubt have been efficient. The
only question is, whether it would not have been worse than the
disease. The fault was in the constitution of the Legislature;
and to blame those ministers who managed the Legislature in the
only way in which it could be managed is gross injustice. They
submitted to extortion because they could not help themselves. We
might as well accuse the poor Lowland farmers who paid black-mail
to Rob Roy of corrupting the virtue of the Highlanders, as accuse
Sir Robert Walpole of corrupting the virtue of Parliament. His
crime was merely this, that he employed his money more
dexterously, and got more support in return for it, than any of
those who preceded or followed him.

He was himself incorruptible by money. His dominant passion was
the love of power: and the heaviest charge which can be brought
against him is that to this passion he never scrupled to
sacrifice the interests of his country.

One of the maxims which, as his son tells us, he was most In the
habit of repeating, was quieta non movere. It was indeed the
maxim by which he generally regulated his public conduct. It is
the maxim of a man more solicitous to hold power long than to use
it well. It is remarkable that, though he was at the head of
affairs during more than twenty years, not one great measure, not
one important change for the better or for the worse in any part
of our institutions, marks the period of his supremacy. Nor was
this because he did not clearly see that many changes were very
desirable. He had been brought up in the school of toleration, at
the feet of Somers and of Burnet. He disliked the shameful laws
against Dissenters. But he never could be induced to bring
forward a proposition for repealing them. The sufferers
represented to him the injustice with which they were treated,
boasted of their firm attachment to the House of Brunswick and to
the Whig party, and reminded him of his own repeated declarations
of goodwill to their cause. He listened, assented, promised, and
did nothing. At length, the question was brought forward by
others, and the Minister, after a hesitating and evasive speech,
voted against it. The truth was that he remembered to the latest
day of his life that terrible explosion of high-church feeling
which the foolish prosecution of a foolish parson had occasioned
in the days of Queen Anne. If the Dissenters had been turbulent
he would probably have relieved them; but while he apprehended no
danger from them, he would not run the slightest risk for their
sake. He acted in the same manner with respect to other
questions. He knew the state of the Scotch Highlands. He was
constantly predicting another insurrection in that part of the
empire. Yet, during his long tenure of power, he never attempted
to perform what was then the most obvious and pressing duty of a
British Statesman, to break the power of the Chiefs, and to
establish the authority of law through the furthest corners of
the Island. Nobody knew better than he that, if this were not
done, great mischiefs would follow. But the Highlands were
tolerably quiet in his time. He was content to meet daily
emergencies by daily expedients; and he left the rest to his
successors. They had to conquer the Highlands in the midst of a
war with France and Spain, because he had not regulated the
Highlands in a time of profound peace.

Sometimes, in spite of all his caution, he found that measures
which he had hoped to carry through quietly had caused great
agitation. When this was the case he generally modified or
withdrew them. It was thus that he cancelled Wood's patent in
compliance with the absurd outcry of the Irish. It was thus that
he frittered away the Porteous Bill to nothing, for fear of
exasperating the Scotch. It was thus that he abandoned the Excise
Bill, as soon as he found that it was offensive to all the great
towns of England. The language which he held about that measure
in a subsequent session is strikingly characteristic. Pulteney
had insinuated that the scheme would be again brought forward.
"As to the wicked scheme," said Walpole, "as the gentleman is
pleased to call it, which he would persuade gentlemen is not yet
laid aside, I for my part assure this House I am not so mad as
ever again to engage in anything that looks like an Excise;
though, in my private opinion, I still think it was a scheme that
would have tended very much to the interest of the nation."

The conduct of Walpole with regard to the Spanish war is the
great blemish of his public life. Archdeacon Coxe imagined that
he had discovered one grand principle of action to which the
whole public conduct of his hero ought to be referred.

"Did the administration of Walpole," says the biographer,
"present any uniform principle which may be traced in every part,
and which gave combination and consistency to the whole? Yes, and
that principle was, THE LOVE OF PEACE." It would be difficult, we
think, to bestow a higher eulogium on any statesman. But the
eulogium is far too high for the merits of Walpole. The great
ruling principle of his public conduct was indeed a love of
peace, but not in the sense in which Archdeacon Coxe uses the
phrase. The peace which Walpole sought was not the peace of the
country, but the peace of his own administration. During the
greater part of his public life, indeed, the two objects were
inseparably connected. At length he was reduced to the necessity
of choosing between them, of plunging the State into hostilities
for which there was no just ground, and by which nothing was to
be got, or of facing a violent opposition in the country, in
Parliament, and even in the royal closet. No person was more
thoroughly convinced than he of the absurdity of the cry against
Spain. But his darling power was at stake, and his choice was
soon made. He preferred an unjust war to a stormy session. It is
impossible to say of a Minister who acted thus that the love of
peace was the one grand principle to which all his conduct is to
be referred. The governing principle of his conduct was neither
love of peace nor love of war, but love of power.

The praise to which he is fairly entitled is this, that he
understood the true interest of his country better than any of
his contemporaries, and that he pursued that interest whenever it
was not incompatible with the interest of his own intense and
grasping ambition. It was only in matters of public moment that
he shrank from agitation and had recourse to compromise. In his
contests for personal influence there was no timidity, no
flinching. He would have all or none. Every member of the
Government who would not submit to his ascendency was turned out
or forced to resign. Liberal of everything else, he was
avaricious of power. Cautious everywhere else, when power was at
stake he had all the boldness of Richelieu or Chatham. He might
easily have secured his authority if he could have been induced
to divide it with others. But he would not part with one fragment
of it to purchase defenders for all the rest. The effect of this
policy was that he had able enemies and feeble allies. His most
distinguished coadjutors left him one by one, and joined the
ranks of the Opposition. He faced the increasing array of his
enemies with unbroken spirit, and thought it far better that they
should attack his power than that they should share it.

The Opposition was in every sense formidable. At its head were
two royal personages, the exiled head of the House of Stuart, the
disgraced heir of the House of Brunswick. One set of members
received directions from Avignon. Another set held their
consultations and banquets at Norfolk House. The majority of the
landed gentry, the majority of the parochial clergy, one of the
universities, and a strong party in the City of London and in the
other great towns, were decidedly adverse to the Government. Of
the men of letters, some were exasperated by the neglect with
which the Minister treated them, a neglect which was the more
remarkable, because his predecessors, both Whig and Tory, had
paid court with emulous munificence to the wits and poets; others
were honestly inflamed by party zeal; almost all lent their aid
to the Opposition. In truth, all that was alluring to ardent and
imaginative minds was on that side; old associations, new visions
of political improvement, high-flown theories of loyalty, high-
flown theories of liberty, the enthusiasm of the Cavalier, the
enthusiasm of the Roundhead. The Tory gentleman, fed in the
common-rooms of Oxford with the doctrines of Filmer and
Sacheverell, and proud of the exploits of his great-grandfather,
who had charged with Rupert at Marston, who had held out the old
manor-house against Fairfax, and who, after the King's return,
had been set down for a Knight of the Royal Oak, flew to that
section of the Opposition which, under pretence of assailing the
existing administration, was in truth assailing the reigning
dynasty. The young republican, fresh from his Livy and his Lucan,
and glowing with admiration of Hampden, of Russell, and of
Sydney, hastened with equal eagerness to those benches from which
eloquent voices thundered nightly against the tyranny and perfidy
of courts. So many young politicians were caught by these
declamations that Sir Robert, in one of his best speeches,
observed that the Opposition consisted of three bodies, the
Tories, the discontented Whigs, who were known by the name of the
Patriots, and the Boys. In fact almost every young man of warm
temper and lively imagination, whatever his political bias might
be, was drawn into the party adverse to the Government; and some
of the most distinguished among them, Pitt, for example, among
public men, and Johnson, among men of letters, afterwards openly
acknowledged their mistake.

The aspect of the Opposition, even while it was still a minority
in the House of Commons, was very imposing. Among those who, in
Parliament or out of Parliament, assailed the administration of
Walpole, were Bolingbroke, Carteret, Chesterfield, Argyle,
Pulteney, Wyndham, Doddington, Pitt, Lyttelton, Barnard, Pope,
Swift, Gay, Arbuthnot, Fielding, Johnson, Thomson, Akenside,
Glover.

The circumstance that the Opposition was divided into two
parties, diametrically opposed to each other in political
opinions, was long the safety of Walpole. It was at last his
ruin. The leaders of the minority knew that it would be difficult
for them to bring forward any important measure without producing
an immediate schism in their party. It was with very great
difficulty that the Whigs in opposition had been induced to give
a sullen and silent vote for the repeal of the Septennial Act.
The Tories, on the other hand, could not be induced to support
Pulteney's motion for an addition to the income of Prince
Frederic. The two parties had cordially joined in calling out for
a war with Spain; but they now had their war. Hatred of Walpole
was almost the only feeling which was common to them. On this one
point, therefore, they concentrated their whole strength. With
gross ignorance, or gross dishonesty, they represented the
Minister as the main grievance of the State. His dismissal, his
punishment, would prove the certain cure for all the evils which
the nation suffered. What was to be done after his fall, how
misgovernment was to be prevented in future, were questions to
which there were as many answers as there were noisy and ill-
informed members of the Opposition. The only cry in which all
could join was, "Down with Walpole!" So much did they narrow the
disputed ground, so purely personal did they make the question,
that they threw out friendly hints to the other members of the
Administration, and declared that they refused quarter to the
Prime Minister alone. His tools might keep their heads, their
fortunes, even their places, if only the great father of
corruption were given up to the just vengeance of the nation.

If the fate of Walpole's colleagues had been inseparably bound up
with his, he probably would, even after the unfavourable
elections of 1741, have been able to weather the storm. But as
soon as it was understood that the attack was directed against
him alone, and that, if he were sacrificed, his associates might
expect advantageous and honourable terms, the ministerial ranks
began to waver, and the murmur of sauve qui peut was heard. That
Walpole had foul play is almost certain, but to what extent it is
difficult to say. Lord Islay was suspected; the Duke of Newcastle
something more than suspected. It would have been strange,
indeed, if his Grace had been idle when treason was hatching.

"Ch' i' ho de' traditor' sempre sospetto,
E Gan fu traditor prima che nato."

"His name," said Sir Robert, "is perfidy."

Never was a battle more manfully fought out than the last
struggle of the old statesman. His clear judgment, his long
experience, and his fearless spirit, enabled him to maintain a
defensive war through half the session. To the last his heart
never failed him--and, when at last he yielded, he yielded not to
the threats of his enemies, but to the entreaties of his
dispirited and refractory followers. When he could no longer
retain his power, he compounded for honour and security, and
retired to his garden and his paintings, leaving to those who had
overthrown him shame, discord, and ruin.

Everything was in confusion. It has been said that the confusion
was produced by the dexterous policy of Walpole; and,
undoubtedly, he did his best to sow dissension amongst his
triumphant enemies. But there was little for him to do. Victory
had completely dissolved the hollow truce, which the two sections
of the Opposition had but imperfectly observed, even while the
event of the contest was still doubtful. A thousand questions
were opened in a moment. A thousand conflicting claims were
preferred. It was impossible to follow any line of policy which
would not have been offensive to a large portion of the
successful party. It was impossible to find places for a tenth
part of those who thought that they had a right to office. While
the parliamentary leaders were preaching patience and confidence,
while their followers were clamouring for reward, a still louder
voice was heard from without, the terrible cry of a people angry,
they hardly know with whom, and impatient they hardly knew for
what. The day of retribution had arrived. The Opposition reaped
that which they had sown. Inflamed with hatred and cupidity,
despairing of success by any ordinary mode of political warfare,
and blind to consequences, which, though remote, were certain,
they had conjured up a devil whom they could not lay. They had
made the public mind drunk with calumny and declamation. They had
raised expectations which it was impossible to satisfy. The
downfall of Walpole was to be the beginning of a political
millennium; and every enthusiast had figured to himself that
millennium according to the fashion of his own wishes. The
republican expected that the power of the Crown would be reduced
to a mere shadow, the high Tory that the Stuarts would be
restored, the moderate Tory that the golden days which the Church
and the landed interest had enjoyed during the last years of Queen
Anne would immediately return. It would have been impossible to
satisfy everybody. The conquerors satisfied nobody.

We have no reverence for the memory of those who were then called
the patriots. We are for the principles of good government
against Walpole,--and for Walpole against the Opposition. It was
most desirable that a purer system should be introduced; but, if
the old system was to be retained, no man was so fit as Walpole
to be at the head of affairs. There were grievous abuses in the
Government, abuses more than sufficient to justify a strong
Opposition. But the party opposed to Walpole, while they
stimulated the popular fury to the highest point, were at no
pains to direct it aright. Indeed they studiously misdirected it.
They misrepresented the evil.  They prescribed inefficient and
pernicious remedies. They held up a single man as the sole cause
of all the vices of a bad system which had been in full operation
before his entrance into public life, and which continued to be
in full operation when some of these very brawlers had succeeded
to his power. They thwarted his best measures. They drove him
into an unjustifiable war against his will. Constantly talking
in magnificent language about tyranny, corruption, wicked
ministers, servile courtiers, the liberty of Englishmen, the
Great Charter, the rights for which our fathers bled, Timoleon,
Brutus, Hampden, Sydney, they had absolutely nothing to propose
which would have been an improvement on our institutions. Instead
of directing the public mind to definite reforms which might have
completed the work of the revolution, which might have brought
the legislature into harmony with the nation, and which might
have prevented the Crown from doing by influence what it could no
longer do by prerogative, they excited a vague craving for
change, by which they profited for a single moment, and of which,
as they well deserved, they were soon the victims.

Among the reforms which the State then required, there were two
of paramount importance, two which would alone have remedied
almost every gross abuse, and without which all other remedies
would have been unavailing, the publicity of parliamentary
proceedings, and the abolition of the rotten boroughs. Neither of
these was thought of. It seems us clear that, if these were not
adopted, all other measures would have been illusory. Some of the
patriots suggested changes which would, beyond all doubt, have
increased the existing evils a hundredfold. These men wished to
transfer the disposal of employments and the command of the army
from the Crown to the Parliament; and this on the very ground
that the Parliament had long been a grossly corrupt body. The
security against malpractices was to be that the members, instead
of having a portion of the public plunder doled out to them by a
minister, were to help themselves.

The other schemes of which the public mind was full were less
dangerous than this. Some of them were in themselves harmless.
But none of them would have done much good, and most of them were
extravagantly absurd. What they were we may learn from the
instructions which many constituent bodies, immediately after the
change of administration, sent up to their representatives. A
more deplorable collection of follies can hardly be imagined.
There is, in the first place, a general cry for Walpole's head.
Then there are better complaints of the decay of trade, a decay
which, in the judgment of these enlightened politicians, was
brought about by Walpole and corruption. They would have been
nearer to the truth if they had attributed their sufferings to
the war into which they had driven Walpole against his better
judgment. He had foretold the effects of his unwilling
concession. On the day when hostilities against Spain were
proclaimed, when the heralds were attended into the city by the
chiefs of the Opposition, when the Prince of Wales himself
stopped at Temple Bar to drink success to the English arms, the
minister heard all the steeples of the city jingling with a merry
peal, and muttered, "They may ring the bells now; they will be
wringing their hands before long."

Another grievance, for which of course Walpole and corruption
were answerable, was the great exportation of English wool. In
the judgment of the sagacious electors of several large towns,
the remedying of this evil was a matter second only in importance
to the hanging of Sir Robert. There were also earnest injunctions
that the members should vote against standing armies in time of
peace, injunctions which were, to say the least, ridiculously
unseasonable in the midst of a war which was likely to last, and
which did actually last, as long as the Parliament. The repeal of
the Septennial Act, as was to be expected, was strongly pressed.
Nothing was more natural than that the voters should wish for a
triennial recurrence of their bribes and their ale. We feel
firmly convinced that the repeal of the Septennial Act,
unaccompanied by a complete reform of the constitution of the
elective body, would have been an unmixed curse to the country.
The only rational recommendation which we can find in all these
instructions is that the number of placemen in Parliament should
be limited, and that pensioners should not he allowed to sit
there. It is plain, however, that this cure was far from going to
the root of the evil, and that, if it had been adopted without
other reforms, secret bribery would probably have been more
practised than ever.

We will give one more instance of the absurd expectations which
the declamations of the Opposition had raised in the country.
Akenside was one of the fiercest and most uncompromising of the
young patriots out of Parliament. When he found that the change
of administration had produced no change of system, he gave vent
to his indignation in the Epistle to Curio, the best poem that he
ever wrote, a poem, indeed, which seems to indicate, that, if he
had left lyric composition to Gray and Collins, and had employed
his powers in grave and elevated satire, he might have disputed
the pre-eminence of Dryden. But whatever be the literary merits
of the epistle, we can say nothing in praise of the political
doctrines which it inculcates. The poet, in a rapturous
apostrophe to the spirits of the great men of antiquity, tells
us what he expected from Pulteney at the moment of the fall of
the tyrant.

"See private life by wisest arts reclaimed,
See ardent youth to noblest manners framed,
See us achieve whate'er was sought by you,
If Curio--only Curio--will be true."

It was Pulteney's business, it seems, to abolish faro, and
masquerades, to stint the young Duke of Marlborough to a bottle
of brandy a day, and to prevail on Lady Vane to be content with
three lovers at a time.

Whatever the people wanted, they certainly got nothing. Walpole
retired in safety; and the multitude were defrauded of the
expected show on Tower Hill. The Septennial Act was not repealed.
The placemen were not turned out of the House of Commons. Wool,
we believe, was still exported. "Private life" afforded as much
scandal as if the reign of Walpole and corruption had continued;
and "ardent youth" fought with watchmen and betted with blacklegs
as much as ever.

The colleagues of Walpole had, after his retreat, admitted some
of the chiefs of the Opposition into the Government, and soon
found themselves compelled to submit to the ascendency of one of
their new allies. This was Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl
Granville. No public man of that age had greater courage, greater
ambition, greater activity, greater talents for debate or for
declamation. No public man had such profound and extensive
learning. He was familiar with the ancient writers, and loved to
sit up till midnight discussing philological and metrical
questions with Bentley. His knowledge of modern languages was
prodigious. The privy council, when he was present; needed no
interpreter. He spoke and wrote French, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese, German, even Swedish. He had pushed his researches
into the most obscure nooks of literature. He was as familiar
with Canonists and Schoolmen as with orators and poets. He had
read all that the universities of Saxony and Holland had produced
on the most intricate questions of public law. Harte, in the
preface to the second edition of his History of Gustavus
Adolphus, bears a remarkable testimony to the extent and accuracy
of Lord Carteret's knowledge. "It was my good fortune or prudence
to keep the main body of my army (or in other words my matters of
fact) safe and entire. The late Earl of Granville was pleased to
declare himself of this opinion; especially when he found that I
had made Chemnitius one of my principal guides; for his Lordship
was apprehensive I might not have seen that valuable and
authentic book, which is extremely scarce. I thought myself happy
to have contented his Lordship even in the lowest degree: for he
understood the German and Swedish histories to the highest
perfection."

With all this learning, Carteret was far from being a pedant. His
was not one of those cold spirits of which the fire is put out by
the fuel. In council, in debate, in society, he was all life and
energy. His measures were strong, prompt, and daring, his oratory
animated and glowing. His spirits were constantly high. No
misfortune, public or private, could depress him. He was at once
the most unlucky and the happiest public man of his time.

He had been Secretary of State in Walpole's Administration, and
had acquired considerable influence over the mind of George the
First. The other ministers could speak no German. The King could
speak no English. All the communication that Walpole held with
his master was in very bad Latin. Carteret dismayed his
colleagues by the volubility with which he addressed his Majesty
in German. They listened with envy and terror to the mysterious
gutturals which might possibly convey suggestions very little in
unison with their wishes.

Walpole was not a man to endure such a colleague as Carteret. The
King was induced to give up his favourite. Carteret joined the
Opposition, and signalised himself at the head of that party
till, after the retirement of his old rival, he again became
Secretary of State.

During some months he was chief Minister, indeed sole Minister.
He gained the confidence and regard of George the Second. He was
at the same time in high favour with the Prince of Wales. As a
debater in the House of Lords, he had no equal among his
colleagues. Among his opponents, Chesterfield alone could be
considered as his match. Confident in his talents, and in the
royal favour, he neglected all those means by which the power of
Walpole had been created and maintained. His head was full of
treaties and expeditions, of schemes for supporting the Queen of
Hungary and for humbling the House of Bourbon. He contemptuously
abandoned to others all the drudgery, and, with the drudgery, all
the fruits of corruption. The patronage of the Church and of the
Bar he left to the Pelhams as a trifle unworthy of his care. One
of the judges, Chief Justice Willes, if we remember rightly, went
to him to beg some ecclesiastical preferment for a friend.
Carteret said, that he was too much occupied with continental
politics to think about the disposal of places and benefices.
"You may rely on it, then," said the Chief Justice, "that people
who want places and benefices will go to those who have more
leisure." The prediction was accomplished. It would have been a
busy time indeed in which the Pelhams had wanted leisure for
jobbing; and to the Pelhams the whole cry of place-hunters and
pension-hunters resorted. The parliamentary influence of the two
brothers became stronger every day, till at length they were at
the head of a decided majority in the House of Commons. Their
rival, meanwhile, conscious of his powers, sanguine in his hopes,
and proud of the storm which he had conjured up on the Continent,
would brook neither superior nor equal. "His rants," says Horace
Walpole, "are amazing; so are his parts and his spirits." He
encountered the opposition of his colleagues, not with the fierce
haughtiness of the first Pitt, or the cold unbending arrogance of
the second, but with a gay vehemence, a good-humoured
imperiousness, that bore everything down before it. The period of
his ascendency was known by the name of the "Drunken
Administration"; and the expression was not altogether
figurative. His habits were extremely convivial; and champagne
probably lent its aid to keep him in that state of joyous
excitement in which his life was passed.

That a rash and impetuous man of genius like Carteret should not
have been able to maintain his ground in Parliament against the
crafty and selfish Pelhams is not strange. But it is less easy to
understand why he should have been generally unpopular throughout
the country. His brilliant talents, his bold and open temper,
ought, it should seem, to have made him a favourite with the
public. But the people had been bitterly disappointed; and he had
to face the first burst of their rage. His close connection with
Pulteney, now the most detested man in the nation, was an
unfortunate circumstance. He had, indeed, only three partisans,
Pulteney, the King, and the Prince of Wales, a most singular
assemblage.

He was driven from his office. He shortly after made a bold,
indeed a desperate, attempt to recover power. The attempt failed.
From that time he relinquished all ambitious hopes, and retired
laughing to his books and his bottle. No statesman ever enjoyed
success with so exquisite a relish, or submitted to defeat with
so genuine and unforced a cheerfulness. Ill as he had been used,
he did not seem, says Horace Walpole, to have any resentment, or
indeed any feeling except thirst.

These letters contain many good stories, some of them no doubt
grossly exaggerated, about Lord Carteret; how, in the height of
his greatness, he fell in love at first sight on a birthday with
Lady Sophia Fermor, the handsome daughter of Lord Pomfret; how he
plagued the Cabinet every day with reading to them her ladyship's
letters; how strangely he brought home his bride; what fine
jewels he gave her; how he fondled her at Ranelagh; and what
queen-like state she kept in Arlington Street. Horace Walpole has
spoken less bitterly of Carteret than of any public man of that
time, Fox, perhaps, excepted; and this is the more remarkable,
because Carteret was one of the most inveterate enemies of Sir
Robert. In the Memoirs, Horace Walpole, after passing in review
all the great men whom England had produced within his memory,
concludes by saying, that in genius none of them equalled Lord
Granville. Smollett, in Humphrey Clinker, pronounces a similar
judgment in coarser language. "Since Granville was turned out,
there has been no minister in this nation worth the meal that
whitened his periwig."

Carteret fell; and the reign of the Pelhams commenced. It was
Carteret's misfortune to be raised to power when the public mind
was still smarting from recent disappointment. The nation had
been duped, and was eager for revenge. A victim was necessary,
and on such occasions the victims of popular rage are selected
like the victim of Jephthah. The first person who comes in the
way is made the sacrifice. The wrath of the people had now spent
itself; and the unnatural excitement was succeeded by an
unnatural calm. To an irrational eagerness for something new,
succeeded an equally irrational disposition to acquiesce in
everything established. A few months back the people had been
disposed to impute every crime to men in power, and to lend a
ready ear to the high professions of men in opposition. They were
now disposed to surrender themselves implicitly to the management
of Ministers, and to look with suspicion and contempt on all who
pretended to public spirit. The name of patriot had become a by-
word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he
said that, in those times, the most popular declaration which a
candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been
and never would be a patriot. At this conjecture took place the
rebellion of the Highland clans. The alarm produced by that event
quieted the strife of internal factions. The suppression of the
insurrection crushed for ever the spirit of the Jacobite party.
Room was made in the Government for a few Tories. Peace was
patched up with France and Spain. Death removed the Prince of
Wales, who had contrived to keep together a small portion of that
formidable opposition of which he had been the leader in the time
of Sir Robert Walpole. Almost every man of weight in the House of
Commons was officially connected with the Government The even
tenor of the session of Parliament was ruffled only by an
occasional harangue from Lord Egmont on the army estimates. For
the first time since the accession of the Stuarts there was no
opposition. This singular good fortune, denied to the ablest
statesmen, to Salisbury, to Strafford, to Clarendon, to Somers,
to Walpole, had been reserved for the Pelhams.

Henry Pelham, it is true, was by no means a contemptible person.
His understanding was that of Walpole on a somewhat smaller
scale. Though not a brilliant orator, he was, like his master, a
good debater, a good parliamentary tactician, a good man of
business. Like his master, he distinguished himself by the
neatness and clearness of his financial expositions. Here the
resemblance ceased. Their characters were altogether dissimilar.
Walpole was good-humoured, but would have his way: his spirits
were high, and his manners frank even to coarseness. The temper
of Pelham was yielding, but peevish: his habits were regular, and
his deportment strictly decorous. Walpole was constitutionally
fearless, Pelharn constitutionally timid. Walpole had to face a
strong opposition; but no man in the Government durst wag a
finger against him. Almost all the opposition which Pelham had to
encounter was from members of the Government of which he was the
head. His own pay-master spoke against his estimates. His own
secretary-at-war spoke against his Regency Bill. In one day
Walpole turned Lord Chesterfield, Lord Burlington, and Lord
Clinton out of the royal household, dismissed the highest
dignitaries of Scotland from their posts, and took away the
regiments of the Duke of Bolton and Lord Cobham, because he
suspected them of having encouraged the resistance to his Excise
Bill. He would far rather have contended with the strongest
minority, under the ablest leaders, than have tolerated mutiny in
his own party. It would have gone hard with any of his
colleagues, who had ventured, on a Government question, to divide
the House of Commons against him. Pelham, on the other hand, was
disposed to bear anything rather than drive from office any man
round whom a new opposition could form. He therefore endured with
fretful patience the insubordination of Pitt and Fox. He thought
it far better to connive at their occasional infractions of
discipline than to hear them, night after night, thundering
against corruption and wicked ministers from the other side of
the House.

We wonder that Sir Walter Scott never tried his hand on the Duke
of Newcastle. An interview between his Grace and Jeanie Deans
would have been delightful, and by no means unnatural. There is
scarcely any public man in our history of whose manners and
conversation so many particulars have been preserved. Single
stories may be unfounded or exaggerated. But all the stories
about him, whether told by people who were perpetually seeing him
in Parliament and attending his levee in Lincoln's Inn Fields, or
by Grub Street writers who never had more than a glimpse of his
star through the windows of his gilded coach, are of the same
character. Horace Walpole and Smollett differed in their tastes
and opinions as much as two human beings could differ. They kept
quite different society. Walpole played at cards with countesses,
and corresponded with ambassadors. Smollett passed his life
surrounded by printers' devils and famished scribblers. Yet
Walpole's Duke and Smollett's Duke are as like as if they were
both from one hand. Smollett's Newcastle runs out of his
dressing-room, with his face covered with soap-suds, to embrace
the Moorish envoy. Walpole's Newcastle pushes his way into the
Duke of Grafton's sick-room to kiss the old nobleman's plasters.
No man was so unmercifully satirised. But in truth he was himself
a satire ready made. All that the art of the satirist does for
other men, nature had done for him. Whatever was absurd about him
stood out with grotesque prominence from the rest of the
character. He was a living, moving, talking caricature. His gait
was a shuffling trot; his utterance a rapid stutter; he was
always in a hurry; he was never in time; he abounded in fulsome
caresses and in hysterical tears. His oratory resembled that of
justice Shallow. It was nonsense--effervescent with animal
spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain,
some well authenticated, some probably invented at coffee-houses,
but all exquisitely characteristic. "Oh--yes--yes--to be sure--
Annapolis must he defended--troops must be sent to Annapolis--
Pray where is Annapolis?"--"Cape Breton an island! Wonderful!--
show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you
always bring us good news. I must go and tell the King that Cape
Breton is an island."

And this man was, during near thirty years, Secretary of State,
and, during near ten years, First Lord of the Treasury! His large
fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great
parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary
fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by
a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one
object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and
authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the Fortunes
of Nigel. It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place
of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no
money dealings with my father," says Marth to Lord Glenvarloch;
"for, dotard as he is, he will make an ass of you." It was as
dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to
buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a
greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and
even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity he was
false beyond all example of political falsehood. All the able men
of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who
never knew his own mind for an hour together; and he overreached
them all round.

If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that
this man would have continued at the head of affairs without
admitting any other person to a share of his authority until the
throne was filled by a new Prince, who brought with him new
maxims of government, new favourites, and a strong will. But the
inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a
crisis to which Newcastle was altogether unequal. After a calm of
fifteen years the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its
inmost depths. In a few days the whole aspect of the political
world was changed.

But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the
end of an article already more than sufficiently long. It is
probable that we may, at no remote time, resume the subject.



WILLIAM PITT, EARL OF CHATHAM

(January 1834)

A History of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Earl of Chatham,
containing his Speeches in Parliament, a considerable Portion of
his Correspondence when Secretary of State, upon French, Spanish,
and American Affairs, never before published; and an Account of
the principal Events and Persons of his Time, connected with his
Life, Sentiments and Administration. By the Rev. FRANCIS
THACKERAY, A.M. 2 Vols. 4to. London: 1827.

Though several years have elapsed since the publication of this
work, it is still, we believe, a new publication to most of our
readers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book is large, and the
style heavy. The information which Mr. Thackeray has obtained
from the State Paper Office is new; but much of it is very
uninteresting. The rest of his narrative is very little better
than Gifford's or Tomline's Life of the second Pitt, and tells us
little or nothing that may not be found quite as well told in the
Parliamentary History, the Annual Register, and other works
equally common.

Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency
to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan.
Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in
their growth; smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost
every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some
intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors, all, in
short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the
writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to the Lues
Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. But we scarcely remember
ever to have seen a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr.
Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing us to confess that
Pitt was a great orator, a vigorous minister, an honourable and
high-spirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all
accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of Gods, men, and
columns, Pitt must be a poet, a poet capable of producing a
heroic poem of the first order; and we are assured that we ought
to find many charms in such lines as these:

"Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere,
My light-charged bark may haply glide;
Some gale may waft, some conscious thought shall cheer,
And the small freight unanxious glide."

[The quotation is faithfully made from Mr. Thackeray. Perhaps
Pitt wrote guide in the fourth line.]

Pitt was in the army for a few months in time of peace. Mr.
Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the
young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one
of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all.
Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet, in esse, and a great
general in posse, but a finished example of moral excellence, the
just man made perfect. He was in the right when he attempted to
establish an inquisition, and to give bounties for perjury, in
order to get Walpole's head. He was in the right when he declared
Walpole to have been an excellent minister. He was in the right
when, being in opposition, he maintained that no peace ought to
be made with Spain, till she should formally renounce the right
of search. He was in the right when, being in office, he silently
acquiesced in a treaty by which Spain did not renounce the right
of search. When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced
with the Duke of Newcastle, when he thundered against subsidies,
when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion, when he
execrated the Hanoverian connection, when he declared that
Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire, he was still
invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened
statesman.

The truth is that there scarcely ever lived a person who had so
little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a
great man. But his was not a complete and well-proportioned
greatness. The public life of Hampden or of Somers resembles a
regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every
scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main
action. The public life of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude
though striking piece, a piece abounding in incongruities, a
piece without any unity of plan, but redeemed by some noble
passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or
extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions
were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most important
conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by pride and
resentment. He had one fault, which of all human faults is most
rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely
affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real
genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without
simplicity of character. He was an actor in the Closet, an actor
at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society
he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We
know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often
complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord
Chatham's room till everything was ready for the representation,
till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till
the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of
the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been arranged
with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as
gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear.

Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt had, in a very
extraordinary degree, many of the elements of greatness. He had
genius, strong passions, quick sensibility, and vehement
enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was something
about him which ennobled tergiversation itself. He often went
wrong, very wrong. But, to quote the language of Wordsworth,

                      "He still retained,
'Mid such abasement, what he had received
From nature, an intense and glowing mind."

In an age of low and dirty prostitution, in the age of Dodington
and Sandys, it was something to have a man who might perhaps,
under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his
country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her, a
man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire of gain, but
from a fierce thirst for power, for glory, and for vengeance.
History owes to him this attestation, that at a time when
anything short of direct embezzlement of the public money was
considered as quite fair in public men, he showed the most
scrupulous disinterestedness; that, at a time when it seemed to
be generally taken for granted that Government could be upheld
only by the basest and most immoral arts, he appealed to the
better and nobler parts of human nature; that he made a brave and
splendid attempt to do, by means of public opinion, what no other
statesman of his day thought it possible to do, except by means
of corruption; that he looked for support, not, like the Pelhams,
to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the
personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of
Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in
his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an
unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an
ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner
as clearly proved him to have sought it, not for the sake of
profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a
great and durable reputation by means of eminent services
rendered to the State.

The family of Pitt was wealthy and respectable. His grandfather
was Governor of Madras, and brought back from India that
celebrated diamond which the Regent Orleans, by the advice of
Saint Simon, purchased for upwards of two millions of livres, and
which is still considered as the most precious of the crown
jewels of France. Governor Pitt bought estates and rotten
boroughs, and sat in the House of Commons for Old Sarum. His son
Robert was at one time member for Old Sarum, and at another for
Oakhampton. Robert had two sons. Thomas, the elder, inherited the
estates and the parliamentary interest of his father. The second
was the celebrated William Pitt.

He was born in November, 1708. About the early part of his life
little more is known than that he was educated at Eton, and that
at seventeen he was entered at Trinity College, Oxford. During
the second year of his residence at the University, George the
First died; and the event was, after the fashion of that
generation, celebrated by the Oxonians in many middling copies of
verses. On this occasion Pitt published some Latin lines, which
Mr. Thackeray has preserved. They prove that the young student
had but a very limited knowledge even of the mechanical part of
his art. All true Etonians will hear with concern that their
illustrious schoolfellow is guilty of making the first syllable
in labenti short. [So Mr. Thackeray has printed the poem. But it
may be charitably hoped that Pitt wrote labanti.] The matter of
the poem is as worthless as that of any college exercise that was
ever written before or since. There is, of course, much about
Mars, Themis, Neptune, and Cocytus. The Muses are earnestly
entreated to weep over the urn of Caesar; for Caesar, says the
Poet, loved the Muses; Caesar, who could not read a line of Pope,
and who loved nothing but punch and fat women.

Pitt had been, from his school-days, cruelly tormented by the
gout, and was advised to travel for his health. He accordingly
left Oxford without taking a degree, and visited France and
Italy. He returned, however, without having received much benefit
from his excursion, and continued, till the close of his life, to
suffer most severely from his constitutional malady.

His father was now dead, and had left very little to the younger
children. It was necessary that William should choose a
profession. He decided for the army, and a cornet's commission
was procured for him in the Blues.

But, small as his fortune was, his family had both the power and
the inclination to serve him. At the general election of 1734,
his elder brother Thomas was chosen both for Old Sarum and for
Oakhampton. When Parliament met in 1735, Thomas made his election
to serve for Oakhampton, and William was returned for Old Sarum.

Walpole had now been, during fourteen years, at the head of
affairs. He had risen to power under the most favourable
circumstances. The whole of the Whig party, of that party which
professed peculiar attachment to the principles of the
Revolution, and which exclusively enjoyed the confidence of the
reigning house, had been united in support of his administration.
Happily for him, he had been out of office when the South-Sea Act
was passed; and, though he does not appear to have foreseen all
the consequences of that measure, he had strenuously opposed it,
as he had opposed all the measures, good and bad, of Sutherland's
administration. When the South-Sea Company were voting dividends
of fifty per cent, when a hundred pounds of their stock were
selling for eleven hundred pounds, when Threadneedle Street was
daily crowded with the coaches of dukes and prelates, when
divines and philosophers turned gamblers, when a thousand kindred
bubbles were daily blown into existence, the periwig-company, and
the Spanish-jackass-company, and the quicksilver-fixation-
company, Walpole's calm good sense preserved him from the general
infatuation. He condemned the prevailing madness in public, and
turned a considerable sum by taking advantage of it in private.
When the crash came, when ten thousand families were reduced to
beggary in a day, when the people, in the frenzy of their rage
and despair, clamoured, not only against the lower agents in the
juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the
English ministers, against the King himself, when Parliament met,
eager for confiscation and blood, when members of the House of
Commons proposed that the directors should be treated like
parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the
Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their
eyes. Four years before he had been driven from power by the
intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope; and the lead in the House
of Commons had been intrusted to Craggs and Aislabie. Stanhope
was no more. Aislabie was expelled from Parliament on account of
his disgraceful conduct regarding the South-Sea scheme. Craggs
was perhaps saved by a timely death from a similar mark of
infamy. A large minority in the House of Commons voted for a
severe censure on Sunderland, who, finding it impossible to
withstand the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired from
office, and outlived his retirement but a very short time. The
schism which had divided the Whig party was now completely
healed. Walpole had no opposition to encounter except that of the
Tories; and the Tories were naturally regarded by the King with
the strongest suspicion and dislike.

For a time business went on with a smoothness and a despatch such
as had not been known since the days of the Tudors. During the
session of 1724, for example, there was hardly a single division
except on private bills. It is not impossible that, by taking the
course which Pelham afterwards took, by admitting into the
Government all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party,
and by making room here and there for a Tory not unfriendly to
the House of Brunswick, Walpole might have averted the tremendous
conflict in which he passed the later years of his
administration, and in which he was at length vanquished. The
Opposition which overthrew him was an opposition created by his
own policy, by his own insatiable love of power.

In the very act of forming his Ministry he turned one of the
ablest and most attached of his supporters into a deadly enemy.
Pulteney had strong public and private claims to a high situation
in the new arrangement. His fortune was immense. His private
character was respectable. He was already a distinguished
speaker. He had acquired official experience in an important
post. He had been, through all changes of fortune, a consistent
Whig. When the Whig party was split into two sections, Pulteney
had resigned a valuable place, and had followed the fortunes of
Walpole. Yet, when Walpole returned to power, Pulteney was not
invited to take office. An angry discussion took place between
the friends. The Ministry offered a peerage. It was impossible
for Pulteney not to discern the motive of such an offer. He
indignantly refused to accept it. For some time he continued to
brood over his wrongs, and to watch for an opportunity of
revenge. As soon as a favourable conjuncture arrived he joined
the minority, and became the greatest leader of Opposition that
the House of Commons had ever seen.

Of all the members of the Cabinet Carteret was the most eloquent
and accomplished. His talents for debate were of the first order;
his knowledge of foreign affairs was superior to that of any
living statesman; his attachment to the Protestant succession was
undoubted. But there was not room in one Government for him and
Walpole. Carteret retired, and was from that time forward, one of
the most persevering and formidable enemies of his old colleague.

If there was any man with whom Walpole could have consented to
make a partition of power, that man was Lord Townshend. They were
distant kinsmen by birth, near kinsmen by marriage. They had been
friends from childhood. They had been schoolfellows at Eton. They
were country neighbours in Norfolk. They had been in office
together under Godolphin. They had gone into opposition together
when Harley rose to power. They had been persecuted by the same
House of Commons. They had, after the death of Anne, been
recalled together to office. They had again been driven out
together by Sunderland, and had again come back together when the
influence of Sunderland had declined. Their opinions on public
affairs almost always coincided. They were both men of frank,
generous, and compassionate natures. Their intercourse had been
for many years affectionate and cordial. But the ties of blood,
of marriage, and of friendship, the memory of mutual services,
the memory of common triumphs and common disasters, were
insufficient to restrain that ambition which domineered over all
the virtues and vices of Walpole. He was resolved, to use his own
metaphor, that the firm of the house should be, not Townshend and
Walpole, but Walpole and Townshend. At length the rivals
proceeded to personal abuse before a large company, seized each
other by the collar, and grasped their swords. The women
squalled. The men parted the combatants. By friendly intervention
the scandal of a duel between cousins, brothers-in-law, old
friends, and old colleagues, was prevented. But the disputants
could not long continue to act together. Townshend retired, and,
with rare moderation and public spirit, refused to take any part
in politics. He could not, he said, trust his temper. He feared
that the recollection of his private wrongs might impel him to
follow the example of Pulteney, and to oppose measures which he
thought generally beneficial to the country. He therefore never
visited London after his resignation, but passed the closing
years of his life in dignity and repose among his trees and
pictures at Rainham.

Next went Chesterfield. He too was a Whig and a friend of the
Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a
man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order
to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and
supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the
ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His
brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The Minister
acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy;
caution in the conduct of public affairs; energy where his own
supremacy was concerned. He withdrew his Bill, and turned out all
his hostile or wavering colleagues. Chesterfield was stopped on
the great staircase of St. James's, and summoned to deliver up
the staff which he bore as Lord Steward of the Household. A crowd
of noble and powerful functionaries, the Dukes of Montrose and
Bolton, Lord Burlington, Lord Stair, Lord Cobham, Lord Marchmont,
Lord Clinton, were at the same time dismissed from the service of
the Crown,

Not long after these events the Opposition was reinforced by the
Duke of Argyle, a man vainglorious indeed and fickle, but brave,
eloquent and popular. It was in a great measure owing to his
exertions that the Act of Settlement had been peaceably carried
into effect in England immediately after the death of Anne, and
that the Jacobite rebellion which, during the following year,
broke out in Scotland, had been suppressed. He too carried over
to the minority the aid of his great name, his talents, and his
paramount influence in his native country.

In each of these cases taken separately, a skilful defender of
Walpole might perhaps make out a case for him. But when we see
that during a long course of years all the footsteps are turned
the same way, that all the most eminent of those public men who
agreed with the Minister in their general views of policy left
him, one after another, with sore and irritated minds, we find it
impossible not to believe that the real explanation of the
phaenomenon is to be found in the words of his son, "Sir Robert
Walpole loved power so much that he would not endure a rival."
Hume has described this famous minister with great felicity in
one short sentence,--"moderate in exercising power, not equitable
in engrossing it." Kind-hearted, jovial, and placable as Walpole
was, he was yet a man with whom no person of high pretensions and
high spirit could long continue to act. He had, therefore, to
stand against an Opposition containing all the most accomplished
statesmen of the age, with no better support than that which he
received from persons like his brother Horace or Henry Pelham,
whose industrious mediocrity gave no cause for jealousy, or from
clever adventurers, whose situation and character diminished the
dread which their talents might have inspired. To this last class
belonged Fox, who was too poor to live without office; Sir
William Yonge, of whom Walpole himself said, that
"Nothing but such parts could buoy up such a character, and that
nothing but such a character could drag down such parts; and
Winnington, whose private morals lay, justly or unjustly, under
imputations of the worst kind."

The discontented Whigs were, not perhaps in number, but certainly
in ability, experience, and weight, by far the most important
part of the Opposition. The Tories furnished little more than
rows of ponderous foxhunters, fat with Staffordshire or
Devonshire ale, men who drank to the King over the water, and
believed that all the fundholders were Jews, men whose religion
consisted in hating the Dissenters, and whose political
researches had led them to fear, like Squire Western, that their
land might be sent over to Hanover to be put in the sinking-fund.
The eloquence of these zealous squires, and remnant of the once
formidable October Club, seldom went beyond a hearty Aye or No.
Very few members of this party had distinguished themselves much
in Parliament, or could, under any circumstances, have been
called to fill any high office; and those few had generally, like
Sir William Wyndham, learned in the company of their new
associates the doctrines of toleration and political liberty, and
might indeed with strict propriety be called Whigs.

It was to the Whigs in Opposition, the Patriots, as they were
called, that the most distinguished of the English youth who at
this season entered into public life attached themselves. These
inexperienced politicians felt all the enthusiasm which the name
of liberty naturally excites in young and ardent minds. They
conceived that the theory of the Tory Opposition and the practice
of Walpole's Government were alike inconsistent with the
principles of liberty. They accordingly repaired to the standard
which Pulteney had set up. While opposing the Whig minister, they
professed a firm adherence to the purest doctrines of Whiggism.
He was the schismatic; they were the true Catholics, the peculiar
people, the depositaries of the orthodox faith of Hampden and
Russell, the one sect which, amidst the corruptions generated by
time and by the long possession of power, had preserved inviolate
the principles of the Revolution. Of the young men who attached
themselves to this portion of the Opposition the most
distinguished were Lyttelton and Pitt.

When Pitt entered Parliament, the whole political world was
attentively watching the progress of an event which soon added
great strength to the Opposition, and particularly to that
section of the Opposition in which the young statesman enrolled
himself. The Prince of Wales was gradually becoming more and more
estranged from his father and his father's ministers, and more
and more friendly to the Patriots.

Nothing is more natural than that, in a monarchy where a
constitutional Opposition exists, the heir-apparent of the throne
should put himself at the head of that Opposition. He is impelled
to such a course by every feeling of ambition and of vanity. He
cannot be more than second in the estimation of the party which
is in. He is sure to be the first member of the party which is
out. The highest favour which the existing administration can
expect from him is that he will not discard them. But, if he
joins the Opposition, all his associates expect that he will
promote them; and the feelings which men entertain towards one
from whom they hope to obtain great advantages which they have
not are far warmer than the feelings with which they regard one
who, at the very utmost, can only leave them in possession of
what they already have. An heir-apparent, therefore, who wishes
to enjoy, in the highest perfection, all the pleasure that can be
derived from eloquent flattery and profound respect, will always
join those who are struggling to force themselves into power.
This is, we believe, the true explanation of a fact which Lord
Granville attributed to some natural peculiarity in the
illustrious House of Brunswick. "This family," said he at
Council, we suppose after his daily half-gallon of Burgundy,
"always has quarrelled, and always will quarrel, from generation
to generation." He should have known something of the matter; for
he had been a favourite with three successive generations of the
royal house. We cannot quite admit his explanation; but the fact
is indisputable. Since the accession of George the First, there
have been four Princes of Wales, and they have all been almost
constantly in Opposition.

Whatever might have been the motives which induced Prince
Frederick to join the party opposed to the Government, his
support infused into many members of that party a courage and an
energy of which they stood greatly in need. Hitherto it had been
impossible for the discontented Whigs not to feel some misgivings
when they found themselves dividing night after night, with
uncompromising Jacobites who were known to be in constant
communication with the exiled family, or with Tories who had
impeached Somers, who had murmured against Harley and St. John as
too remiss in the cause of the Church and the landed interest,
and who, if they were not inclined to attack the reigning family,
yet considered the introduction of that family as, at best,
only the least of two great evils, as a necessary but painful
and humiliating preservative against Popery. The Minister might
plausibly say that Pulteney and Carteret, in the hope of gratifying
their own appetite for office and for revenge, did not scruple to
serve the purposes of a faction hostile to the Protestant succession.
The appearance of Frederick at the head of the Patriots silenced
this reproach. The leaders of the Opposition might now boast that
their course was sanctioned by a person as deeply interested as
the King himself in maintaining the Act of Settlement, and that,
instead of serving the purposes of the Tory party, they had
brought that party over to the side of Whiggism. It must indeed
be admitted that, though both the King and the Prince behaved in
a manner little to their honour, though the father acted harshly,
the son disrespectfully, and both childishly, the royal family
was rather strengthened than weakened by the disagreement of its
two most distinguished members. A large class of politicians, who
had considered themselves as placed under sentence of perpetual
exclusion from office, and who, in their despair, had been almost
ready to join in a counter-revolution as the only mode of
removing the proscription under which they lay, now saw with
pleasure an easier and safer road to power opening before them,
and thought it far better to wait till, in the natural course of
things, the Crown should descend to the heir of the House of
Brunswick, than to risk their lands and their necks in a rising
for the House of Stuart. The situation of the royal family
resembled the situation of those Scotch families in which father
and son took opposite sides during the rebellion, in order that,
come what might, the estate might not be forfeited.

In April 1736, Frederick was married to the Princess of Saxe
Gotha, with whom he afterwards lived on terms very similar to
those on which his father had lived with Queen Caroline. The
Prince adored his wife, and thought her in mind and person the
most attractive of her sex. But he thought that conjugal fidelity
was an unprincely virtue; and, in order to be like Henry the
Fourth, and the Regent Orleans, he affected a libertinism for
which he had no taste, and frequently quitted the only woman whom
he loved for ugly and disagreeable mistresses.

The address which the House of Commons presented to the King on
the occasion of the Prince's marriage was moved, not by the
Minister, but by Pulteney, the leader of the Whigs in Opposition.
It was on this motion that Pitt, who had not broken silence
during the session in which he took his seat, addressed the House
for the first time. "A contemporary historian," says Mr.
Thackeray, "describes Mr. Pitt's first speech as superior even to
the models of ancient eloquence. According to Tindal, it was more
ornamented than the speeches of Demosthenes, and less diffuse
than those of Cicero." This unmeaning phrase has been a hundred
times quoted. That it should ever have been quoted, except to be
laughed at, is strange. The vogue which it has obtained may serve
to show in how slovenly a way most people are content to think.
Did Tindal, who first used it, or Archdeacon Coxe and Mr.
Thackeray, who have borrowed it, ever in their lives hear any
speaking which did not deserve the same compliment? Did they ever
hear speaking less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more
diffuse than that of Cicero? We know no living orator, from Lord
Brougham down to Mr. Hunt, who is not entitled to the same
eulogy. It would be no very flattering compliment to a man's
figure to say, that he was taller than the Polish Count, and
shorter than Giant O'Brien, fatter than the Anatomie Vivante, and
more slender than Daniel Lambert.

Pitt's speech, as it is reported in the Gentleman's Magazine,
certainly deserves Tindal's compliment, and deserves no other. It
is just as empty and wordy as a maiden speech on such an occasion
might be expected to be. But the fluency and the personal
advantages of the young orator instantly caught the ear and eye
of his audience. He was, from the day of his first appearance,
always heard with attention; and exercise soon developed the
great powers which he possessed.

In our time, the audience of a member of Parliament is the
nation. The three or four hundred persons who may be present
while a speech is delivered may be pleased or disgusted by the
voice and action of the orator; but, in the reports which are
read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference
between the noblest and the meanest figure, between the richest
and the shrillest tones, between the most graceful and the most
uncouth gesture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago,
scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House
of Commons was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore,
the impression which a speaker might make on the persons who
actually heard him was everything. His fame out of doors depended
entirely on the report of those who were within the doors. In the
Parliaments of that time, therefore, as in the ancient
commonwealths, those qualifications which enhance the immediate
effect of a speech, were far more important ingredients in the
composition of an orator than at present. All those
qualifications Pitt possessed in the highest degree. On the
stage, he would have been the finest Brutus or Coriolanus ever
seen. Those who saw him in his decay, when his health was broken,
when his mind was untuned, when he had been removed from that
stormy assembly of which he thoroughly knew the temper, and over
which he possessed unbounded influence, to a small, a torpid, and
an unfriendly audience, say that his speaking was then, for the
most part, a low, monotonous muttering, audible only to those who
sat close to him, that when violently excited, he sometimes
raised his voice for a few minutes, but that it sank again into
an unintelligible murmur. Such was the Earl of Chatham, but such
was not William Pitt. His figure, when he first appeared in
Parliament, was strikingly graceful and commanding, his features
high and noble, his eye full of fire. His voice, even when it
sank to a whisper, was heard to the remotest benches; and when he
strained it to its full extent, the sound rose like the swell of
the organ of a great Cathedral, shook the house with its peal,
and was heard through lobbies and down staircases to the Court of
Requests and the precincts of Westminster Hall. He cultivated all
these eminent advantages with the most assiduous care. His action
is described by a very malignant observer as equal to that of
Garrick. His play of countenance was wonderful: he frequently
disconcerted a hostile orator by a single glance of indignation
or scorn. Every tone, from the impassioned cry to the thrilling
aside, was perfectly at his command. It is by no means improbable
that the pains which he took to improve his great personal
advantages had, in some respects, a prejudicial operation, and
tended to nourish in him that passion for theatrical effect
which, as we have already remarked, was one of the most
conspicuous blemishes in his character.

But it was not solely or principally to outward accomplishments
that Pitt owed the vast influence which, during nearly thirty
years, he exercised over the House of Commons. He was undoubtedly
a great orator; and, from the descriptions given by his
contemporaries, and the fragments of his speeches which still
remain, it is not difficult to discover the nature and extent of
his oratorical powers.

He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared discourses
were complete failures. The elaborate panegyric which he
pronounced on General Wolfe was considered as the very worst of
all his performances. "No man," says a critic who had often heard
him, "ever knew so little what he was going to say." Indeed, his
facility amounted to a vice. He was not the master, but the slave
of his own speech. So little self-command had he when once he
felt the impulse, that he did not like to take part in a debate
when his mind was full of an important secret of state. "I must
sit still," he once said to Lord Shelburne on such an occasion;
"for, when once I am up, everything that is in my mind comes
out."

Yet he was not a great debater. That he should not have been so
when first he entered the House of Commons is not strange.
Scarcely any person has ever become so without long practice and
many failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that
Charles Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that
ever lived. Charles Fox himself attributed his own success to the
resolution which he formed when very young, of speaking, well or
ill, at least once every night. "During five whole sessions," he
used to say, "I spoke every night but one; and I regret only that
I did not speak on that night too." Indeed, with the exception of
Mr. Stanley, whose knowledge of the science of parliamentary
defence resembles an instinct, it would be difficult to name any
eminent debater who has not made himself a master of his art at
the expense of his audience.

But, as this art is one which even the ablest men have seldom
acquired without long practice, so it is one which men of
respectable abilities, with assiduous and intrepid practice,
seldom fail to acquire. It is singular that, in such an art,
Pitt, a man of great parts, of great fluency, of great boldness,
a man whose whole life was passed in parliamentary conflict, a
man who, during several years, was the leading minister of the
Crown in the House of Commons, should never have attained to high
excellence. He spoke without premeditation; but his speech
followed the course of his own thoughts, and not the course of
the previous discussion. He could, indeed, treasure up in his
memory some detached expression of an opponent, and make it the
text for lively ridicule or solemn reprehension. Some of the most
celebrated bursts of his eloquence were called forth by an
unguarded word, a laugh, or a cheer. But this was the only sort
of reply in which he appears to have excelled. He was perhaps the
only great English orator who did not think it any advantage to
have the last word, and who generally spoke by choice before his
most formidable antagonists. His merit was almost entirely
rhetorical. He did not succeed either in exposition or in
refutation; but his speeches abounded with lively illustrations,
striking apophthegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allusions,
passionate appeals. His invective and sarcasm were terrific.
Perhaps no English orator was ever so much feared.

But that which gave most effect to his declamation was the air of
sincerity, of vehement feeling, of moral elevation, which
belonged to all that he said. His style was not always in the
purest taste. Several contemporary judges pronounced it too
florid. Walpole, in the midst of the rapturous eulogy which he
pronounces on one of Pitt's greatest orations, owns that some of
the metaphors were too forced. Some of Pitt's quotations and
classical stories are too trite for a clever schoolboy. But these
were niceties for which the audience cared little. The enthusiasm
of the orator infected all who heard him; his ardour and his
noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave
dignity to the most puerile allusion.

His powers soon began to give annoyance to the Government; and
Walpole determined to make an example of the patriotic cornet.
Pitt was accordingly dismissed from the service. Mr. Thackeray
says that the Minister took this step, because he plainly saw
that it would have been vain to think of buying over so
honourable and disinterested an opponent. We do not dispute
Pitt's integrity; but we do not know what proof he had given of
it when he was turned out of the army; and we are sure that
Walpole was not likely to give credit for inflexible honesty to a
young adventurer who had never had an opportunity of refusing
anything. The truth is, that it was not Walpole's practice to buy
off enemies. Mr. Burke truly says, in the Appeal to the Old
Whigs, that Walpole gained very few over from the Opposition.
Indeed that great minister knew his business far too well. He,
knew that, for one mouth which is stopped with a place, fifty
other mouths will he instantly opened. He knew that it would have
been very bad policy in him to give the world to understand that
more was to be got by thwarting his measures than by supporting
them. These maxims are as old as the origin of parliamentary
corruption in England. Pepys learned them, as he tells us, from
the counsellors of Charles the Second.

Pitt was no loser. He was made Groom of the Bedchamber to the
Prince of Wales, and continued to declaim against the ministers
with unabated violence and with increasing ability. The question
of maritime right, then agitated between Spain and England,
called forth all his powers. He clamoured for war with a
vehemence which it is not easy to reconcile with reason or
humanity, but which appears to Mr. Thackeray worthy of the
highest admiration. We will not stop to argue a point on which we
had long thought that all well-informed people were agreed. We
could easily show, we think, that, if any respect be due to
international law, if right, where societies of men are
concerned, be anything but another name for might, if we do not
adopt the doctrine of the Buccaneers, which seems to be also the
doctrine of Mr. Thackeray, that treaties mean nothing within
thirty degrees of the line, the war with Spain was altogether
unjustifiable. But the truth is, that the promoters of that war
have saved the historian the trouble of trying them. They have
pleaded guilty. "I have seen," says Burke, "and with some care
examined, the original documents concerning certain important
transactions of those times. They perfectly satisfied me of the
extreme injustice of that war, and of the falsehood of the
colours which Walpole, to his ruin, and guided by a mistaken
policy, suffered to be daubed over that measure. Some years
after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal
actors against that minister, and with those who principally
excited that clamour. None of them, no, not one, did in the least
defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct. They
condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting upon
any proceeding in history in which they were totally
unconcerned." Pitt, on subsequent occasions, gave ample proof
that he was one of these penitents. But his conduct, even where
it appeared most criminal to himself, appears admirable to his
biographer.

The elections of 1741 were unfavourable to Walpole; and after a
long and obstinate struggle he found it necessary to resign. The
Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke opened a negotiation with
the leading Patriots, in the hope of forming an administration on
a Whig basis. At this conjuncture, Pitt and those persons who
were most nearly connected with him acted in a manner very little
to their honour. They attempted to come to an understanding with
Walpole, and offered, if he would use his influence with the King
in their favour, to screen him from prosecution. They even went
so far as to engage for the concurrence of the Prince of Wales.
But Walpole knew that the assistance of the Boys, as he called
the young Patriots, would avail him nothing if Pulteney and
Carteret should prove intractable, and would be superfluous if
the great leaders of the Opposition could be gained. He,
therefore, declined the proposal. It is remarkable that Mr.
Thackeray, who has thought it worth while to preserve Pitt's bad
college verses, has not even alluded to this story, a story which
is supported by strong testimony, and which may be found in so
common a book as Coxe's Life of Walpole.

The new arrangements disappointed almost every member of the
Opposition, and none more than Pitt. He was not invited to become
a place-man; and he therefore stuck firmly to his old trade of
patriot. Fortunate it was for him that he did so. Had he taken
office at this time, he would in all probability have shared
largely in the unpopularity of Pulteney, Sandys, and Carteret. He
was now the fiercest and most implacable of those who called for
vengeance on Walpole. He spoke with great energy and ability in
favour of the most unjust and violent propositions which the
enemies of the fallen minister could invent. He urged the House
of Commons to appoint a secret tribunal for the purpose of
investigating the conduct of the late First Lord of the Treasury.
This was done. The great majority of the inquisitors were
notoriously hostile to the accused statesman. Yet they were
compelled to own that they could find no fault in him. They
therefore called for new powers, for a bill of indemnity to
witnesses, or, in plain words, for a bill to reward all who might
give evidence, true or false, against the Earl of Orford. This
bill Pitt supported, Pitt, who had himself offered to be a screen
between Lord Orford and public justice. These are melancholy
facts. Mr. Thackeray omits them, or hurries over them as fast as
he can; and, as eulogy is his business, he is in the right to do
so. But, though there are many parts of the life of Pitt which it
is more agreeable to contemplate, we know none more instructive.
What must have been the general state of political morality, when
a young man, considered, and justly considered, as the most
public-spirited and spotless statesman of his time, could attempt
to force his way into office by means so disgraceful!

The Bill of Indemnity was rejected by the Lords. Walpole withdrew
himself quietly from the public eye; and the ample space which he
had left vacant was soon occupied by Carteret. Against Carteret
Pitt began to thunder with as much zeal as he had ever manifested
against Sir Robert. To Carteret he transferred most of the hard
names which were familiar to his eloquence, sole minister, wicked
minister, odious minister, execrable minister. The chief topic of
Pitt's invective was the favour shown to the German dominions of
the House of Brunswick. He attacked with great violence, and with
an ability which raised him to the very first rank among the
parliamentary speakers, the practice of paying Hanoverian troops
with English money. The House of Commons had lately lost some of
its most distinguished ornaments. Walpole and Pulteney had
accepted peerages; Sir William Wyndham was dead; and among the
rising men none could be considered as, on the whole, a match for
Pitt.

During the recess of 1744, the old Duchess of Marlborough died.
She carried to her grave the reputation of being decidedly the
best hater of her time. Yet her love had been infinitely more
destructive than her hatred. More than thirty years before, her
temper had ruined the party to which she belonged and the husband
whom she adored. Time had made her neither wiser nor kinder.
Whoever was at any moment great and prosperous was the object of
her fiercest detestation. She had hated Walpole; she now hated
Carteret. Pope, long before her death, predicted the fate of her
vast property.

"To heirs unknown descends the unguarded store,
Or wanders, heaven-directed, to the poor."

Pitt was then one of the poor; and to him Heaven directed a
portion of the wealth of the haughty Dowager. She left him a
legacy of ten thousand pounds, in consideration of "the noble
defence he had made for the support of the laws of England, and
to prevent the ruin of his country."

The will was made in August--The Duchess died in October. In
November Pitt was a courtier. The Pelhams had forced the King,
much against his will, to part with Lord Carteret, who had now
become Earl Granville. They proceeded, after this victory, to
form the Government on that basis, called by the cant name of
"the broad bottom." Lyttelton had a seat at the Treasury, and
several other friends of Pitt were provided for. But Pitt himself
was, for the present, forced to be content with promises. The
King resented most highly some expressions which the ardent
orator had used in the debate on the Hanoverian troops. But
Newcastle and Pelham, expressed the strongest confidence that
time and their exertions would soften the royal displeasure.

Pitt, on his part, omitted nothing that might facilitate his
admission to office. He resigned his place in the household of
Prince Frederick, and, when Parliament met, exerted his eloquence
in support of the Government. The Pelhams were really sincere in
their endeavours to remove the strong prejudices which had taken
root in the King's mind. They knew that Pitt was not a man to be
deceived with ease or offended with impunity. They were afraid
that they should not be long able to put him off with promises.
Nor was it their interest so to put him off. There was a strong
tie between him and them. He was the enemy of their enemy. The
brothers hated and dreaded the eloquent, aspiring, and imperious
Granville. They had traced his intrigues in many quarters. They
knew his influence over the royal mind. They knew that, as soon
as a favourable opportunity should arrive, he would be recalled
to the head of affairs. They resolved to bring things to a
crisis; and the question on which they took issue with their
master was whether Pitt should or should not be admitted to
office. They chose their time with more skill than generosity. It
was when rebellion was actually raging in Britain, when the
Pretender was master of the northern extremity of the island,
that they tendered their resignations. The King found himself
deserted, in one day, by the whole strength of that party which
had placed his family on the throne. Lord Granville tried to form
a Government; but it soon appeared that the parliamentary
interest of the Pelhams was irresistible, and that the King's
favourite statesman could count only on about thirty Lords and
eighty members of the House of Commons. The scheme was given up.
Granville went away laughing. The ministers came back stronger
than ever; and the King was now no longer able to refuse anything
that they might be pleased to demand. He could only mutter that
it was very hard that Newcastle, who was not fit to be
chamberlain to the most insignificant prince in Germany, should
dictate to the King of England.

One concession the ministers graciously made. They agreed that
Pitt should not be placed in a situation in which it would be
necessary for him to have frequent interviews with the King.
Instead, therefore, of making their new ally Secretary at War as
they had intended, they appointed him Vice-Treasurer of Ireland,
and in a few months promoted him to the office of Paymaster of
the Forces.

This was, at that time, one of the most lucrative offices in the
Government. The salary was but a small part of the emolument
which the Paymaster derived from his place. He was allowed to
keep a large sum, which, even in time of peace, was seldom less
than one hundred thousand pounds, constantly in his hands; and
the interest on this sum he might appropriate to his own use.
This practice was not secret, nor was it considered as
disreputable. It was the practice of men of undoubted honour,
both before and after the time of Pitt. He, however, refused to
accept one farthing beyond the salary which the law had annexed
to his office. It had been usual for foreign princes who received
the pay of England to give to the Paymaster of the Forces a small
percentage on the subsidies. These ignominious veils Pitt
resolutely declined.

Disinterestedness of this kind was, in his days, very rare. His
conduct surprised and amused politicians. It excited the warmest
admiration throughout the body of the people. In spite of the
inconsistencies of which Pitt had been guilty, in spite of the
strange contrast between his violence in Opposition and his
tameness in office, he still possessed a large share of the
public confidence. The motives which may lead a politician to
change his connections or his general line of conduct are often
obscure; but disinterestedness in pecuniary matters everybody can
understand. Pitt was thenceforth considered as a man who was
proof to all sordid temptations. If he acted ill, it might be
from an error in judgment; it might be from resentment; it might
be from ambition. But poor as he was, he had vindicated himself
from all suspicion of covetousness.

Eight quiet years followed, eight years during which the
minority, which had been feeble ever since Lord Granville had
been overthrown, continued to dwindle till it became almost
invisible. Peace was made with France and Spain in 1748. Prince
Frederick died in 1751; and with him died the very semblance of
opposition. All the most distinguished survivors of the party
which had supported Walpole and of the party which had opposed
him, were united under his successor. The fiery and vehement
spirit of Pitt had for a time been laid to rest. He silently
acquiesced in that very system of continental measures which he
had lately condemned. He ceased to talk disrespectfully about
Hanover. He did not object to the treaty with Spain, though that
treaty left us exactly where we had been when he uttered his
spirit-stirring harangues against the pacific policy of Walpole.
Now and then glimpses of his former self appeared; but they were
few and transient. Pelham knew with whom he had to deal, and felt
that an ally, so little used to control, and so capable of
inflicting injury, might well be indulged in an occasional fit of
waywardness.

Two men, little, if at all inferior to Pitt in powers of mind,
held, like him, subordinate offices in the Government. One of
these, Murray, was successively Solicitor-General and Attorney-
General. This distinguished person far surpassed Pitt in
correctness of taste, in power of reasoning, in depth and variety
of knowledge. His parliamentary eloquence never blazed into
sudden flashes of dazzling brilliancy; but its clear, placid, and
mellow splendour was never for an instant overclouded.
Intellectually he was, we believe, fully equal to Pitt; but he
was deficient in the moral qualities to which Pitt owed most of
his success. Murray wanted the energy, the courage, the all-
grasping and all-risking ambition, which make men great in
stirring times. His heart was a little cold, his temper cautious
even to timidity, his manners decorous even to formality. He
never exposed his fortunes or his fame to any risk which he could
avoid. At one time he might, in all probability, have been Prime
Minister. But the object of his wishes was the judicial bench.
The situation of Chief justice might not be so splendid as that
of First Lord of the Treasury; but it was dignified; it was
quiet; it was secure; and therefore it was the favourite
situation of Murray.

Fox, the father of the great man whose mighty efforts in the
cause of peace, of truth, and of liberty, have made that name
immortal, was Secretary-at-War. He was a favourite with the King,
with the Duke of Cumberland, and with some of the most powerful
members of the great Whig connection. His parliamentary talents
were of the highest order. As a speaker he was in almost all
respects the very opposite to Pitt. His figure was ungraceful;
his face, as Reynolds and Nollekens have preserved it to us,
indicated a strong understanding; but the features were coarse,
and the general aspect dark and lowering. His manner was awkward;
his delivery was hesitating; he was often at a stand for want of
a word; but as a debater, as a master of that keen, weighty,
manly logic, which is suited to the discussion of political
questions, he has perhaps never been surpassed except by his son.
In reply he was as decidedly superior to Pitt as in declamation
he was Pitt's inferior. Intellectually the balance was nearly
even between the rivals. But here, again, the moral qualities of
Pitt turned the scale. Fox had undoubtedly many virtues. In
natural disposition as well as in talents, he bore a great
resemblance to his more celebrated son. He had the same sweetness
of temper, the same strong passions, the same openness, boldness,
and impetuosity, the same cordiality towards friends, the same
placability towards enemies. No man was more warmly or justly
beloved by his family or by his associates. But unhappily he had
been trained in a bad political school, in a school, the
doctrines of which were, that political virtue is the mere
coquetry of political prostitution, that every patriot has his
price, that government can be carried on only by means of
corruption, and that the State is given as a prey to statesmen.
These maxims were too much in vogue throughout the lower ranks of
Walpole's party, and were too much encouraged by Walpole himself,
who, from contempt of what, is in our day vulgarly called humbug;
often ran extravagantly and offensively into the opposite
extreme. The loose political morality of Fox presented a
remarkable contrast to the ostentatious purity of Pitt. The
nation distrusted the former, and placed implicit confidence in
the latter. But almost all the statesmen of the age had still to
learn that the confidence of the nation was worth having. While
things went on quietly, while there was no opposition, while
everything was given by the favour of a small ruling junto, Fox
had a decided advantage over Pitt; but when dangerous times came,
when Europe was convulsed with war, when Parliament was broken up
into factions, when the public mind was violently excited, the
favourite of the people rose to supreme power, while his rival
sank into insignificance.

Early in the year 1754 Henry Pelham died unexpectedly. "Now I
shall have no more peace," exclaimed the old King, when he heard
the news. He was in the right. Pelham had succeeded in bringing
together and keeping together all the talents of the kingdom. By
his death, the highest post to which an English subject can
aspire was left vacant; and at the same moment, the influence
which had yoked together and reined-in so many turbulent and
ambitious spirits was withdrawn.

Within a week after Pelham's death, it was determined that the
Duke of Newcastle should be placed at the head of the Treasury;
but the arrangement was still far from complete. Who was to be
the leading Minister of the Crown in the House of Commons? Was
the office to be intrusted to a man of eminent talents? And would
not such a man in such a place demand and obtain a larger share
of power and patronage than Newcastle would be disposed to
concede? Was a mere drudge to be employed? And what probability
was there that a mere drudge would be able to manage a large and
stormy assembly, abounding with able and experienced men?

Pope has said of that wretched miser Sir John Cutler,

"Cutler saw tenants break and houses fall
For very want: he could not build a wall."

Newcastle's love of power resembled Cutler's love of money. It
was an avarice which thwarted itself, a penny-wise and pound-
foolish cupidity. An immediate outlay was so painful to him that
he would not venture to make the most desirable improvement. If
he could have found it in his heart to cede at once a portion of
his authority, he might probably have ensured the continuance of
what remained. But he thought it better to construct a weak and
rotten government, which tottered at the smallest breath, and
fell in the first storm, than to pay the necessary price for
sound and durable materials. He wished to find some person who
would be willing to accept the lead of the House of Commons on
terms similar to those on which Secretary Craggs had acted under
Sunderland, five-and-thirty years before. Craggs could hardly be
called a minister. He was a mere agent for the Minister. He was
not trusted with the higher secrets of State, but obeyed
implicitly the directions of his superior, and was, to use
Doddington's expression, merely Lord Sunderland's man. But times
were changed. Since the days of Sunderland, the importance of the
House of Commons had been constantly on the increase. During many
years, the person who conducted the business of the Government in
that House had almost always been Prime Minister. In these
circumstances, it was not to be supposed that any that any person
who possessed the talents necessary for the situation would stoop
to accept it on such terms as Newcastle was disposed to offer.

Pitt was ill at Bath; and, had he been well and in London,
neither the King nor Newcastle would have been disposed to make
any overtures to him. The cool and wary Murray had set his heart
on professional objects. Negotiations were opened with Fox.
Newcastle behaved like himself, that is to say, childishly and
basely, The proposition which he made was that Fox should be
Secretary of State, with the lead of the House of Commons; that
the disposal of the secret-service money, or, in plain words, the
business of buying members of Parliament, should be left to the
First Lord of the Treasury; but that Fox should be exactly
informed of the way in which this fund was employed.

To these conditions Fox assented. But the next day everything was
in confusion. Newcastle had changed his mind. The conversation
which took place between Fox and the Duke is one of the most
curious in English history. "My brother," said Newcastle, "when
he was at the Treasury, never told anybody what he did with the
secret-service money. No more will I." The answer was obvious.
Pelham had been not only First Lord of the Treasury, but also
manager of the House of Commons; and it was therefore unnecessary
for him to confide to any other person his dealings with the
members of that House. "But how," said Fox, "can I lead in the
Commons without information on this head? How can I talk to
gentlemen when I do not know which of them have received
gratifications and which have not? And who," he continued, "is to
have the disposal of places?"--"I myself," said the Duke. "How
then am I to manage the House of Commons?"-- "Oh, let the members
of the House of Commons come to me." Fox then mentioned the
general election which was approaching, and asked how the
ministerial boroughs were to be filled up. "Do not trouble
yourself", said Newcastle; "that is all settled." This was too
much for human nature to bear. Fox refused to accept the
Secretaryship of State on such terms; and the Duke confided the
management of the House of Commons to a dull, harmless man, whose
name is almost forgotten in our time, Sir Thomas Robinson.

When Pitt returned from Bath, he affected great moderation,
though his haughty soul was boiling with resentment. He did not
complain of the manner in which he had been passed by, but said
openly that, in his opinion, Fox was the fittest man to lead the
House of Commons. The rivals, reconciled by their common interest
and their common enmities, concerted a plan of operations for the
next session. "Sir Thomas Robinson lead us!" said Pitt to Fox.
"The Duke might as well send his jack-boot to lead us."

The elections of 1754 were favourable to the administration. But
the aspect of foreign affairs was threatening. In India the
English and the French had been employed, ever since the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle, in cutting each other's throats. They had lately
taken to the same practice in America. It might have been
foreseen that stirring times were at hand, times which would call
for abilities very different from those of Newcastle and
Robinson.

In November the Parliament met; and before the end of that month
the new Secretary of State had been so unmercifully baited by the
Paymaster of the Forces and the Secretary-at-War that he was
thoroughly sick of his situation. Fox attacked him with great
force and acrimony. Pitt affected a kind of contemptuous
tenderness for Sir Thomas, and directed his attacks principally
against Newcastle. On one occasion he asked in tones of thunder
whether Parliament sat only to register the edicts of one too
powerful subject? The Duke was scared out of his wits. He was
afraid to dismiss the mutineers, he was afraid to promote them;
but it was absolutely necessary to do something. Fox, as the less
proud and intractable of the refractory pair, was preferred. A
seat in the Cabinet was offered to him on condition that he would
give efficient support to the ministry in Parliament. In an evil
hour for his fame and his fortunes he accepted the offer, and
abandoned his connection with Pitt, who never forgave this
desertion.

Sir Thomas, assisted by Fox, contrived to get through the
business of the year without much trouble. Pitt was waiting his
time. The negotiations pending between France and England took
every day a more unfavourable aspect. Towards the close of the
session the King sent a message to inform the House of Commons
that he had found it necessary to make preparations for war. The
House returned an address of thanks, and passed a vote of credit.
During the recess, the old animosity of both nations was inflamed
by a series of disastrous events. An English force was cut off in
America and several French merchantmen were taken in the West
Indian seas. It was plain that an appeal to arms was at hand.

The first object of the King was to secure Hanover; and Newcastle
was disposed to gratify his master. Treaties were concluded,
after the fashion of those times, with several petty German
princes, who bound themselves to find soldiers if England would
find money; and, as it was suspected that Frederic the Second had
set his heart on the electoral dominions of his uncle, Russia was
hired to keep Prussia in awe.

When the stipulations of these treaties were made known, there
arose throughout the kingdom a murmur from which a judicious
observer might easily prognosticate the approach of a tempest.
Newcastle encountered strong opposition, even from those whom he
had always considered as his tools. Legge, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, refused to sign the Treasury warrants, which were
necessary to give effect to the treaties. Those persons who were
supposed to possess the confidence of the young Prince of Wales
and of his mother held very menacing language. In this perplexity
Newcastle sent for Pitt, hugged him, patted him, smirked at him,
wept over him, and lisped out the highest compliments and the
most splendid promises. The King, who had hitherto been as sulky
as possible, would be civil to him at the levee; he should be
brought into the Cabinet; he should be consulted about
everything; if he would only be so good as to support the Hessian
subsidy in the House of Commons. Pitt coldly declined the
proffered scat in the Cabinet, expressed the highest love and
reverence for the King, and said that, if his Majesty felt a
strong personal interest in the Hessian treaty he would so far
deviate from the line which he had traced out for himself as to
give that treaty his support. "Well, and the Russian subsidy,"
said Newcastle. "No," said Pitt, "not a system of subsidies."
The Duke summoned Lord Hardwicke to his aid; but Pitt was
inflexible. Murray would do nothing. Robinson could do nothing.
It was necessary to have recourse to Fox. He became Secretary of
State, with the full authority of a leader in the House of
Commons; and Sir Thomas was pensioned off on the Irish
establishment.

In November 1755, the Houses met. Public expectation was wound up
to the height. After ten quiet years there was to be an
Opposition, countenanced by the heir-apparent of the throne, and
headed by the most brilliant orator of the age. The debate on the
address was long remembered as one of the parliamentary conflicts
of that generation. It began at three in the afternoon, and
lasted till five the next morning. It was on this night that
Gerard Hamilton delivered that single speech from which his
nickname was derived. His eloquence threw into the shade every
orator, except Pitt, who declaimed against the subsidies for an
hour and a half with extraordinary energy and effect. Those
powers which had formerly spread terror through the majorities of
Walpole and Carteret were now displayed in their highest
perfection before an audience long unaccustomed to such
exhibitions. One fragment of this celebrated oration remains in a
state of tolerable preservation. It is the comparison between the
coalition of Fox and Newcastle, and the junction of the Rhone and
the Saone. "At Lyons," said Pitt, "I was taken to see the place
where the two rivers meet, the one gentle, feeble, languid, and
though languid, yet of no depth, the other a boisterous and
impetuous torrent: but different as they are, they meet at last."
The amendment moved by the Opposition was rejected by a great
majority; and Pitt and Legge were immediately dismissed from
their offices.

During several months the contest in the House of Commons was
extremely sharp. Warm debates took place in the estimates,
debates still warmer on the subsidiary treaties. The Government
succeeded in every division; but the fame of Pitt's eloquence,
and the influence of his lofty and determined character,
continued to increase through the Session; and the events which
followed the prorogation made it utterly impossible for any other
person to manage the Parliament or the country.

The war began in every part of the world with events disastrous
to England, and even more shameful than disastrous. But the most
humiliating of these events was the loss of Minorca. The Duke of
Richelieu, an old fop who had passed his life from sixteen to
sixty in seducing women for whom he cared not one straw,
landed on that island, and succeeded in reducing it. Admiral Byng
was sent from Gibraltar to throw succours into Port-Mahon; but
he did not think fit to engage the French squadron, and sailed
back without having effected his purpose. The people were inflamed
to madness. A storm broke forth, which appalled even those who
remembered the days of Excise and of South-Sea. The shops were
filled with libels and caricatures. The walls were covered with
placards. The city of London called for vengeance, and the cry
was echoed from every corner of the kingdom. Dorsetshire,
Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Somersetshire,
Lancashire, Suffolk, Shropshire, Surrey, sent up strong addresses
to the throne, and instructed their representatives to vote for a
strict inquiry into the causes of the late disasters. In the great
towns the feeling was as strong as in the counties. In some of the
instructions it was even recommended that the supplies should be
stopped.

The nation was in a state of angry and sullen despondency, almost
unparalleled in history. People have, in all ages, been in the
habit of talking about the good old times of their ancestors, and
the degeneracy of their contemporaries. This is in general merely
a cant. But in 1756 it was something more. At this time appeared
Brown's Estimate, a book now remembered only by the allusions in
Cowper's Table Talk and in Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace.
It was universally read, admired, and believed. The author fully
convinced his readers that they were a race of cowards and
scoundrels; that nothing could save them; that they were on the
point of being enslaved by their enemies, and that they richly
deserved their fate. Such were the speculations to which ready
credence was given at the outset of the most glorious war in
which England had ever been engaged.

Newcastle now began to tremble for his place, and for the only
thing which was dearer to him than his place, his neck. The
people were not in a mood to be trifled with. Their cry was for
blood. For this once they might be contented with the sacrifice
of Byng. But what if fresh disasters should take place? What if
an unfriendly sovereign should ascend the throne? What if a
hostile House of Commons should be chosen?

At length, in October, the decisive crisis came. The new
Secretary of State had been long sick of the perfidy and levity
of the First Lord of the Treasury, and began to fear that he
might be made a scapegoat to save the old intriguer who, imbecile
as he seemed never wanted dexterity where danger was to be
avoided. Fox threw up his office, Newcastle had recourse to
Murray; but Murray had now within his reach the favourite object
of his ambition. The situation of Chief-Justice of the King's
Bench was vacant; and the Attorney-General was fully resolved to
obtain it, or to go into Opposition. Newcastle offered him any
terms, the Duchy of Lancaster for life, a teller-ship of the
Exchequer, any amount of pension, two thousand a year, six
thousand a year. When the Ministers found that Murrays mind was
made up, they pressed for delay, the delay of a session, a month,
a week, a day. Would he only make his appearance once more in the
House of Commons? Would he only speak in favour of the address?
He was inexorable, and peremptorily said that they might give or
withhold the Chief-Justiceship, but that he would be Attorney-
General no longer

Newcastle now contrived to overcome the prejudices of the King,
and overtures were made to Pitt, through Lord Hardwicke. Pitt
knew his power, and showed that he knew it. He demanded as an
indispensable condition that Newcastle should be altogether
excluded from the new arrangement.

The Duke was in a state of ludicrous distress. He ran about
chattering and crying, asking advice and listening to none. In
the meantime, the Session drew near. The public excitement was
unabated. Nobody could be found to face Pitt and Fox in the
House of Commons. Newcastle's heart failed him, and he tendered
his resignation.

The King sent for Fox, and directed him to form the plan of an
administration in concert with Pitt. But Pitt had not forgotten
old injuries, and positively refused to act with Fox.

The King now applied to the Duke of Devonshire, and this mediator
succeeded in making an arrangement. He consented to take the
Treasury. Pitt became Secretary of State, with the lead of the
House of Commons. The Great Seal was put into commission. Legge
returned to the Exchequer; and Lord Temple, whose sister Pitt had
lately married, was placed at the head of the Admiralty.

It was clear from the first that this administration would last
but a very short time. It lasted not quite five months; and,
during those five months, Pitt and Lord Temple were treated with
rudeness by the King, and found but feeble support in the House
of Commons. It is a remarkable fact, that the Opposition
prevented the re-election of some of the new Ministers. Pitt, who
sat for one of the boroughs which were in the Pelham interest,
found some difficulty in obtaining a seat after his acceptance of
the seals. So destitute was the new Government of that sort of
influence without which no Government could then be durable. One
of the arguments most frequently urged against the Reform Bill
was that, under a system of popular representation, men whose
presence in the House of Commons was necessary to the conducting
of public business might often find it impossible to find seats.
Should this inconvenience ever be felt, there cannot be the
slightest difficulty in devising and applying a remedy. But those
who threatened us with this evil ought to have remembered that,
under the old system, a great man called to power at a great
crisis by the voice of the whole nation was in danger of being
excluded, by an aristocratical cabal from that House of which he
was the most distinguished ornament.

The most important event of this short administration was the
trial of Byng. On that subject public opinion is still divided.
We think the punishment of the Admiral altogether unjust and
absurd. Treachery, cowardice, ignorance amounting to what lawyers
have called crassa ignorantia, are fit objects of severe penal
inflictions. But Byng was not found guilty of treachery, of
cowardice, or of gross ignorance of his profession. He died for
doing what the most loyal subject, the most intrepid warrior, the
most experienced seaman, might have done. He died for an error in
judgment, an error such as the greatest commanders, Frederick,
Napoleon, Wellington, have  often committed, and have often
acknowledged. Such errors are not proper objects of punishment,
for this reason, that the punishing of such errors tends not to
prevent them, but to produce them. The dread of an ignominious
death may stimulate sluggishness to exertion, may keep a traitor
to his standard, may prevent a coward from running away, but it
has no tendency to bring out those qualities which enable men to
form prompt and judicious decisions in great emergencies. The
best marksman may be expected to fail when the apple which is to
be his mark is set on his child's head. We cannot conceive
anything more likely to deprive an officer of his self-possession
at the time when he most needs it than the knowledge that, if,
the judgment of his superiors should not agree with his, he will
he executed with every circumstance of shame. Queens, it has
often been said, run far greater risk in childbed than private
women, merely because their medical attendants are more anxious.
The surgeon who attended Marie Louise was altogether unnerved by
his emotions. "Compose yourself," said Bonaparte; "imagine that
you are assisting a poor girl in the Faubourg Saint Antoine."
This was surely a far wiser course than that of the Eastern king
in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, who proclaimed that the
physicians who failed to cure his daughter should have their
heads chopped off. Bonaparte knew mankind well; and, as he acted
towards this surgeon, he acted towards his officers. No sovereign
was ever so indulgent to mere errors of judgment; and it is
certain that no sovereign ever had in his service so many
military men fit for the highest commands.

Pitt acted a brave and honest part on this occasion. He ventured
to put both his power and his popularity to hazard, and spoke
manfully for Byng, both in Parliament and in the royal presence.
But the King was inexorable. "The House of Commons, Sir," said
Pitt, "seems inclined to mercy." "Sir," answered the King, "you
have taught me to look for the sense of my people in other places
than the House of Commons." The saying has more point than most
of those which are recorded of George the Second, and, though
sarcastically meant, contains a high and just compliment to Pitt.

The King disliked Pitt, but absolutely hated Temple. The new
Secretary of State, his Majesty said, had never read Vattel, and
was tedious and pompous, but respectful. The first Lord of the
Admiralty was grossly impertinent. Walpole tells one story,
which, we fear, is much too good to be true, He assures us that
Temple entertained his royal master with an elaborate parallel
between Byng's behaviour at Minorca, and his Majesty's behaviour
at Oudenarde, in which the advantage was all on the side of the
Admiral.

This state of things could not last. Early in April, Pitt and all
his friends were turned out, and Newcastle was summoned to St.
James's. But the public discontent was not extinguished. It had
subsided when Pitt was called to power. But it still glowed under
the embers; and it now burst at once into a flame. The stocks
fell. The Common Council met. The freedom of the city was voted
to Pitt. All the greatest corporate towns followed the example.
"For some weeks," says Walpole, "it rained gold boxes."

This was the turning point of Pitt's life. It might have been
expected that a man of so haughty and vehement a nature, treated
so ungraciously by the Court, and supported so enthusiastically
by the people, would have eagerly taken the first opportunity of
showing his power and gratifying his resentment; and an
opportunity was not wanting. The members for many counties and
large towns had been instructed to vote for an inquiry into the
circumstances which had produced the miscarriage of the preceding
year. A motion for inquiry had been carried in the House of
Commons, without opposition; and, a few days after Pitt's
dismissal, the investigation commenced. Newcastle and his
colleagues obtained a vote of acquittal; but the minority were so
strong that they could not venture to ask for a vote of
approbation, as they had at first intended; and it was thought
by some shrewd observers that, if, Pitt had exerted himself to
the utmost of his power, the inquiry might have ended in a
censure, if not in an impeachment.

Pitt showed on this occasion a moderation and self-government
which was not habitual to him. He had found by experience, that
he could not stand alone. His eloquence and his popularity had
done much, very much for him. Without rank, without fortune,
without borough interest, hated by the King, hated by the
aristocracy, he was a person of the first importance in the
State. He had been suffered to form a ministry, and to pronounce
sentence of exclusion on all his rivals, on the most powerful
nobleman of the Whig party, on the ablest debater in the House
of Commons. And he now found that he had gone too far. The
English Constitution was not, indeed, without a popular element.
But other elements generally predominated. The confidence and
admiration of the nation might make a statesman formidable at the
head of an Opposition, might load him with framed and glazed
parchments and gold boxes, might possibly, under very peculiar
circumstances, such as those of the preceding year, raise him for
a time to power. But, constituted as Parliament then was, the
favourite of the people could not depend on a majority in the
people's own House. The Duke of Newcastle, however contemptible
in morals, manners, and understanding, was a dangerous enemy. His
rank, his wealth, his unrivalled parliamentary interest, would
alone have made him important. But this was not all. The Whig
aristocracy regarded him as their leader. His long possession of
power had given him a kind of prescriptive right to possess it
still. The House of Commons had been elected when he was at the
head of affairs, The members for the ministerial boroughs had all
been nominated by him. The public offices swarmed with his
creatures.

Pitt desired power; and he desired it, we really believe, from
high and generous motives. He was, in the strict sense of the
word, a patriot. He had none of that philanthropy which the great
French writers of his time preached to all the nations of Europe.
He loved England as an Athenian loved the City of the Violet
Crown, as a Roman loved the City of the Seven Hills. He saw his
country insulted and defeated. He saw the national spirit
sinking. Yet he knew what the resources of the empire, vigorously
employed, could effect, and he felt that he was the man to employ
them vigorously. "My Lord," he said to the Duke of Devonshire, "I
am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can."

Desiring, then, to be in power, and feeling that his abilities
and the public confidence were not alone sufficient to keep him
in power against the wishes of the Court and of the aristocracy,
he began to think of a coalition with Newcastle.

Newcastle was equally disposed to a reconciliation. He, too, had
profited by his recent experience. He had found that the Court
and the aristocracy, though powerful, were not everything in the
State. A strong oligarchical connection, a great borough
interest, ample patronage, and secret-service money, might, in
quiet times, be all that a Minister needed; but it was unsafe to
trust wholly to such support in time of war, of discontent, and
of agitation. The composition of the House of Commons was not
wholly aristocratical; and, whatever he the composition of large
deliberative assemblies, their spirit is always in some degree
popular. Where there are free debates, eloquence must have
admirers, and reason must make converts. Where there is a free
press, the governors must live in constant awe of the opinions of
the governed.

Thus these two men, so unlike in character, so lately mortal
enemies, were necessary to each other. Newcastle had fallen in
November, for want of that public confidence which Pitt
possessed, and of that parliamentary support which Pitt was
better qualified than any man of his time to give. Pitt had
fallen in April, for want of that species of influence which
Newcastle had passed his whole life in acquiring and hoarding.
Neither of them had power enough to support himself. Each of them
had power enough to overturn the other. Their union would be
irresistible. Neither the King nor any party in the State would
be able to stand against them.

Under these circumstances, Pitt was not disposed to proceed to
extremities against his predecessors in office. Something,
however, was due to consistency; and something was necessary for
the preservation of his popularity. He did little; but that
little he did in such manner as to produce great effect. He came
down to the House in all the pomp of gout, his legs swathed in
flannels, his arm dangling in a sling. He kept his seat through
several fatiguing days, in spite of pain and langour. He uttered
a few sharp and vehement sentences; but during the greater part
of the discussion, his language was unusually gentle.

When the inquiry had terminated without a vote either of
approbation or of censure, the great obstacle to a coalition was
removed. Many obstacles, however, remained. The King was still
rejoicing in his deliverance from the proud and aspiring Minister
who had been forced on him by the cry of the nation. His
Majesty's indignation was excited to the highest point when it
appeared that Newcastle, who had, during thirty years, been
loaded with marks of royal favour, and who had bound himself, by
a solemn promise, never to coalesce with Pitt, was meditating a
new perfidy. Of all the statesmen of that age, Fox had the
largest share of royal favour. A coalition between Fox and
Newcastle was the arrangement which the King wished to bring
about. But the Duke was too cunning to fall into such a snare. As
a speaker in Parliament, Fox might perhaps be, on the whole, as
useful to an administration as his great rival; but he was one of
the most unpopular men in England. Then, again, Newcastle felt
all that jealousy of Fox, which, according to the proverb,
generally exists between two of a trade. Fox would certainly
intermeddle with that department which the Duke was most desirous
to reserve entire to himself, the jobbing department. Pitt, on
the other hand, was quite willing to leave the drudgery of
corruption to any who might be inclined to undertake it.

During eleven weeks England remained without a ministry; and in
the meantime Parliament was sitting, and a war was raging. The
prejudices of the King, the haughtiness of Pitt, the jealousy,
levity, and treachery of Newcastle, delayed the settlement. Pitt
knew the Duke too well to trust him without security. The Duke
loved power too much to be inclined to give security. While they
were haggling, the King was in vain attempting to produce a final
rupture between them, or to form a Government without them. At
one time he applied to Lord Waldegrave, an honest and sensible
man, but unpractised in affairs. Lord Waldegrave had the courage
to accept the Treasury, but soon found that no administration
formed by him had the smallest chance of standing a single week.

At length the King's pertinacity yielded to the necessity of the
case. After exclaiming with great bitterness, and with some
justice, against the Whigs, who ought, he said, to be ashamed to
talk about liberty while they submitted to the footmen of the
Duke of Newcastle, his Majesty submitted. The influence of
Leicester House prevailed on Pitt to abate a little, and but a
little, of his high demands; and all at once, out of the chaos in
which parties had for some time been rising, falling, meeting,
separating, arose a government as strong at home as that of
Pelham, as successful abroad as that of Godolphin.

Newcastle took the Treasury. Pitt was Secretary of State, with
the lead in the House of Commons, and with the supreme direction
of the war and of foreign affairs. Fox, the only man who could
have given much annoyance to the new Government, was silenced by
the office of Paymaster, which, during the continuance of that
war, was probably the most lucrative place in the whole
Government. He was poor, and the situation was tempting; yet it
cannot but seem extraordinary that a man who had played a first
part in politics, and whose abilities had been found not unequal
to that part, who had sat in the Cabinet, who had led the House
of Commons, who had been twice intrusted by the King with the
office of forming a ministry, who was regarded as the rival of
Pitt, and who at one time seemed likely to be a successful rival,
should have consented, for the sake of emolument, to take a
subordinate place, and to give silent votes for all the measures
of a government to the deliberations of which he was not
summoned.

The first acts of the new administration were characterized
rather by vigour than by judgment. Expeditions were sent against
different parts of the French coast with little success. The
small island of Aix was taken, Rochefort threatened, a few ships
burned in the harbour of St. Maloes, and a few guns and mortars
brought home as trophies from the fortifications of Cherbourg.
But soon conquests of a very different kind filled the kingdom
with pride and rejoicing. A succession of victories undoubtedly
brilliant, and, as was thought, not barren, raised to the highest
point the fame of the minister to whom the conduct of the war had
been intrusted. In July 1758, Louisburg fell. The whole island of
Cape Breton was reduced. The fleet to which the Court of
Versailles had confided the defence of French America was
destroyed. The captured standards were borne in triumph from
Kensington Palace to the city, and were suspended in St. Paul's
Church, amidst the roar of drums and kettledrums, and the shouts
of an immense multitude. Addresses of congratulation came in from
all the great towns of England. Parliament met only to decree
thanks and monuments, and to bestow, without one murmur, supplies
more than double of those which had been given during the war of
the Grand Alliance.

The year 1759 opened with the conquest of Goree. Next fell
Guadaloupe; then Ticonderoga; then Niagara. The Toulon squadron
was completely defeated by Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the
greatest exploit of the year was the achievement of Wolfe on the
heights of Abraham. The news of his glorious death and of the
fall of Quebec reached London in the very week in which the
Houses met. All was joy and triumph. Envy and faction were forced
to join in the general applause. Whigs and Tories vied with each
other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt. His colleagues
were never talked of or thought of. The House of Commons, the
nation, the colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes
fixed on him alone.

Scarcely had Parliament voted a monument to Wolfe, when another
great event called for fresh rejoicings. The Brest fleet, under
the command of Conflans, had put out to sea. It was overtaken by
an English squadron under Hawke. Conflans attempted to take
shelter close under the French coast. The shore was rocky; the
night was black: the wind was furious: the waves of the Bay of
Biscay ran high. But Pitt had infused into each branch of the
service a spirit which had long been unknown. No British seaman
was disposed to err on the same side with Byng. The pilot told
Hawke that the attack could not be made without the greatest
danger. "You have done your duty in remonstrating," answered
Hawke; "I will answer for everything. I command you to lay me
alongside the French admiral." Two French ships of the line
struck. Four were destroyed. The rest hid themselves in the
rivers of Brittany.

The year 1760 came; and still triumph followed triumph. Montreal
was taken; the whole province of Canada was subjugated; the
French fleets underwent a succession of disasters in the seas of
Europe and America.

In the meantime conquests equalling in rapidity, and far
surpassing in magnitude, those of Cortes and Pizarro, had been
achieved in the East. In the space of three years the English had
founded a mighty empire. The French had been defeated in every
part of India. Chandernagore had surrendered to Clive,
Pondicherry to Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, and the
Carnatic, the authority of the East India Company was more
absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been.

On the continent of Europe the odds were against England. We had
but one important ally, the King of Prussia; and he was attacked
not only by France, but also by Russia and Austria. Yet even on
the Continent the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties.
Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidising
foreign princes, he now carried that practice further than
Carteret himself would have ventured to do. The active and able
Sovereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assistance as
enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against his
powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much
eloquence and ardour as on the mischiefs of the Hanoverian
connection. He now declared, not without much show of reason,
that it would be unworthy of the English people to suffer their
King to be deprived of his electoral dominions in an English
quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should be no losers,
and that he would conquer America for them in Germany. By taking
this line he conciliated the King, and lost no part of his
influence with the nation. In Parliament, such was the ascendency
which his eloquence, his success, his high situation, his pride,
and his intrepidity had obtained for him, that he took liberties
with the House of which there had been no example, and which have
never since been imitated. No orator could there venture to
reproach him with inconsistency. One unfortunate man made the
attempt, and was so much disconcerted by the scornful demeanour
of the Minister that he stammered, stopped, and sat down. Even
the old Tory country gentleman, to whom the very name of Hanover
had been odious, gave their hearty Ayes to subsidy after subsidy.
In a lively contemporary satire, much more lively indeed than
delicate, this remarkable conversation is not unhappily
described:

"No more they make a fiddle-faddle
About a Hessian horse or saddle.
No more of continental measures
No more of wasting British treasures.
Ten millions, and a vote of credit,
'Tis right. He can't be wrong who did it."

The success of Pitt's continental measures was such as might have
been expected from their vigour. When he came into power, Hanover
was in imminent danger; and before he had been in office three
months, the whole electorate was in the hands of France. But the
face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders were driven
out. An army, partly English, partly Hanoverian, partly composed
of soldiers furnished by the petty Princes of Germany, was placed
under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick. The French
were beaten in 1758 at Crevelt. In 1759 they received a still
more complete and humiliating defeat at Minden.

In the meantime, the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and
prosperity. The merchants of London had never been more thriving.
The importance of several great commercial and manufacturing
towns, of Glasgow in particular, dates from this period. The fine
inscription on the monument of Lord Chatham, in Guildhall records
the general opinion of the citizens of London, that under his
administration commerce had been "united with and made to
flourish by war?"

It must be owned that these signs of prosperity were in some
degree delusive. It must be owned that some of our conquests were
rather splendid than useful. It must be owned that the expense of
the war never entered into Pitt's consideration. Perhaps it would
be more correct to say that the cost of his victories increased
the pleasure with which he contemplated them. Unlike other men in
his situation, he loved to exaggerate the sums which the nation
was laying out under his direction. He was proud of the
sacrifices and efforts which his eloquence and his success had
induced his countrymen to make. The price at which he purchased
faithful service and complete victory, though far smaller than
that which his son, the most profuse and incapable of war
ministers, paid for treachery, defeat, and shame, was long and
severely felt by the nation.

Even as a war minister, Pitt is scarcely entitled to all the
praise which his contemporaries lavished on him. We, perhaps from
ignorance, cannot discern in his arrangements any appearance of
profound or dexterous combination. Several of his expeditions,
particularly those which were sent to the coast of France, were
at once costly and absurd. Our Indian conquests, though they add
to the splendour of the period during which he was at the head of
affairs, were not planned by him. He had undoubtedly great
energy, great determination, great means at his command. His
temper was enterprising; and, situated as he was, he had only to
follow his temper. The wealth of a rich nation, the valour of a
brave nation, were ready to support him in every attempt.

In one respect, however, he deserved all the praise that he has
ever received. The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to
the skill of his dispositions than to the national resources and
the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the
emergency, that the national resources were contributed with
unexampled cheerfulness, this was undoubtedly his work. The
ardour of his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire. It inflamed
every soldier who dragged the cannon up the heights of Quebec,
and every sailor who boarded the French ships among the rocks of
Brittany. The Minister, before he had been long in office, had
imparted to the commanders whom he employed his own impetuous,
adventurous, and defying character They, like him, were disposed
to risk everything, to play double or quits to the last, to think
nothing done while anything remained undone, to fail rather than
not to attempt. For the errors of rashness there might be
indulgence. For over-caution, for faults like those of Lord
George Sackville, there was no mercy. In other times, and against
other enemies, this mode of warfare might have failed. But the
state of the French government and of the French nation gave
every advantage to Pitt. The fops and intriguers of Versailles
were appalled and bewildered by his vigour. A panic spread
through all ranks of society. Our enemies soon considered it as a
settled thing that they were always to be beaten. Thus victory
begot victory; till, at last, wherever the forces of the two
nations met, they met with disdainful confidence on one side, and
with a craven fear on the other.

The situation which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of
George the Second was the most enviable ever occupied by any
public man in English history. He had conciliated the King; he
domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the
people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first Englishman
of his time; and he had made England the first country in the
world. The Great Commoner, the name by which he was often
designated, might look down with scorn on coronets and garters.
The nation was drunk with joy and pride. The Parliament was as
quiet as it had been under Pelham. The old party distinctions
were almost effaced; nor was their place yet supplied by
distinctions of a still more important kind. A new generation of
country squires and rectors had arisen who knew not the Stuarts.
The Dissenters were tolerated; the Catholics not cruelly
persecuted. The Church was drowsy and indulgent. The great civil
and religious conflict which began at the Reformation seemed to
have terminated in universal repose. Whigs and Tories, Churchmen
and Puritans, spoke with equal reverence of the constitution, and
with equal enthusiasm of the talents, virtues, and services of
the Minister.

A few years sufficed to change the whole aspect of affairs. A
nation convulsed by faction, a throne assailed by the fiercest
invective, a House of Commons hated and despised by the nation,
England set against Scotland, Britain set against America, a
rival legislature sitting beyond the Atlantic, English blood shed
by English bayonets, our armies capitulating, our conquests
wrested from us, our enemies hastening to take vengeance for past
humiliation, our flag scarcely able to maintain itself in our own
seas, such was the spectacle which Pitt lived to see. But the
history of this great revolution requires far more space than we
can at present bestow. We leave the Great Commoner in the zenith
of his glory. It is not impossible that we may take some other
opportunity of tracing his life to its melancholy, yet not
inglorious close.


THE EARL OF CHATHAM
(October 1844)

1. Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 4 vols. 8vo.
London: 1840.

2. Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Horace Mann. 4
vols. 8vo. London: 1843-4.

More than ten years ago we commenced a sketch of the political
life of the great Lord Chatham. We then stopped at the death of
George the Second, with the intention of speedily resuming our
task. Circumstances, which it would be tedious to explain, long
prevented us from carrying this intention into effect. Nor can we
regret the delay. For the materials which were within our reach
in 1834 were scanty and unsatisfactory when compared with those
which we at present possess. Even now, though we have had access
to some valuable sources of information which have not yet been
opened to the public, we cannot but feel that the history of the
first ten years of the reign of George the Third is but
imperfectly known to us. Nevertheless, we are inclined to think
that we are in a condition to lay before our readers a narrative
neither uninstructive nor uninteresting. We therefore return with
pleasure to our long interrupted labour.

We left Pitt in the zenith of prosperity and glory, the idol of
England, the terror of France, the admiration of the whole
civilised world. The wind, from whatever quarter it blew, carried
to England tidings of battles won, fortresses taken, provinces
added to the empire. At home, factions had sunk into a lethargy,
such as had never been known since the great religious schism of
the sixteenth century had roused the public mind from repose.

In order that the events which we have to relate may be clearly
understood, it may be desirable that we should advert to the
causes which had for a time suspended the animation of both the
great English parties.

If, rejecting all that is merely accidental, we look at the
essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may
consider each of them as the representative of a great principle,
essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial
manner, the guardian of liberty, and the other of order. One is
the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the State.
One is the sail, without which society would make no progress;
the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety
in a tempest. But, during the forty-six years which followed the
accession of the House of Hanover, these distinctive
peculiarities seemed to be effaced. The Whig conceived that he
could not better serve the cause of civil and religious freedom
than by strenuously supporting the Protestant dynasty. The Tory
conceived that he could not better prove his hatred of
revolutions than by attacking a government to which a revolution
had given birth. Both came by degrees to attach more importance
to the means than to the end. Both were thrown into unnatural
situations; and both, like animals transported to an uncongenial
climate, languished and degenerated. The Tory, removed from the
sunshine of the Court, was as a camel in the snows of Lapland.
The Whig, basking in the rays of royal favour, was as a reindeer
in the sands of Arabia.

Dante tells us that he saw, in Malebolge, a strange encounter
between a human form and a serpent. The enemies, after cruel
wounds inflicted, stood for a time glaring on each other. A great
cloud surrounded them, and then a wonderful metamorphosis began.
Each creature was transfigured into the likeness of its
antagonist. The serpent's tail divided itself into two legs; the
man's legs intertwined themselves into a tail. The body of the
serpent put forth arms; the arms of the man shrank into his body.
At length the serpent stood up a man, and spake; the man sank
down a serpent, and glided hissing away. Something like this was
the transformation which, during the reign of George the First,
befell the two English parties. Each gradually took the shape and
colour of its foe, till at length the Tory rose up erect the
zealot of freedom, and the Whig crawled and licked the dust at
the feet of power.

It is true that, when these degenerate politicians discussed
questions merely speculative, and, above all, when they discussed
questions relating to the conduct of their own grandfathers, they
still seemed to differ as their grandfathers had differed. The
Whig, who, during three Parliaments, had never given one vote
against the Court, and who was ready to sell his soul for the
Comptroller's staff or for the Great Wardrobe, still professed to
draw his political doctrines from Locke and Milton, still
worshipped the memory of Pym and Hampden, and would still, on the
thirtieth of January, take his glass, first to the man in the
mask, and then to the man who would do it without a mask. The
Tory, on the other hand, while he reviled the mild and temperate
Walpole as a deadly enemy of liberty, could see nothing to
reprobate in the iron tyranny of Strafford and Laud. But,
whatever judgment the Whig or the Tory of that age might
pronounce on transactions long past, there can be no doubt that,
as respected the practical questions then pending, the Tory was a
reformer, and indeed an intemperate and indiscreet reformer,
while the Whig was conservative even to bigotry. We have
ourselves seen similar effects produced in a neighbouring country
by similar causes. Who would have believed, fifteen years ago,
that M. Guizot and M. Villemain would have to defend property and
social order against the attacks of such enemies as M. Genoude
and M. de La Roche Jaquelin?

Thus the successors of the old Cavaliers had turned demagogues;
the successors of the old Roundheads had turned courtiers. Yet
was it long before their mutual animosity began to abate; for it
is the nature of parties to retain their original enmities far
more firmly than their original principles. During many years, a
generation of Whigs, whom Sidney would have spurned as slaves,
continued to wage deadly war with a generation of Tories whom
Jeffreys would have hanged for republicans.

Through the whole reign of George the First, and through nearly
half of the reign of George the Second, a Tory was regarded as an
enemy of the reigning house, and was excluded from all the
favours of the Crown. Though most of the country gentlemen were
Tories, none but Whigs were created peers and baronets. Though
most of the clergy were Tories, none but Whigs were appointed
deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and well descended
Tory squires complained that their names were left out of the
commission of the peace, while men of small estate and mean
birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial parliaments
and standing armies, presided at quarter-sessions, and became
deputy lieutenants.

By degrees some approaches were made towards a reconciliation.
While Walpole was at the head of affairs, enmity to his power
induced a large and powerful body of Whigs, headed by the heir-
apparent of the throne, to make an alliance with the Tories, and
a truce even with the Jacobites. After Sir Robert's fall, the ban
which lay on the Tory party was taken off. The chief places in
the administration continued to be filled with Whigs, and,
indeed, could scarcely have been filled otherwise; for the Tory
nobility and gentry, though strong in numbers and in property,
had among them scarcely a single man distinguished by talents,
either for business or for debate. A few of them, however, were
admitted to subordinate offices; and this indulgence produced a
softening effect on the temper of the whole body. The first levee
of George the Second after Walpole's resignation was a remarkable
spectacle. Mingled with the constant supporters of the House of
Brunswick, with the Russells, the Cavendishes, and the Pelhams,
appeared a crowd of faces utterly unknown to the pages and
gentlemen-ushers, lords of rural manors, whose ale and foxhounds
were renowned in the neighbourhood of the Mendip hills, or round
the Wrekin, but who had never crossed the threshold of the palace
since the days when Oxford, with the white staff in his hand,
stood behind Queen Anne.

During the eighteen years which followed this day, both factions
were gradually sinking deeper and deeper into repose. The apathy
of the public mind is partly to be ascribed to the unjust
violence with which the administration of Walpole had been
assailed. In the body politic, as in the natural body, morbid
languor generally succeeds morbid excitement. The people had been
maddened by sophistry, by calumny, by rhetoric, by stimulants
applied to the national pride. In the fulness of bread, they had
raved as if famine had been in the land. While enjoying such a
measure of civil and religious freedom as, till then, no great
society had ever known, they had cried out for a Timoleon or a
Brutus to stab their oppressor to the heart. They were in this
frame of mind when the change of administration took place; and
they soon found that there was to be no change whatever in the
system of government. The natural consequences followed. To
frantic zeal succeeded sullen indifference. The cant of
patriotism had not merely ceased to charm the public ear, but
had become as nauseous as the cant of Puritanism after the
downfall of the Rump. The hot fit was over, the cold fit had
begun: and it was long before seditious arts, or even real
grievances, could bring back the fiery paroxysm which had run its
course and reached its termination.

Two attempts were made to disturb this tranquillity. The banished
heir of the House of Stuart headed a rebellion; the discontented
heir of the House of Brunswick headed an opposition. Both the
rebellion and the opposition came to nothing. The battle of
Culloden annihilated the Jacobite party. The death of Prince
Frederic dissolved the faction which, under his guidance, had
feebly striven to annoy his father's government. His chief
followers hastened to make their peace with the ministry; and the
political torpor became complete.

Five years after the death of Prince Frederic, the public mind
was for a time violently excited. But this excitement had nothing
to do with the old disputes between Whigs and Tories. England was
at war with France. The war had been feebly conducted. Minorca
had been torn from us. Our fleet had retired before the white
flag of the House of Bourbon. A bitter sense of humiliation, new
to the proudest and bravest of nations, superseded every other
feeling. The cry of all the counties and great towns of the realm
was for a government which would retrieve the honour of the
English arms. The two most powerful in the country were the Duke
of Newcastle and Pitt. Alternate victories and defeats had made
them sensible that neither of them could stand alone. The
interest of the State, and the interest of their own ambition,
impelled them to coalesce. By their coalition was formed the
ministry which was in power when George the Third ascended the
throne.

The more carefully the structure of this celebrated ministry is
examined, the more shall we see reason to marvel at the skill or
the luck which had combined in one harmonious whole such various
and, as it seemed, incompatible elements of force. The influence
which is derived from stainless integrity, the influence which is
derived from the vilest arts of corruption, the strength of
aristocratical connection, the strength of democratical
enthusiasm, all these things were for the first time found
together. Newcastle brought to the coalition a vast mass of
power, which had descended to him from Walpole and Pelham. The
public offices, the church, the courts of law, the army, the
navy, the diplomatic service, swarmed with his creatures. The
boroughs, which long afterwards made up the memorable schedules A
and B, were represented by his nominees. The great Whig families,
which, during several generations, had been trained in the
discipline of party warfare, and were accustomed to stand
together in a firm phalanx, acknowledged him as their captain.
Pitt, on the other hand, had what Newcastle wanted, an eloquence
which stirred the passions and charmed the imagination, a high
reputation for purity, and the confidence and ardent love of
millions.

The partition which the two ministers made of the powers of
government was singularly happy. Each occupied a province for
which he was well qualified; and neither had any inclination to
intrude himself into the province of the other. Newcastle took
the treasury, the civil and ecclesiastical patronage, and the
disposal of that part of the secret-service money which was then
employed in bribing members of Parliament. Pitt was Secretary of
State, with the direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Thus
the filth of all the noisome and pestilential sewers of
government was poured into one channel. Through the other passed
only what was bright and stainless. Mean and selfish politicians,
pining for commissionerships, gold sticks, and ribands, flocked
to the great house at the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields. There,
at every levee, appeared eighteen or twenty pair of lawn sleeves;
for there was not, it was said, a single Prelate who had not owed
either his first elevation or some subsequent translation to
Newcastle. There appeared those members of the House of Commons
in whose silent votes the main strength of the Government lay.
One wanted a place in the excise for his butler. Another came
about a prebend for his son. A third whispered that he had always
stood by his Grace and the Protestant succession; that his last
election had been very expensive; that potwallopers had now no
conscience; that he had been forced to take up money on mortgage;
and that he hardly knew where to turn for five hundred pounds.
The Duke pressed all their hands, passed his arms round all their
shoulders, patted all their backs, and sent away some with wages,
and some with promises. From this traffic Pitt stood haughtily
aloof. Not only was he himself incorruptible, but he shrank from
the loathsome drudgery of corrupting others. He had not, however,
been twenty years in Parliament, and ten in office, without
discovering how the Government was carried on. He was perfectly
aware that bribery was practised on a large scale by his
colleagues. Hating the practice, yet despairing of putting it
down, and doubting whether, in those times, any ministry could
stand without it, he determined to be blind to it. He would see
nothing, know nothing, believe nothing. People who came to talk
to him about shares in lucrative contracts, or about the means of
securing a Cornish corporation, were soon put out of countenance
by his arrogant humility. They did him too much honour. Such
matters were beyond his capacity. It was true that his poor
advice about expeditions and treaties was listened to with
indulgence by a gracious sovereign. If the question were, who
should command in North America, or who should be ambassador at
Berlin, his colleagues would condescend to take his opinion. But
he had not the smallest influence with the Secretary of the
Treasury, and could not venture to ask even for a tidewaiter's
place.

It may be doubted whether he did not owe as much of his
popularity to his ostentatious purity as to his eloquence, or to
his talents for the administration of war. It was everywhere said
with delight and admiration that the Great Commoner, without any
advantages of birth or fortune, had, in spite of the dislike of
the Court and of the aristocracy, made himself the first man in
England, and made England the first country in the world; that
his name was mentioned with awe in every palace from Lisbon to
Moscow; that his trophies were in all the four quarters of the
globe; yet that he was still plain William Pitt, without title or
riband, without pension or sinecure place. Whenever he should
retire, after saving the State, he must sell his coach horses and
his silver candlesticks. Widely as the taint of corruption had
spread, his hands were clean. They had never received, they had
never given, the price of infamy. Thus the coalition gathered to
itself support from all the high and all the low parts of human
nature, and was strong with the whole united strength of virtue
and of Mammon.

Pitt and Newcastle were co-ordinate chief ministers. The
subordinate places had been filled on the principle of including
in the Government every party and shade of party, the avowed
Jacobites alone excepted, nay, every public man who, from his
abilities or from his situation, seemed likely to be either
useful in office or formidable in opposition.

The Whigs, according to what was then considered as their
prescriptive right, held by far the largest share of power. The
main support of the administration was what may be called the
great Whig connection, a connection which, during near half a
century, had generally had the chief sway in the country, and
which derived an immense authority from rank, wealth, borough
interest, and firm union. To this connection, of which Newcastle
was the head, belonged the houses of Cavendish, Lennox, Fitzroy,
Bentinck, Manners, Conway, Wentworth, and many others of high
note.

There were two other powerful Whig connections, either of which
might have been a nucleus for a strong opposition. But room had
been found in the Government for both. They were known as the
Grenvilles and the Bedfords.

The head of the Grenvilles was Richard Earl Temple. His talents
for administration and debate were of no high order. But his
great possessions, his turbulent and unscrupulous character, his
restless activity, and his skill in the most ignoble tactics of
faction, made him one of the most formidable enemies that a
ministry could have. He was keeper of the privy seal. His brother
George was treasurer of the navy. They were supposed to be on
terms of close friendship with Pitt, who had married their
sister, and was the most uxorious of husbands.

The Bedfords, or, as they were called by their enemies, the
Bloomsbury gang, professed to be led by John Duke of Bedford, but
in truth led him wherever they chose, and very often led him
where he never would have gone of his own accord. He had many
good qualities of head and heart, and would have been certainly a
respectable, and possibly a distinguished man, if he had been
less under the influence of his friends, or more fortunate in
choosing them. Some of them were indeed, to do them justice, men
of parts. But here, we are afraid, eulogy must end. Sandwich and
Rigby were able debaters, pleasant boon companions, dexterous
intriguers, masters of all the arts of jobbing and
electioneering, and both in public and private life, shamelessly
immoral. Weymouth had a natural eloquence, which sometimes
astonished those who knew how little he owed to study. But he was
indolent and dissolute, and had early impaired a fine estate with
the dice-box, and a fine constitution with the bottle. The wealth
and power of the Duke, and the talents and audacity of some of
his retainers, might have seriously annoyed the strongest
ministry. But his assistance had been secured. He was Lord-
Lieutenant of Ireland; Rigby was his secretary; and the whole
party dutifully supported the measures of the Government.

Two men had, a short time before, been thought likely to contest
with Pitt the lead of the House of Commons, William Murray and
Henry Fox. But Murray had been removed to the Lords, and was
Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Fox was indeed still in the
Commons; but means had been found to secure, if not his strenuous
support, at least his silent acquiescence. He was a poor man; he
was a doting father. The office of Paymaster-General during an
expensive war was, in that age, perhaps the most lucrative
situation in the gift of the Government. This office was bestowed
on Fox. The prospect of making a noble fortune in a few years,
and of providing amply for his darling boy Charles, was
irresistibly tempting. To hold a subordinate place, however
profitable, after having led the House of Commons, and having
been intrusted with the business of forming a ministry, was
indeed a great descent. But a punctilious sense of personal
dignity was no part of the character of Henry Fox.

We have not time to enumerate all the other men of weight who
were, by some tie or other, attached to the Government. We may
mention Hardwicke, reputed the first lawyer of the age; Legge,
reputed the first financier of the age; the acute and ready
Oswald; the bold and humorous Nugent; Charles Townshend, the most
brilliant and versatile of mankind; Elliot, Barrington, North,
Pratt. Indeed, as far as we recollect, there were in the whole
House of Commons only two men of distinguished abilities who were
not connected with the Government; and those two men stood so low
in public estimation, that the only service which they could have
rendered to any government would have been to oppose it. We speak
of Lord George Sackville and Bubb Dodington.

Though most of the official men, and all the members of the
Cabinet, were reputed Whigs, the Tories were by no means excluded
from employment. Pitt had gratified many of them with commands in
the militia, which increased both their income and their
importance in their own counties; and they were therefore in
better humour than at any time since the death of Anne. Some of
the party still continued to grumble over their punch at the
Cocoa Tree; but in the House of Commons not a single one of the
malcontents durst lift his eyes above the buckle of Pitt's shoe.

Thus there was absolutely no opposition. Nay, there was no sign
from which it could be guessed in what quarter opposition was
likely to arise. Several years passed during which Parliament
seemed to have abdicated its chief functions. The journals of the
House of Commons, during four sessions, contain no trace of a
division on a party question. The supplies, though beyond
precedent great, were voted without discussion. The most animated
debates of that period were on road bills and enclosure bills.

The old King was content; and it mattered little whether he were
content or not. It would have been impossible for him to
emancipate himself from a ministry so powerful, even if he had
been inclined to do so. But he had no such inclination. He had
once, indeed, been strongly prejudiced against Pitt, and had
repeatedly been ill used by Newcastle; but the vigour and success
with which the war had been waged in Germany, and the smoothness
with which all public business was carried on, had produced a
favourable change in the royal mind.

Such was the posture of affairs when, on the twenty-fifth of
October, 1760, George the Second suddenly died, and George the
Third, then twenty-two years old, became King. The situation of
George the Third differed widely from that of his grandfather and
that of his great grandfather. Many years had elapsed since a
sovereign of England had been an object of affection to any part
of his people. The first two Kings of the House of Hanover had
neither those hereditary rights which have often supplied the
defect of merit, nor those personal qualities which have often
supplied the defect of title. A prince may be popular with little
virtue or capacity, if he reigns by birthright derived from a
long line of illustrious predecessors. An usurper may be popular,
if his genius has saved or aggrandised the nation which he
governs. Perhaps no rulers have in our time had a stronger hold
on the affection of subjects than the Emperor Francis, and his
son-in-law the Emperor Napoleon. But imagine a ruler with no
better title than Napoleon, and no better understanding than
Francis. Richard Cromwell was such a ruler; and, as soon as an
arm was lifted up against him, he fell without a struggle, amidst
universal derision. George the First and George the Second were
in a situation which bore some resemblance to that of Richard
Cromwell. They were saved from the fate of Richard Cromwell by
the strenuous and able exertions of the Whig party, and by the
general conviction that the nation had no choice but between the
House of Brunswick and popery. But by no class were the Guelphs
regarded with that devoted affection, of which Charles the First,
Charles the Second, and James the Second, in spite of the
greatest faults, and in the midst of the greatest misfortunes,
received innumerable proofs. Those Whigs who stood by the new
dynasty so manfully with purse and sword did so on principles
independent of, and indeed almost incompatible with, the
sentiment of devoted loyalty. The moderate Tories regarded the
foreign dynasty as a great evil, which must be endured for fear
of a greater evil. In the eyes of the high Tories, the Elector
was the most hateful of robbers and tyrants. The crown of another
was on his head; the blood of the brave and loyal was on his
hands. Thus, during many years, the Kings of England were objects
of strong personal aversion to many of their subjects; and of
strong personal attachment to none. They found, indeed, firm and
cordial support against the pretender to their throne; but this
support was given, not at all for their sake, but for the sake of
a religious and political system which would have been endangered
by their fall. This support, too, they were compelled to purchase
by perpetually sacrificing their private inclinations to the
party which had set them on the throne, and which maintained them
there.

At the close of the reign of George the Second, the feeling of
aversion with which the House of Brunswick had long been regarded
by half the nation had died away; but no feeling of affection to
that house had yet sprung up. There was little, indeed, in the
old King's character to inspire esteem or tenderness. He was not
our countryman. He never set foot on our soil till he was more
than thirty years old. His speech betrayed his foreign origin and
breeding. His love for his native land, though the most amiable
part of his character, was not likely to endear him to his
British subjects. He was never so happy as when he could exchange
St. James's for Hernhausen. Year after year, our fleets were
employed to convoy him to the Continent, and the interests of his
kingdom were as nothing to him when compared with the interests
of his Electorate. As to the rest, he had neither the qualities
which make dulness respectable, nor the qualities which make
libertinism attractive. He had been a bad son and a worse father,
an unfaithful husband and an ungraceful lover. Not one
magnanimous or humane action is recorded of him; but many
instances of meanness, and of a harshness which, but for the
strong constitutional restraints under which he was placed, might
have made the misery of his people.

He died; and at once a new world opened. The young King was a
born Englishman. All his tastes and habits, good or bad, were
English. No portion of his subjects had anything to reproach him
with. Even the remaining adherents of the House of Stuart could
scarcely impute to him the guilt of usurpation. He was not
responsible for the Revolution, for the Act of Settlement, for
the suppression of the risings of 1715 and of 1745. He was
innocent of the blood of Derwentwater and Kilmarnock, of
Balmerino and Cameron. Born fifty years after the old line had
been expelled, fourth in descent and third in succession of the
Hanoverian dynasty, he might plead some show of hereditary right.
His age, his appearance, and all that was known of his character,
conciliated public favour. He was in the bloom of youth; his
person and address were pleasing. Scandal imputed to him no vice;
and flattery might without any glaring absurdity, ascribe to him
many princely virtues.

It is not strange, therefore, that the sentiment of loyalty, a
sentiment which had lately seemed to be as much out of date as
the belief in witches or the practice of pilgrimage, should, from
the day of his accession, have begun to revive. The Tories in
particular, who had always been inclined to King-worship, and who
had long felt with pain the want of an idol before whom they
could bow themselves down, were as joyful as the priests of Apis,
when, after a long interval, they had found a new calf to adore.
It was soon clear that George the Third was regarded by a portion
of the nation with a very different feeling from that which his
two predecessors had inspired. They had been merely First
Magistrates, Doges, Stadtholders; he was emphatically a King, the
anointed of heaven, the breath of his people's nostrils. The
years of the widowhood and mourning of the Tory party were over.
Dido had kept faith long enough to the cold ashes of a former
lord; she had at last found a comforter, and recognised the
vestiges of the old flame. The golden days of Harley would
return. The Somersets, the Lees, and the Wyndhams would again
surround the throne. The latitudinarian Prelates, who had not
been ashamed to correspond with Doddridge and to shake hands with
Whiston, would be succeeded by divines of the temper of South and
Atterbury. The devotion which had been so signally shown to the
House of Stuart, which had been proof against defeats,
confiscations, and proscriptions, which perfidy, oppression,
ingratitude, could not weary out, was now transferred entire to
the House of Brunswick. If George the Third would but accept the
homage of the Cavaliers, and High Churchmen, he should be to them
all that Charles the First and Charles the Second had been.

The Prince, whose accession was thus hailed by a great party long
estranged from his house, had received from nature a strong will,
a firmness of temper to which a harsher name might perhaps be
given, and an understanding not, indeed, acute or enlarged, but
such as qualified him to be a good man of business. But his
character had not yet fully developed itself. He had been brought
up in strict seclusion. The detractors of the Princess Dowager of
Wales affirmed that she had kept her children from commerce with
society, in order that she might hold an undivided empire over
their minds. She gave a very different explanation of her
conduct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons and daughters
mix in the world, if they could do so without risk to their
morals. But the profligacy of the people of quality alarmed her.
The young men were all rakes; the young women made love, instead
of waiting till it was made to them. She could not bear to expose
those whom she loved best to the contaminating influence of such
society. The moral advantages of the system of education which
formed the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Queen of
Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George the Third was indeed
no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind only half open,
and was for some time entirely under the influence of his mother
and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart, Earl of Bute.

The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even by name, to the country
which he was soon to govern. He had indeed, a short time after he
came of age, been chosen to fill a vacancy, which, in the middle
of a parliament, had taken place among the Scotch representative
peers. He had disobliged the Whig ministers by giving some silent
votes with the Tories, had consequently lost his seat at the next
dissolution, and had never been re-elected. Near twenty years had
elapsed since he had borne any part in politics. He had passed
some of those years at his seat in one of the Hebrides, and from
that retirement he had emerged as one of the household of Prince
Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had found out
many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerable actor in
private theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part
of Lothario. A handsome leg, to which both painters and satirists
took care to give prominence, was among his chief qualifications
for the stage. He devised quaint dresses for masquerades. He
dabbled in geometry, mechanics, and botany. He paid some
attention to antiquities and works of art, and was considered in
his own circle as a judge of painting, architecture, and poetry.
It is said that his spelling was incorrect. But though, in our
time, incorrect spelling is justly considered as a proof of
sordid ignorance, it would be unjust to apply the same rule to
people who lived a century ago. The novel of Sir Charles
Grandison was published about the time at which Lord Bute made
his appearance at Leicester House. Our readers may perhaps
remember the account which Charlotte Grandison gives of her two
lovers. One of them, a fashionable baronet who talks French and
Italian fluently, cannot write a line in his own language without
some sin against orthography; the other, who is represented as a
most respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, and something
of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for a lord.
On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of
cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honour. But his
understanding was narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His
qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by
Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of sneering
at his dependants. "Bute," said his Royal Highness, "you are the
very man to be envoy at some small proud German court where there
is nothing to do."

Scandal represented the Groom of the Stole as the favoured lover
of the Princess Dowager. He was undoubtedly her confidential
friend. The influence which the two united exercised over the
mind of the King was for a time unbounded. The Princess, a woman
and a foreigner, was not likely to be a judicious adviser about
affairs of State. The Earl could scarcely be said to have served
even a noviciate in politics. His notions of government had been
acquired in the society which had been in the habit of assembling
round Frederic at Kew and Leicester House. That society consisted
principally of Tories, who had been reconciled to the House of
Hanover by the civility with which the Prince had treated them,
and by the hope of obtaining high preferment when he should come
to the throne. Their political creed was a peculiar modification
of Toryism. It was the creed neither of the Tories of the
seventeenth nor of the Tories of the nineteenth century. It was
the creed, not of Filmer and Sacheverell, not of Perceval and
Eldon, but of the sect of which Bolingbroke may be considered
as the chief doctor. This sect deserves commendation for having
pointed out and justly reprobated some great abuses which sprang
up during the long domination of the Whigs. But it is far easier
to point out and reprobate abuses than to propose beneficial
reforms: and the reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would either
have been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much more
mischief than they would have removed.

The Revolution had saved the nation from one class of evils, but
had at the same time--such is the imperfection of all things
human--engendered or aggravated another class of evils which
required new remedies. Liberty and property were secure from the
attacks of prerogative. Conscience was respected. No government
ventured to infringe any of the rights solemnly recognised by the
instrument which had called William and Mary to the throne. But
it cannot be denied that, under the new system, the public
interests and the public morals were seriously endangered by
corruption and faction. During the long struggle against the
Stuarts, the chief object of the most enlightened statesmen had
been to strengthen the House of Commons, The struggle was over;
the victory was won; the House of Commons was supreme in the
State; and all the vices which had till then been latent in the
representative system were rapidly developed by prosperity and
power. Scarcely had the executive government become really
responsible to the House of Commons, when it began to appear that
the House of Commons was not really responsible to the nation.
Many of the constituent bodies were under the absolute control of
individuals; many were notoriously at the command of the highest
bidder. The debates were not published. It was very seldom known
out of doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry
was accountable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament
was accountable to nobody. In such circumstances, nothing could
be more natural than that the members should insist on being paid
for their votes, should form themselves into combinations for the
purpose of raising the price of their votes, and should at
critical conjunctures extort large wages by threatening a strike.
Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George the Second
were compelled to reduce corruption to a system, and to practise
it on a gigantic scale.

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely
be wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive
the House of Commons of its weight in the State. Such a course
would undoubtedly have put an end to parliamentary corruption and
to parliamentary factions: for, when votes cease to be of
importance, they will cease to be bought; and, when knaves can
get nothing by combining, they will cease to combine. But to
destroy corruption and faction by introducing despotism would
have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy evidently was,
to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation; and this
was to be effected in two ways; first, by giving publicity to
parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his
trial before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so
reforming the constitution of the House that no man should be
able to sit in it who had not been returned by a respectable and
independent body of constituents.

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very
different mode of treating the diseases of the State. Their
doctrine was that a vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot
King would at once break all factious combinations, and supersede
the pretended necessity of bribing members of Parliament. The
King had only to resolve that he would be master, that he would
not be held in thraldom by any set of men, that he would take for
ministers any persons in whom he had confidence, without
distinction of party, and that he would restrain his servants
from influencing by immoral means either the constituent bodies
or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that
those who proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with
which they pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of
corruption and faction was that a House of Commons, not
accountable to the people, was more powerful than the King.
Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only by a King more
powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot Prince to
govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could not
equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or
defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve
the Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to
Sudbury and Old Sarum against the venality of their
representatives? Was he to send out privy seals? Was he to levy
ship-money? If so, this boasted reform must commence in all
probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must be
consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the
patriot King to carry the House of Commons with him in his
upright designs? By what means? Interdicting himself from the use
of corrupt influence, what motive was he to address to the
Dodingtons and Winningtons? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit,
to be laid asleep by a few fine sentences about virtue and union?

Absurd as this theory was, it had many admirers, particularly
among men of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and
the result was, as any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the
most piteous and ridiculous of failures.

On the very day of the young King's accession, appeared some
signs which indicated the approach of a great change. The speech
which he made to his Council was not submitted to the Cabinet. It
was drawn up by Bute, and contained some expressions which might
be construed into reflections on the conduct of affairs during
the late reign. Pitt remonstrated, and begged that these
expressions might be softened down in the printed copy; but it
was not till after some hours of altercation that Bute yielded;
and even after Bute had yielded, the King affected to hold out
till the following afternoon. On the same day on which this
singular contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the Privy
Council, but introduced into the Cabinet.

Soon after this Lord Holdernesse, one of the Secretaries of
State, in pursuance of a plan concerted with the Court, resigned
the seals. Bute was instantly appointed to the vacant place.

A general election speedily followed, and the new Secretary
entered Parliament in the only way in which he then could enter
it, as one of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland. [In
the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that, under
the 23rd article of Union, no Scotch peer could be created a peer
of Great Britain. This resolution was not annulled till the year
1782.]

Had the ministers been firmly united it can scarcely be doubted
that they would have been able to withstand the Court. The
parliamentary influence of the Whig aristocracy, combined with
the genius, the virtue, and the fame of Pitt, would have been
irresistible. But there had been in the Cabinet of George the
Second latent jealousies and enmities, which now began to show
themselves. Pitt had been estranged from his old ally Legge, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Some of the ministers were envious
of Pitt's popularity. Others were, not altogether without cause,
disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanour. Others, again,
were honestly opposed to some parts of his policy. They admitted
that he had found the country in the depths of humiliation, and
had raised it to the height of glory; they admitted that he had
conducted the war with energy, ability, and splendid success; but
they began to hint that the drain on the resources of the State
was unexampled, and that the public debt was increasing with a
speed at which Montague or Godolphin would have stood aghast.
Some of the acquisitions made by our fleets and armies were, it
was acknowledged, profitable as well as honourable; but, now that
George the Second was dead, a courtier might venture to ask why
England was to become a party in a dispute between two German
powers. What was it to her whether the House of Hapsburg or the
House of Brandenburg ruled in Silesia? Why were the best English
regiments fighting on the Main? Why were the Prussian battalions
paid with English gold? The great minister seemed to think it
beneath him to calculate the price of victory. As long as the
Tower guns were fired, as the streets were illuminated, as French
banners were carried in triumph through London, it was to him
matter of indifference to what extent the public burdens were
augmented. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of those
sacrifices which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and
success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly
regret. There was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our
commissaries returned from the camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy
boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the magnificence of the old
aristocracy of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years
of war, more than the most skilful and economical government
would pay in forty years of peace. But the prospect of peace was
as remote as ever. It could not be doubted that France, smarting
and prostrate, would consent to fair terms of accommodation; but
this was not what Pitt wanted. War had made him powerful and
popular; with war, all that was brightest in his life was
associated: for war his talents were peculiarly fitted. He had at
length begun to love war for its own sake, and was more disposed
to quarrel with neutrals than to make peace with enemies.

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of
Hardwicke; but no member of the Government held these opinions so
strongly as George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. George
Grenville was brother-in-law of Pitt, and had always been
reckoned one of Pitt's personal and political friends. But it is
difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity more
utterly unlike each other, Pitt, as his sister often said, knew
nothing accurately except Spenser's Fairy Queen. He had never
applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was a
wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules
of that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had
never studied public law as a system; and was, indeed, so
ignorant of the whole subject, that George the Second, on one
occasion, complained bitterly that a man who had never read
Vattel should presume to undertake the direction of foreign
affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed by high and
rare gifts, by a strange power of inspiring great masses of men
with confidence and affection, by an eloquence which not only
delighted the ear, but stirred the blood, and brought tears into
the eyes, by originality in devising plans, by vigour in
executing them. Grenville, on the other hand, was by nature and
habit a man of details. He had been bred a lawyer; and he had
brought the industry and acuteness of the Temple into official
and parliamentary life. He was supposed to be intimately
acquainted with the whole fiscal system of the country. He had
paid especial attention to the law of Parliament, and was so
learned in all things relating to the privileges and orders of
the House of Commons that those who loved him least pronounced
him the only person competent to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His
speeches were generally instructive, and sometimes, from the
gravity and earnestness with which he spoke, even impressive, but
never brilliant, and generally tedious. Indeed, even when he was
at the head of affairs, he sometimes found it difficult to
obtain the ear of the House. In disposition as well as in
intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt
was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch
out his hand to take it; and when it came, he threw it away
with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright,
was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable
nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and
popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to forgive;
Grenville's character was stem, melancholy, and pertinacious.
Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination always to
look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of
Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and
bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general
applause, compared him, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the
evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately
temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain
from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep.
Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity
Grenville opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced
even those who hated him to respect him.

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were,
should take very different views of the situation of affairs.
Pitt could see nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see
nothing but the bill. Pitt boasted that England was victorious at
once in America, in India, and in Germany, the umpire of the
Continent, the mistress of the sea. Grenville cast up the
subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned in
spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in
one year.

With a ministry thus divided it was not difficult for Bute to
deal. Legge was the first who fell. He had given offence to the
young King in the late reign, by refusing to support a creature
of Bute at a Hampshire election. He was now not only turned out,
but in the closet, when he delivered up his seal of office, was
treated with gross incivility.

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference.
But the danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the
Third of Spain had early conceived a deadly hatred of England.
Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had
been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an
English fleet had suddenly appeared in the Bay of Naples. An
English Captain had landed, and proceeded to the palace, had laid
a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that, within an
hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment
would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of
the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that
day the ruling passion of the humbled Prince was aversion to the
English name. He was at length in a situation in which he might
hope to gratify that passion. He had recently become King of
Spain and the Indies. He saw, with envy and apprehension, the
triumphs of our navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial
Empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathised with the distress of
the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard; and no
Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the
possession of a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles
concluded a secret treaty with France. By this treaty, known as
the Family Compact, the two powers bound themselves, not in
express words, but by the clearest implication, to make war on
England in common. Spain postponed the declaration of hostilities
only till her fleet, laden with the treasures of America, should
have arrived.

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret from Pitt.
He acted as a man of his capacity and energy might be expected to
act. He at once proposed to declare war against Spain, and to
intercept the American fleet. He had determined, it is said, to
attack without delay both Havanna and the Philippines.

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was foremost in
opposing it, and was supported by almost the whole Cabinet. Some
of the ministers doubted, or affected to doubt, the correctness
of Pitt's intelligence; some shrank from the responsibility of
advising a course so bold and decided as that which he proposed;
some were weary of his ascendency, and were glad to be rid of him
on any pretext. One only of his colleagues agreed with him, his
brother-in-law, Earl Temple.

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young King
behaved at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud
and fiery everywhere else, was always meek and humble in the
closet, was moved even to tears. The King and the favourite urged
him to accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would he
like to be appointed governor of Canada? A salary of five
thousand pounds a year should be annexed to the office. Residence
would not be required. It was true that the governor of Canada,
as the law then stood, could not be a member of the House of
Commons. But a bill should be brought in, authorising Pitt to
hold his Government together with a seat in Parliament, and in
the preamble should be set forth his claims to the gratitude of
his country. Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that his anxieties
were rather for his wife and family than for himself, and that
nothing would be so acceptable to him as a mark of royal goodness
which might be beneficial to those who were dearest to him. The
hint was taken. The same Gazette which announced the retirement
of the Secretary of State announced also that, in consideration
of his great public services, his wife had been created a peeress
in her own right, and that a pension of three thousand pounds a
year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. It was
doubtless thought that the rewards and honours conferred on the
great minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public
mind. Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which had
partly arisen from the contempt which he had always shown for
money, would be damaged by a pension; and, indeed, a crowd of
libels instantly appeared, in which he was accused of having sold
his country. Many of his true friends thought that he would have
best consulted the dignity of his character by refusing to accept
any pecuniary reward from the Court. Nevertheless, the general
opinion of his talents, virtues, and services, remained
unaltered. Addresses were presented to him from several large
towns. London showed its admiration and affection in a still more
marked manner. Soon after his resignation came the Lord Mayor's
day. The King and the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was
one of the guests. The young Sovereign, seated by his bride in
his state coach, received a remarkable lesson. He was scarcely
noticed. All eyes were fixed on the fallen minister; all
acclamations directed to him. The streets, the balconies, the
chimney tops, burst into a roar of delight as his chariot passed
by. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs from the windows. The
common people clung to the wheels, shook hands with the footmen,
and even kissed the horses. Cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle
salmon!" were mingled with the shouts of "Pitt for ever!" When
Pitt entered Guildhall, he was welcomed by loud huzzas and
clapping of hands, in which the very magistrates of the city
joined. Lord Bute, in the meantime, was hooted and pelted through
Cheapside, and would, it was thought, have been in some danger,
if he had not taken the precaution of surrounding his carriage
with a strong bodyguard of boxers.

Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as
disrespectful to the King. Indeed, Pitt himself afterwards owned
that he had done wrong. He was led into this error, as he was
afterwards led into more serious errors, by the influence of his
turbulent and mischievous brother-in-law, Temple.

The events which immediately followed Pitt's retirement raised
his fame higher than ever. War with Spain proved to be, as he had
predicted, inevitable. News came from the West Indies that
Martinique had been taken by an expedition which he had sent
forth. Havanna fell; and it was known that he had planned an
attack on Havanna. Manilla capitulated; and it was believed that
he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The American fleet,
which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an immense cargo
of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could be convinced
that the Court of Madrid really entertained hostile intentions.

The session of Parliament which followed Pitt's retirement passed
over without any violent storm. Lord Bute took on himself the
most prominent part in the House of Lords. He had become
Secretary of State, and indeed Prime Minister, without having
once opened his lips in public except as an actor. There was,
therefore, no small curiosity to know how he would acquit
himself. Members of the House of Commons crowded the bar of the
Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It was generally
expected that the orator would break down; but his most malicious
hearers were forced to own that he had made a better figure than
they expected. They, indeed, ridiculed his action as theatrical,
and his style as tumid. They were especially amused by the long
pauses which, not from hesitation, but from affectation, he made
at all the emphatic words, and Charles Townshend cried out,
"Minute guns!" The general opinion however was, that, if Bute had
been early practised in debate, he might have become an
impressive speaker.

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted with the
lead. The task was not, as yet, a very difficult one for Pitt did
not think fit to raise the standard of opposition. His speeches
at this time were distinguished, not only by that eloquence in
which he excelled all his rivals, but also by a temperance and a
modesty which had too often been wanting to his character. When
war was declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the merit
of having foreseen what had at length become manifest to all, but
he carefully abstained from arrogant and acrimonious expressions;
and this abstinence was the more honourable to him, because his
temper, never very placid, was now severely tried, both by gout
and calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode of warfare, which
was soon turned with far more formidable effect against
themselves. Half the inhabitants of the Grub Street garrets paid
their milk scores, and got their shirts out of pawn, by abusing
Pitt. His German war, his subsidies, his pension, his wife's
peerage, were shin of beef and gin, blankets and baskets of small
coal, to the starving poetasters of the Fleet. Even in the House
of Commons, he was, on one occasion during this session, assailed
with an insolence and malice which called forth the indignation
of men of all parties; but he endured the outrage with majestic
patience. In his younger days he had been but too prompt to
retaliate on those who attacked him; but now, conscious of his
great services, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of
all mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles. "This is
no season," he said, in the debate on the Spanish war, "for
altercation and recrimination. A day has arrived when every
Englishman should stand forth for his country. Arm the whole; be
one people; forget everything but the public. I set you the
example. Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain and disease,
for the public I forget both my wrongs and my infirmities!" On a
general review of his life, we are inclined to think that his
genius and virtue never shone with so pure an effulgence as
during the session Of 1762.

The session drew towards the close; and Bute, emboldened by the
acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to strike another great
blow, and to become first minister in name as well as in reality.
That coalition, which a few months before had seemed all-powerful,
had been dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had deprived
the Government of popularity. Newcastle had exulted in the fall
of the illustrious colleague whom he envied and dreaded, and had
not foreseen that his own doom was at hand. He still tried to
flatter himself that he was at the head of the Government; but
insults heaped on insults at length undeceived him. Places which
had always been considered as in his gift, were bestowed without
any reference to him. His expostulations only called forth
significant hints that it was time for him to retire. One day he
pressed on Bute the claims of a Whig Prelate to the archbishopric
of York. "If your grace thinks so highly of him," answered. Bute,
"I wonder that you did not promote him when you had the power."
Still the old man clung with a desperate grasp to the wreck.
Seldom, indeed, have Christian meekness and Christian humility
equalled the meekness and humility of his patient and abject
ambition. At length he was forced to understand that all was
over. He quitted that Court where he had held high office during
forty-five years, and hid his shame and regret among the cedars
of Claremont. Bute became First Lord of the Treasury.

The favourite had undoubtedly committed a great error. It is
impossible to imagine a tool better suited to his purposes than
that which he thus threw away, or rather put into the hands of
his enemies. If Newcastle had been suffered to play at being
first minister, Bute might securely and quietly have enjoyed the
substance of power. The gradual introduction of Tories into all
the departments of the Government might have been effected
without any violent clamour, if the chief of the great Whig
connection had been ostensibly at the head of affairs. This was
strongly represented to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may
justly be called the father of modern Toryism, of Toryism modified
to suit an order of things under which the House of Commons is
the most powerful body in the State. The theories which had
dazzled Bute could not impose on the fine intellect of Mansfield.
The temerity with which Bute provoked the hostility of powerful
and deeply rooted interests, was displeasing to Mansfield's cold
and timid nature. Expostulation, however, was vain. Bute was
impatient of advice, drunk with success, eager to be, in show as
well as in reality, the head of the Government. He had engaged in
an undertaking in which a screen was absolutely necessary to his
success, and even to his safety. He found an excellent screen
ready in the very place where it was most needed; and he rudely
pushed it away.

And now the new system of government came into full operation.
For the first time since the accession of the House of Hanover,
the Tory party was in the ascendant. The Prime Minister himself
was a Tory. Lord Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt as Secretary of
State, was a Tory, and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis Dashwood, a
man of slender parts, of small experience, and of notoriously
immoral character, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, for no
reason that could be imagined, except that he was a Tory, and had
been a Jacobite. The royal household was filled with men whose
favourite toast, a few years before, had been the King over the
water. The relative position of the two great national seats of
learning was suddenly changed. The University of Oxford had long
been the chief seat of disaffection. In troubled times the High
Street had been lined with bayonets; the colleges had been
searched by the King's messengers. Grave doctors were in the
habit of talking very Ciceronian treason in the theatre; and the
undergraduates drank bumpers to Jacobite toasts, and chanted
Jacobite airs. Of four successive Chancellors of the University,
one had notoriously been in the Pretender's service; the other
three were fully believed to be in secret correspondence with the
exiled family. Cambridge had therefore been especially favoured
by the Hanoverian Princes, and had shown herself grateful for
their patronage. George the First had enriched her library;
George the Second had contributed munificently to her Senate
House. Bishoprics and deaneries were showered on her children.
Her Chancellor was Newcastle, the chief of the Whig aristocracy;
her High Steward was Hardwicke, the Whig head of the law. Both
her burgesses had held office under the Whig ministry. Times had
now changed. The University of Cambridge was received at St.
James's with comparative coldness. The answers to the addresses
of Oxford were all graciousness and warmth.

The watchwords of the new Government were prerogative and purity.
The sovereign was no longer to be a puppet in the hands of any
subject, or of any combination of subjects. George the Third
would not be forced to take ministers whom he disliked, as his
grandfather had been forced to take Pitt. George the Third would
not be forced to part with any whom he delighted to honour, as
his grandfather had been forced to part with Carteret. At the
same time, the system of bribery which had grown up during the
late reigns was to cease. It was ostentatiously proclaimed that,
since the accession of the young King, neither constituents nor
representatives had been bought with the secret-service money. To
free Britain from corruption and oligarchical cabals, to detach
her from continental connections, to bring the bloody and
expensive war with France and Spain to a close, such were the
specious objects which Bute professed to procure.

Some of these objects he attained. England withdrew, at the cost
of a deep stain on her faith, from her German connections. The
war with France and Spain was terminated by a peace, honourable
indeed and advantageous to our country, yet less honourable and
less advantageous than might have been expected from a long and
almost unbroken series of victories, by land and sea, in every
part of the world. But the only effect of Bute's domestic
administration was to make faction wilder, and corruption fouler
than ever.

The mutual animosity of the Whig and Tory parties had begun to
languish after the fall of Walpole, and had seemed to be almost
extinct at the close of the reign of George the Second. It now
revived in all its force. Many Whigs, it is true, were still in
office. The Duke of Bedford had signed the treaty with France.
The Duke of Devonshire, though much out of humour, still
continued to be Lord Chamberlain. Grenville, who led the House of
Commons, and Fox, who still enjoyed in silence the immense gains
of the Pay Office, had always been regarded as strong Whigs. But
the bulk of the party throughout the country regarded the new
minister with abhorrence. There was, indeed, no want of popular
themes for invective against his character. He was a favourite;
and favourites have always been odious in this country. No mere
favourite had been at the head of the Government since the dagger
of Felton had reached the heart of the Duke of Buckingham. After
that event the most arbitrary and the most frivolous of the
Stuarts had felt the necessity of confiding the chief direction
of affairs to men who had given some proof of parliamentary or
official talent. Strafford, Falkland, Clarendon, Clifford,
Shaftesbury, Lauderdale, Danby, Temple, Halifax, Rochester,
Sunderland, whatever their faults might be, were all men of
acknowledged ability. They did not owe their eminence merely to
the favour of the sovereign. On the contrary, they owed the
favour of the sovereign to their eminence. Most of them, indeed,
had first attracted the notice of the Court by the capacity and
vigour which they had shown in opposition. The Revolution seemed
to have for ever secured the State against the domination of a
Carr or a Villiers. Now, however, the personal regard of the King
had at once raised a man who had seen nothing of public business,
who had never opened his lips in Parliament, over the heads of a
crowd of eminent orators, financiers, diplomatists. From a
private gentleman, this fortunate minion had at once been turned
into a Secretary of State. He had made his maiden speech when at
the head of the administration. The vulgar resorted to a simple
explanation of the phaenomenon, and the coarsest ribaldry against
the Princess Mother was scrawled on every wall, and sung in every
alley.

This was not all. The spirit of party, roused by impolitic
provocation from its long sleep, roused in turn a still fiercer
and more malignant Fury, the spirit of national animosity.  The
grudge of Whig against Tory was mingled with the grudge of
Englishman against Scot. The two sections of the great British
people had not yet been indissolubly blended together. The events
of 1715 and of 1745 had left painful and enduring traces. The
tradesmen of Cornhill had been in dread of seeing their tills and
warehouses plundered by barelegged mountaineers from the
Grampians. They still recollected that Black Friday, when the
news came that the rebels were at Derby, when all the shops in
the city were closed, and when the Bank of England began to pay
in sixpences. The Scots, on the other hand, remembered, with
natural resentment, the severity with which the insurgents had
been chastised, the military outrages, the humiliating laws, the
heads fixed on Temple Bar, the fires and quartering blocks on
Kennington Common. The favourite did not suffer the English to
forget from what part of the island he came. The cry of all the
south was that the public offices, the army, the navy, were
filled with high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines, Macdonalds and
Macgillivrays, who could not talk a Christian tongue, and some of
whom had but lately begun to wear Christian breeches. All the old
jokes on hills without trees, girls without stockings, men eating
the food of horses, pails emptied from the fourteenth story, were
pointed against these lucky adventurers. To the honour of the
Scots it must be said, that their prudence and their pride
restrained them from retaliation. Like the princess in the
Arabian tale, they stopped their ears tight, and, unmoved by the
shrillest notes of abuse, walked on, without once looking round,
straight towards the Golden Fountain.

Bute, who had always been considered as a man of taste and
reading, affected, from the moment of his elevation, the
character of a Maecenas. If he expected to conciliate the public
by encouraging literature and art, he was grievously mistaken.
Indeed, none of the objects of his munificence, with the single
exception of Johnson, can be said to have been well selected; and
the public, not unnaturally, ascribed the selection of Johnson
rather to the Doctor's political prejudices than to his literary
merits: for a wretched scribbler named Shebbeare, who had nothing
in common with Johnson except violent Jacobitism, and who had
stood in the pillory for a libel on the Revolution, was honoured
with a mark of royal approbation, similar to that which was
bestowed on the author of the English Dictionary, and of the
Vanity of Human Wishes. It was remarked that Adam, a Scotchman,
was the Court architect, and that Ramsay, a Scotchman, was the
Court painter, and was preferred to Reynolds. Mallet, a
Scotchman, of no high literary fame, and of infamous character,
partook largely of the liberality of the Government. John Home, a
Scotchman, was rewarded for the tragedy of Douglas, both with a
pension and with a sinecure place. But, when the author of the
Bard, and of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, ventured to ask
for a Professorship, the emoluments of which he much needed, and
for the duties of which he was, in many respects, better
qualified than any man living, he was refused; and the post was
bestowed on the pedagogue under whose care the favourite's son-
in-law, Sir James Lowther, had made such signal proficiency in
the graces and in the humane virtues.

Thus, the First Lord of the Treasury was detested by many as a
Tory, by many as a favourite, and by many as a Scot. All the
hatred which flowed from these various sources soon mingled, and
was directed in one torrent of obloquy against the treaty of
peace. The Duke of Bedford, who had negotiated that treaty, was
hooted through the streets. Bute was attacked in his chair, and
was with difficulty rescued by a troop of the guards. He could
hardly walk the streets in safety without disguising himself. A
gentleman who died not many years ago used to say that he once
recognised the favourite Earl in the piazza of Covent Garden,
muffled in a large coat, and with a hat and wig drawn down over
his brows. His lordship's established type with the mob was a
jack-boot, a wretched pun on his Christian name and title. A
jack-boot, generally accompanied by a  petticoat, was sometimes
fastened on a gallows, and sometimes committed to the flames.
Libels on the Court, exceeding in audacity and rancour any that
had been published for many years, now appeared daily both in
prose and verse. Wilkes, with lively insolence, compared the
mother of George the Third to the mother of Edward the Third, and
the Scotch minister to the gentle Mortimer. Churchill, with all
the energy of hatred, deplored the fate of his country invaded by
a new race of savages, more cruel and ravenous than the Picts or
the Danes, the poor, proud children of Leprosy and Hunger. It is
a slight circumstance, but deserves to be recorded, that in this
year pamphleteers first ventured to print at length the names of
the great men whom they lampooned. George the Second had always
been the K--. His ministers had been Sir R-- W--, Mr. P--, and
the Duke of N--. But the libellers of George the Third, of the
Princess Mother, and of Lord Bute did not give quarter to a
single vowel.

It was supposed that Lord Temple secretly encouraged the most
scurrilous assailants of the Government. In truth, those who knew
his habits tracked him as men track a mole. It was his nature to
grub underground. Whenever a heap of dirt was flung up it might
well be suspected that he was at work in some foul crooked
labyrinth below. Pitt turned away from the filthy work of
opposition, with the same scorn with which he had turned away
from the filthy work of government. He had the magnanimity to
proclaim everywhere the disgust which he felt at the insults
offered by his own adherents to the Scottish nation, and missed
no opportunity of extolling the courage and fidelity which the
Highland regiments had displayed through the whole war. But,
though he disdained to use any but lawful and honourable weapons,
it was well known that his fair blows were likely to be far more
formidable than the privy thrusts of his brother-in-law's
stiletto.

Bute's heart began to fail him. The Houses were about to meet.
The treaty would instantly be the subject of discussion. It was
probable that Pitt, the great Whig connection, and the multitude,
would all be on the same side. The favourite had professed to
hold in abhorrence those means by which preceding ministers had
kept the House of Commons in good humour. He now began to think
that he had been too scrupulous. His Utopian visions were at an
end. It was necessary, not only to bribe, but to bribe more
shamelessly and flagitiously than his predecessors, in order to
make up for lost time. A majority must be secured, no matter by
what means. Could Grenville do this? Would he do it? His firmness
and ability had not yet been tried in any perilous crisis. He had
been generally regarded as a humble follower of his brother
Temple, and of his brother-in-law Pitt, and was supposed, though
with little reason, to be still favourably inclined towards them.
Other aid must be called in. And where was other aid to be found?

There was one man, whose sharp and manly logic had often in
debate been found a match for the lofty and impassioned rhetoric
of Pitt, whose talents for jobbing were not inferior to his
talents for debate, whose dauntless spirit shrank from no
difficulty or danger, and who was as little troubled with
scruples as with fears. Henry Fox, or nobody, could weather the
storm which was about to burst. Yet was he a person to whom the
Court, even in that extremity, was unwilling to have recourse. He
had always been regarded as a Whig of the Whigs. He had been the
friend and disciple of Walpole. He had long been connected by
close ties with William Duke of Cumberland. By the Tories he was
more hated than any man living. So strong was their aversion to
him that when, in the late reign, he had attempted to form a
party against the Duke of Newcastle, they had thrown all their
weight into Newcastle's scale. By the Scots, Fox was abhorred as
the confidential friend of the conqueror of Culloden. He was, on
personal grounds, most obnoxious to the Princess Mother. For he
had, immediately after her husband's death, advised the late King
to take the education of her son, the heir-apparent, entirely out
of her hands. He had recently given, if possible, still deeper
offence; for he had indulged, not without some ground, the
ambitious hope that his beautiful sister-in-law, the Lady Sarah
Lennox, might be queen of England. It had been observed that the
King at one time rode every morning by the grounds of Holland
House, and that on such occasions, Lady Sarah, dressed like a
shepherdess at a masquerade, was making hay close to the road,
which was then separated by no wall from the lawn. On account of
the part which Fox had taken in this singular love affair, he was
the only member of the Privy Council who was not summoned to the
meeting at which his Majesty announced his intended marriage with
the Princess of Mecklenburg. Of all the statesmen of the age,
therefore, it seemed that Fox was the last with whom Bute the
Tory, the Scot, the favourite of the Princess Mother, could,
under any circumstances, act. Yet to Fox Bute was now compelled
to apply.

Fox had many noble and amiable qualities, which in private life
shone forth in full lustre, and made him dear to his children, to
his dependants, and to his friends; but as a public man he had no
title to esteem. In him the vices which were common to the whole
school of Walpole appeared, not perhaps in their worst, but
certainly in their most prominent form; for his parliamentary and
official talents made all his faults conspicuous. His courage,
his vehement temper, his contempt for appearances, led him to
display much that others, quite as unscrupulous as himself,
covered with a decent veil. He was the most unpopular of the
statesmen of his time, not because he sinned more than many of
them, but because he canted less.

He felt his unpopularity; but he felt it after the fashion of
strong minds. He became, not cautious, but reckless, and faced
the rage of the whole nation with a scowl of inflexible defiance.
He was born with a sweet and generous temper; but he had been
goaded and baited into a savageness which was not natural to
him, and which amazed and shocked those who knew him best. Such
was the man to whom Bute, in extreme need, applied for
succour.

That succour Fox was not unwilling to afford. Though by no means
of an envious temper, he had undoubtedly contemplated the success
and popularity of Pitt with bitter mortification. He thought
himself Pitt's match as a debater, and Pitt's superior as a man
of business. They had long been regarded as well-paired rivals.
They had started fair in the career of ambition. They had long
run side by side. At length Fox had taken the lead, and Pitt had
fallen behind. Then had come a sudden turn of fortune, like that
in Virgil's foot-race. Fox had stumbled in the mire, and had not
only been defeated, but befouled. Pit had reached the goal, and
received the prize. The emoluments of the Pay Office might induce
the defeated statesman to submit in silence to the ascendency of
his competitor, but could not satisfy a mind conscious of great
powers, and sore from great vexations. As soon, therefore, as a
party arose adverse to the war and to the supremacy of the great
war minister, the hopes of Fox began to revive. His feuds with
the Princess Mother, with the Scots, with the Tories, he was
ready to forget, if, by the help of his old enemies, he could now
regain the importance which he had lost, and confront Pitt on
equal terms.

The alliance was, therefore, soon concluded. Fox was assured
that, if he would pilot the Government out of its embarrassing
situation, he should be rewarded with a peerage, of which he had
long been desirous. He undertook on his side to obtain, by fair
or foul means, a vote in favour of the peace. In consequence of
this arrangement he became leader of the House of Commons; and
Grenville, stifling his vexation as well as he could, sullenly
acquiesced in the change.

Fox had expected that his influence would secure to the Court the
cordial support of some eminent Whigs who were his personal
friends, particularly of the Duke of Cumberland and of the Duke
of Devonshire. He was disappointed, and soon found that, in
addition to all his other difficulties, he must reckon on the
opposition of the ablest prince of the blood, and of the great
house of Cavendish.

But he had pledged himself to win the battle: and he was not a
man to go back. It was no time for squeamishness. Bute was made
to comprehend that the ministry could be saved only by practising
the tactics of Walpole to an extent at which Walpole himself
would have stared. The Pay Office was turned into a mart for
votes. Hundreds of members were closeted there with Fox, and, as
there is too much reason to believe, departed carrying with them
the wages of infamy. It was affirmed by persons who had the best
opportunities of obtaining information, that twenty-five thousand
pounds were thus paid away in a single morning. The lowest bribe
given, it was said, was a bank-note for two hundred pounds.

Intimidation was joined with corruption. All ranks, from the
highest to the lowest, were to be taught that the King would be
obeyed. The Lords Lieutenants of several counties were dismissed.
The Duke of Devonshire was especially singled out as the victim
by whose fate the magnates of England were to take warning. His
wealth, rank, and influence, his stainless private character, and
the constant attachment of his family to the House of Hanover,
did not secure him from gross personal indignity. It was known
that he disapproved of the course which the Government had taken;
and it was accordingly determined to humble the Prince of the
Whigs, as he had been nicknamed by the Princess Mother. He went
to the palace to pay his duty. "Tell him," said the King to a
page, "I that I will not see him." The page hesitated. "Go to
him," said the King, "and tell him those very words." The message
was delivered. The Duke tore off his gold key, and went away
boiling with anger. His relations who were in office instantly
resigned. A few days later, the King called for the list of Privy
Councillors, and with his own hand struck out the Duke's name.

In this step there was at least courage, though little wisdom or
good nature. But, as nothing was too high for the revenge of the
Court, so also was nothing too low. A persecution, such as had
never been known before, and has never been known since, raged in
every public department. Great numbers of humble and laborious
clerks were deprived of their bread, not because they had
neglected their duties, not because they had taken an active part
against the ministry, but merely because they had owed their
situations to the recommendation of some nobleman or gentleman
who was against the peace. The proscription extended to
tidewaiters, to gaugers, to doorkeepers. One poor man to whom a
pension had been given for his gallantry in a fight with
smugglers, was deprived of it because he had been befriended by
the Duke of Grafton. An aged widow, who, on account of her
husband's services in the navy, had, many years before, been made
housekeeper to a public office, was dismissed from her situation,
because it was imagined that she was distantly connected by
marriage with the Cavendish family. The public clamour, as may
well be supposed, grew daily louder and louder. But the louder it
grew, the more resolutely did Fox go on with the work which he
had begun. His old friends could not conceive what had possessed
him. "I could forgive," said the Duke of Cumberland, "Fox's
political vagaries; but I am quite confounded by his inhumanity.
Surely he used to be the best-natured of men."

At last Fox went so far to take a legal opinion on the question,
whether the patents granted by George the Second were binding on
George the Third. It is said, that, if his colleagues had not
flinched, he would at once have turned out the Tellers of the
Exchequer and Justices in Eyre.

Meanwhile the Parliament met. The ministers, more hated by the
people than ever, were secure of a majority, and they had also
reason to hope that they would have the advantage in the debates
as well as in the divisions; for Pitt was confined to his chamber
by a severe attack of gout. His friends moved to defer the
consideration of the treaty till he should be able to attend: but
the motion was rejected. The great day arrived. The discussion
had lasted some time, when a loud huzza was heard in Palace Yard.
The noise came nearer and nearer, up the stairs, through the
lobby. The door opened, and from the midst of a shouting
multitude came forth Pitt, borne in the arms of his attendants.
His face was thin and ghastly, his limbs swathed in flannel, his
crutch in his hand. The bearers set him down within the bar. His
friends instantly surrounded him, and with their help he crawled
to his seat near the table. In this condition he spoke three
hours and a half against the peace. During that time he was
repeatedly forced to sit down and to use cordials. It may well be
supposed that his voice was faint, that his action was languid,
and that his speech, though occasionally brilliant and
impressive, was feeble when compared with his best oratorical
performances. But those who remembered what he had done, and who
saw what he suffered, listened to him with emotions stronger than
any that mere eloquence can produce. He was unable to stay for
the division, and was carried away from the House amidst shouts
as loud as those which had announced his arrival.

A large majority approved the peace. The exultation of the Court
was boundless. "Now," exclaimed the Princess Mother, "my son is
really King." The young sovereign spoke of himself as freed from
the bondage in which his grandfather had been held. On one point,
it was announced, his mind was unalterably made up. Under no
circumstances whatever should those Whig grandees, who had
enslaved his predecessors and endeavoured to enslave himself, be
restored to power.

This vaunting was premature. The real strength of the favourite
was by no means proportioned to the number of votes which he had,
on one particular division, been able to command. He was soon
again in difficulties. The most important part of his budget was
a tax on cider. This measure was opposed, not only by those who
were generally hostile to his administration, but also by many of
his supporters. The name of excise had always been hateful to the
Tories. One of the chief crimes of Walpole in their eyes, had
been his partiality for this mode of raising money. The Tory
Johnson had in his Dictionary given so scurrilous a definition of
the word Excise, that the Commissioners of Excise had seriously
thought of prosecuting him. The counties which the new impost
particularly affected had always been Tory counties. It was the
boast of John Philips, the poet of the English vintage, that the
Cider-land had ever been faithful to the throne, and that all the
pruning-hooks of her thousand orchards had been beaten into
swords for the service of the ill-fated Stuarts. The effect of
Bute's fiscal scheme was to produce an union between the gentry
and yeomanry of the Cider-land and the Whigs of the capital.
Herefordshire and Worcestershire were in a flame. The city of
London, though not so directly interested, was, if possible,
still more excited. The debates on this question irreparably
damaged the Government. Dashwood's financial statement had been
confused and absurd beyond belief, and had been received by the
House with roars of laughter. He had sense enough to be conscious
of his unfitness for the high situation which he held, and
exclaimed in a comical fit of despair, "What shall I do? The
boys will point at me in the street and cry, 'There goes the
worst Chancellor of the Exchequer that ever was.'" George
Grenville came to the rescue, and spoke strongly on his favourite
theme, the profusion with which the late war had been carried on.
That profusion, he said, had made taxes necessary. He called on
the gentlemen opposite to him to say where they would have a tax
laid, and dwelt on this topic with his usual prolixity. "Let them
tell me where," he repeated in a monotonous and somewhat fretful
tone. "I say, sir, let them tell me where. I repeat it, sir; I am
entitled to say to them, Tell me where." Unluckily for him, Pitt
had come down to the House that night, and had been bitterly
provoked by the reflections thrown on the war. He revenged
himself by murmuring in a whine resembling Grenville's, a line of
a well-known song, "Gentle Shepherd, tell me where." "If," cried
Grenville, "gentlemen are to be treated in this way--." Pitt, as
was his fashion, when he meant to mark extreme contempt, rose
deliberately, made his bow, and walked out of the House, leaving
his brother-in-law in convulsions of rage, and everybody else in
convulsions of laughter. It was long before Grenville lost the
nickname of the Gentle Shepherd.

But the ministry had vexations still more serious to endure. The
hatred which the Tories and Scots bore to Fox was implacable. In
a moment of extreme peril, they had consented to put themselves
under his guidance. But the aversion with which they regarded him
broke forth as soon as the crisis seemed to be over. Some of them
attacked him about the accounts of the Pay Office. Some of them
rudely interrupted him when speaking, by laughter and ironical
cheers. He was naturally desirous to escape from so disagreeable
a situation, and demanded the peerage which had been promised as
the reward of his services.

It was clear that there must be some change in the composition of
the ministry. But scarcely any, even of those who, from their
situation, might be supposed to be in all the secrets of the
Government, anticipated what really took place. To the amazement
of the Parliament and the nation, it was suddenly announced that
Bute had resigned.

Twenty different explanations of this strange step were
suggested. Some attributed it to profound design, and some to
sudden panic. Some said that the lampoons of the Opposition had
driven the Earl from the field; some that he had taken office
only in order to bring the war to a close, and had always meant
to retire when that object had been accomplished. He publicly
assigned ill health as his reason for quitting business, and
privately complained that he was not cordially seconded by his
colleagues, and that Lord Mansfield, in particular, whom he had
himself brought into the Cabinet, gave him no support in the
House of Peers. Mansfield was, indeed, far too sagacious not to
perceive that Bute's situation was one of great peril and far too
timorous to thrust himself into peril for the sake of another.
The probability, however, is that Bute's conduct on this
occasion, like the conduct of most men on most occasions, was
determined by mixed motives. We suspect that he was sick of
office; for this is a feeling much more common among ministers
than persons who see public life from a distance are disposed to
believe; and nothing could be more natural than that this feeling
should take possession of the mind of Bute. In general, a
statesman climbs by slow degrees. Many laborious years elapse
before he reaches the topmost pinnacle of preferment. In the
earlier part of his career, therefore, he is constantly lured on
by seeing something above him. During his ascent he gradually
becomes inured to the annoyances which belong to a life of
ambition. By the time that he has attained the highest point, he
has become patient of labour and callous to abuse. He is kept
constant to his vocation, in spite of all its discomforts, at
first by hope, and at last by habit. It was not so with Bute. His
whole public life lasted little more than two years. On the day
on which he became a politician he became a cabinet minister. In
a few months he was, both in name and in show, chief of the
administration. Greater than he had been he could not be. If what
he already possessed was vanity and vexation of spirit, no
delusion remained to entice him onward. He had been cloyed with
the pleasures of ambition before he had been seasoned to its
pains. His habits had not been such as were likely to fortify his
mind against obloquy and public hatred. He had reached his forty-
eighth year in dignified ease, without knowing, by personal
experience, what it was to be ridiculed and slandered. All at
once, without any previous initiation, he had found himself
exposed to such a storm of invective and satire as had never
burst on the head of any statesman. The emoluments of office were
now nothing to him; for he had just succeeded to a princely
property by the death of his father-in-law. All the honours which
could be bestowed on him he had already secured. He had obtained
the Garter for himself, and a British peerage for his son. He
seems also to have imagined that by quitting the Treasury he
should escape from danger and abuse without really resigning
power, and should still be able to exercise in private supreme
influence over the royal mind.

Whatever may have been his motives, he retired. Fox at the same
time took refuge in the House of Lords; and George Grenville
became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the
Exchequer.

We believe that those who made this arrangement fully intended
that Grenville should be a mere puppet in the hands of Bute; for
Grenville was as yet very imperfectly known even to those who had
observed him long. He passed for a mere official drudge; and he
had all the industry, the minute accuracy, the formality, the
tediousness, which belong to the character. But he had other
qualities which had not yet shown themselves, devouring ambition,
dauntless courage, self-confidence amounting to presumption, and
a temper which could not endure opposition. He was not disposed
to be anybody's tool; and he had no attachment, political or
personal, to Bute. The two men had, indeed, nothing in common,
except a strong propensity towards harsh and unpopular courses.
Their principles were fundamentally different. Bute was a Tory.
Grenville would have been very angry with any person who should
have denied his claim to be a Whig. He was more prone to
tyrannical measures than Bute; but he loved tyranny only when
disguised under the forms of constitutional liberty. He mixed up,
after a fashion then not very unusual, the theories of the
republicans of the seventeenth century with the technical maxims
of English law, and thus succeeded in combining anarchical
speculation with arbitrary practice. The voice of the people was
the voice of God; but the only legitimate organ through which the
voice of the people could be uttered was the Parliament. All
power was from the people; but to the Parliament the whole power
of the people had been delegated. No Oxonian divine had ever,
even in the years which immediately followed the Restoration,
demanded for the King so abject, so unreasoning a homage, as
Grenville, on what he considered as the purest Whig principles,
demanded for the Parliament. As he wished to see the Parliament
despotic over the nation, so he wished to see it also despotic
over the Court. In his view the Prime Minister, possessed of the
confidence of the House of Commons, ought to be mayor of the
Palace. The King was a mere Childeric or Chilperic, who well
might think himself lucky in being permitted to enjoy such
handsome apartments at Saint James's, and so fine a park at
Windsor.

Thus the opinions of Bute and those of Grenville were
diametrically opposed. Nor was there any private friendship
between the two statesmen. Grenville's nature was not forgiving;
and he well remembered how, a few months before, he had been
compelled to yield the lead of the House of Commons to Fox.

We are inclined to think, on the whole, that the worst
administration which has governed England since the Revolution
was that of George Grenville. His public acts may be classed
under two heads, outrages on the liberty of the people, and
outrages on the dignity of the Crown.

He began by making war on the press. John Wilkes, member of
Parliament for Aylesbury, was singled out for persecution. Wilkes
had, till very lately, been known chiefly as one of the most
profane, licentious, and agreeable rakes about town. He was a man
of taste, reading, and engaging manners. His sprightly
conversation was the delight of greenrooms and taverns, and
pleased even grave hearers when he was sufficiently under
restraint to abstain from detailing the particulars of his
amours, and from breaking jests on the New Testament. His
expensive debaucheries forced him to have recourse to the Jews.
He was soon a ruined man, and determined to try his chance as a
political adventurer. In Parliament he did not succeed. His
speaking, though pert, was feeble, and by no means interested his
hearers so much as to make them forget his face, which was so
hideous that the caricaturists were forced, in their own despite,
to flatter him. As a writer, he made a better figure. He set up a
weekly paper, called the North Briton. This journal, written with
some pleasantry, and great audacity and impudence, had a
considerable number of readers. Forty-four numbers had been
published when Bute resigned; and, though almost every number had
contained matter grossly libellous, no prosecution had been
instituted. The forty-fifth number was innocent when compared
with the majority of those which had preceded it, and indeed
contained nothing so strong as may in our time be found daily in
the leading articles of the Times and Morning Chronicle. But
Grenville was now at the head of affairs. A new spirit had been
infused into the administration. Authority was to be upheld. The
Government was no longer to be braved with impunity. Wilkes was
arrested under a general warrant, conveyed to the Tower, and
confined there with circumstances of unusual severity. His papers
were seized, and carried to the Secretary of State. These harsh
and illegal measures produced a violent outbreak of popular rage,
which was soon changed to delight and exultation. The arrest was
pronounced unlawful by the Court of Common Pleas, in which Chief
justice Pratt presided, and the prisoner was discharged. This
victory over the Government was celebrated with enthusiasm both
in London and in the cider counties.

While the ministers were daily becoming more odious to the
nation, they were doing their best to make themselves also odious
to the Court. They gave the King plainly to understand that they
were determined not to be Lord Bute's creatures, and exacted a
promise that no secret adviser should have access to the royal
ear. They soon found reason to suspect that this promise had not
been observed. They remonstrated in terms less respectful than
their master had been accustomed to hear, and gave him a
fortnight to make his choice between his favourite and his
Cabinet.

George the Third was greatly disturbed. He had but a few weeks
before exulted in his deliverance from the yoke of the great Whig
connection. He had even declared that his honour would not permit
him ever again to admit the members of that connection into his
service. He now found that he had only exchanged one set of
masters for another set still harsher and more imperious. In his
distress he thought on Pitt. From Pitt it was possible that
better terms might be obtained than either from Grenville, or
from the party of which Newcastle was the head.

Grenville, on his return from an excursion into the country,
repaired to Buckingham House. He was astonished to find at the
entrance a chair, the shape of which was well known to him, and
indeed to all London. It was distinguished by a large boot, made
for the purpose of accommodating the Great Commoner's gouty leg.
Grenville guessed the whole. His brother-in-law was closeted with
the King. Bute, provoked by what he considered as the unfriendly
and ungrateful conduct of his successors, had himself proposed
that Pitt should be summoned to the palace.

Pitt had two audiences on two successive days. What passed at the
first interview led him to expect that the negotiations would be
brought to a satisfactory close; but on the morrow he found the
King less complying. The best account, indeed the only
trustworthy account of the conference, is that which was taken
from Pitt's own mouth by Lord Hardwicke. It appears that Pitt
strongly represented the importance of conciliating those chiefs
of the Whig party who had been so unhappy as to incur the royal
displeasure. They had, he said, been the most constant friends of
the House of Hanover. Their power was great; they had been long
versed in public business. If they were to be under sentence of
exclusion, a solid administration could not be formed. His
Majesty could not bear to think of putting himself into the hands
of those whom he had recently chased from his Court with the
strongest marks of anger. "I am sorry, Mr. Pitt," he said, "but
I see this will not do. My honour is concerned. I must support my
honour." How his Majesty succeeded in supporting his honour, we
shall soon see.

Pitt retired, and the King was reduced to request the ministers,
whom he had been on the point of discarding, to remain in office.
During the two years which followed, Grenville, now closely
leagued with the Bedfords, was the master of the Court; and a
hard master he proved. He knew that he was kept in place only
because there was no choice except between himself and the Whigs.
That under any circumstances the Whigs would be forgiven, he
thought impossible. The late attempt to get rid of him had roused
his resentment; the failure of that attempt had liberated him
from all fear. He had never been very courtly. He now began to
hold a language, to which, since the days of Cornet Joyce and
President Bradshaw, no English King had been compelled to listen.

In one matter, indeed, Grenville, at the expense of justice and
liberty, gratified the passions of the Court while gratifying his
own. The persecution of Wilkes was eagerly pressed. He had
written a parody on Pope's Essay on Man, entitled the Essay on
Woman, and had appended to it notes, in ridicule of Warburton's
famous Commentary. This composition was exceedingly profligate,
but not more so, we think, than some of Pope's own works, the
imitation of the second satire of the first book of Horace, for
example; and, to do Wilkes justice, he had not, like Pope, given
his ribaldry to the world. He had merely printed at a private
press a very small number of copies, which he meant to present to
some of his boon companions, whose morals were in no more danger
of being corrupted by a loose book than a negro of being tanned
by a warm sun. A tool of the Government, by giving a bribe to the
printer, procured a copy of this trash, and placed it in the
hands of the ministers. The ministers resolved to visit Wilkes's
offence against decorum with the utmost rigour of the law. What
share piety and respect for morals had in dictating this
resolution, our readers may judge from the fact that no person
was more eager for bringing the libertine poet to punishment than
Lord March, afterwards Duke of Queensberry. On the first day of
the session of Parliament, the book, thus disgracefully obtained,
was laid on the table of the Lords by the Earl of Sandwich, whom
the Duke of Bedford's interest had made Secretary of State. The
unfortunate author had not the slightest suspicion that his
licentious poem had ever been seen, except by his printer and a
few of his dissipated companions, till it was produced in full
Parliament. Though he was a man of easy temper, averse from
danger, and not very susceptible of shame, the surprise, the
disgrace, the prospect of utter ruin, put him beside himself. He
picked a quarrel with one of Lord Bute's dependants, fought a
duel, was seriously wounded, and when half recovered, fled to
France. His enemies had now their own way both in the Parliament
and in the King's Bench. He was censured, expelled from the House
of Commons, outlawed. His works were ordered to be burned by the
common hangman. Yet was the multitude still true to him. In the
minds even of many moral and religious men, his crime seemed
light when compared with the crime of his accusers. The conduct
of Sandwich in particular, excited universal disgust. His own
vices were notorious; and, only a fortnight before he laid the
Essay on Woman before the House of Lords, he had been drinking
and singing loose catches with Wilkes at one of the most
dissolute clubs in London. Shortly after the meeting of
Parliament, the Beggar's Opera was acted at Covent Garden
theatre. When Macheath uttered the words--"That Jemmy Twitcher
should peach me I own surprised me,"--pit, boxes, and galleries,
burst into a roar which seemed likely to bring the roof down.
From that day Sandwich was universally known by the nickname of
Jemmy Twitcher. The ceremony of burning the North Briton was
interrupted by a riot. The constables were beaten; the paper was
rescued; and, instead of it, a jack-boot and a petticoat were
committed to the flames. Wilkes had instituted an action for the
seizure of his papers against the Under-secretary of State. The
jury gave a thousand pounds damages. But neither these nor any
other indications of public feeling had power to move Grenville.
He had the Parliament with him: and, according to his political
creed, the sense of the nation was to be collected from the
Parliament alone.

Soon, however, he found reason to fear that even the Parliament
might fail him. On the question of the legality of general
warrants, the Opposition, having on its side all sound
principles, all constitutional authorities, and the voice of the
whole nation, mustered in great force, and was joined by many who
did not ordinarily vote against the Government. On one occasion
the ministry, in a very full House, had a majority of only
fourteen votes. The storm, however, blew over. The spirit of the
Opposition, from whatever cause, began to flag at the moment when
success seemed almost certain. The session ended without any
change. Pitt, whose eloquence had shone with its usual lustre in
all the principal debates, and whose popularity was greater than
ever, was still a private man. Grenville, detested alike by the
Court and by the people, was still minister.

As soon as the Houses had risen, Grenville took a step which
proved, even more signally than any of his past acts, how
despotic, how acrimonious, and how fearless his nature was. Among
the gentlemen not ordinarily opposed to the Government, who, on
the great constitutional question of general warrants, had voted
with the minority, was Henry Conway, brother of the Earl of
Hertford, a brave soldier, a tolerable speaker, and a well-
meaning, though not a wise or vigorous politician. He was now
deprived of his regiment, the merited reward of faithful and
gallant service in two wars. It was confidently asserted that in
this violent measure the King heartily concurred.

But whatever pleasure the persecution of Wilkes, or the dismissal
of Conway, may have given to the royal mind, it is certain that
his Majesty's aversion to his ministers increased day by day.
Grenville was as frugal of the public money as of his own, and
morosely refused to accede to the King's request, that a few
thousand pounds might be expended in buying some open fields to
the west of the gardens of Buckingham House. In consequence of
this refusal, the fields were soon covered with buildings, and
the King and Queen were overlooked in their most private walks by
the upper windows of a hundred houses. Nor was this the worst.
Grenville was as liberal of words as he was sparing of guineas.
Instead of explaining himself in that clear, concise, and lively
manner, which alone could win the attention of a young mind new
to business, he spoke in the closet just as he spoke in the House
of Commons. When he had harangued two hours, he looked at his
watch, as he had been in the habit of looking at the clock
opposite the Speaker's chair, apologised for the length of his
discourse, and then went on for an hour more. The members of the
House of Commons can cough an orator down, or can walk away to
dinner; and they were by no means sparing in the use of these
privileges when Grenville was on his legs. But the poor young
King had to endure all this eloquence with mournful civility. To
the end of his life he continued to talk with horror of
Grenville's orations.

About this time took place one of the most singular events in
Pitt's life. There was a certain Sir William Pynsent, a
Somersetshire baronet of Whig politics, who had been a Member of
the House of Commons in the days of Queen Anne, and had retired
to rural privacy when the Tory party, towards the end of her
reign, obtained the ascendency in her councils. His manners were
eccentric. His morals lay under very odious imputations. But his
fidelity to his political opinions was unalterable. During fifty
years of seclusion he continued to brood over the circumstances
which had driven him from public life, the dismissal of the
Whigs, the peace of Utrecht, the desertion of our allies. He now
thought that he perceived a close analogy between the well
remembered events of his youth and the events which he had
witnessed in extreme old age; between the disgrace of Marlborough
and the disgrace of Pitt; between the elevation of Harley and the
elevation of Bute; between the treaty negotiated by St. John and
the treaty negotiated by Bedford; between the wrongs of the House
of Austria in 1712 and the wrongs of the House of Brandenburgh in
1762. This fancy took such possession of the old man's mind that
he determined to leave his whole property to Pitt. In this way,
Pitt unexpectedly came into possession of near three thousand
pounds a year. Nor could all the malice of his enemies find any
ground for reproach in the transaction. Nobody could call him a
legacy-hunter. Nobody could accuse him of seizing that to which
others had a better claim. For he had never in his life seen Sir
William; and Sir William had left no relation so near as to be
entitled to form any expectations respecting the estate.

The fortunes of Pitt seemed to flourish; but his health was worse
than ever. We cannot find that, during the session which began in
January 1765, he once appeared in Parliament. He remained some
months in profound retirement at Hayes, his favourite villa,
scarcely moving except from his armchair to his bed, and from his
bed to his armchair, and often employing his wife as his
amanuensis in his most confidential correspondence. Some of his
detractors whispered that his invisibility was to be ascribed
quite as much to affectation as to gout. In truth his character,
high and splendid as it was, wanted simplicity. With genius which
did not need the aid of stage tricks, and with a spirit which
should have been far above them, he had yet been, through life,
in the habit of practising them. It was, therefore, now surmised
that, having acquired all the considerations which could be
derived from eloquence and from great services to the State, he
had determined not to make himself cheap by often appearing in
public, but, under the pretext of ill health, to surround himself
with mystery, to emerge only at long intervals and on momentous
occasions, and at other times to deliver his oracles only to a
few favoured votaries, who were suffered to make pilgrimages to
his shrine. If such were his object, it was for a time fully
attained. Never was the magic of his name so powerful, never was
he regarded by his country with such superstitious veneration, as
during this year of silence and seclusion.

While Pitt was thus absent from Parliament, Grenville proposed a
measure destined to produce a great revolution, the effects of
which will long be felt by the whole human race. We speak of the
act for imposing stamp-duties on the North American colonies. The
plan was eminently characteristic of its author. Every feature of
the parent was found in the child. A timid statesman would have
shrunk from a step, of which Walpole, at a time when the colonies
were far less powerful, had said--"He who shall propose it will
be a much bolder man than I" But the nature of Grenville was
insensible to fear. A statesman of large views would have felt
that to lay taxes at Westminster on New England and New York, was
a course opposed, not indeed to the letter of the Statute Book,
or to any decision contained in the Term Reports, but to the
principles of good government, and to the spirit of the
constitution. A statesman of large views would also have felt that
ten times the estimated produce of the American stamps would have
been dearly purchased by even a transient quarrel between the
mother country and the colonies. But Grenville knew of no spirit
of the constitution distinct from the letter of the law, and of
no national interests except those which are expressed by pounds,
shillings, and pence. That his policy might give birth to deep
discontents in all the provinces, from the shore of the Great
Lakes to the Mexican sea; that France and Spain might seize the
opportunity of revenge; that the empire might be dismembered;
that the debt, that debt with the amount of which he perpetually
reproached Pitt, might, in consequence of his own policy, be
doubled; these were possibilities which never occurred to that
small, sharp mind.

The Stamp Act will be remembered as long as the globe lasts. But,
at the time, it attracted much less notice in this country than
another Act which is now almost utterly forgotten. The King fell
ill, and was thought to be in a dangerous state. His complaint,
we believe, was the same which, at a later period, repeatedly
incapacitated him for the performance of his regal functions.
The heir-apparent was only two years old. It was clearly proper
to make provision for the administration of the Government, in
case of a minority. The discussions on this point brought the
quarrel between the Court and the ministry to a crisis. The King
wished to be intrusted with the power of naming a regent by will.
The ministers feared, or affected to fear, that, if this power
were conceded to him, he would name the Princess Mother, nay,
possibly the Earl of Bute. They, therefore, insisted on
introducing into the bill words confining the King's choice to
the royal family. Having thus excluded Bute, they urged the King
to let them, in the most marked manner, exclude the Princess
Dowager also. They assured him that the House of Commons would
undoubtedly strike her name out, and by this threat they wrung
from him a reluctant assent. In a few days, it appeared that the
representations by which they had induced the King to put this
gross and public affront on his mother were unfounded. The
friends of the Princess in the House of Commons moved that her
name should be inserted. The ministers could not decently attack
the parent of their master. They hoped that the Opposition would
come to their help, and put on them a force to which they would
gladly have yielded. But the majority of the Opposition, though
hating the Princess, hated Grenville more, beheld his
embarrassment with delight, and would do nothing to extricate him
from it. The Princess's name was accordingly placed in the list
of persons qualified to hold the regency.

The King's resentment was now it the height. The present evil
seemed to him more intolerable than any other. Even the junta of
Whig grandees could not treat him worse than he had been treated
by his present ministers. In his distress, he poured out his
whole heart to his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. The Duke was
not a man to be loved; but he was eminently a man to be trusted.
He had an intrepid temper, a strong understanding, and a high
sense of honour and duty. As a general, he belonged to a
remarkable class of captains, captains we mean, whose fate it has
been to lose almost all the battles which they have fought, and
yet to be reputed stout and skilful soldiers. Such captains were
Coligny and William the Third. We might, perhaps, add Marshal
Soult to the list. The bravery of the Duke of Cumberland was such
as distinguished him even among the princes of his brave house.
The indifference with which he rode about amidst musket balls and
cannon balls was not the highest proof of his fortitude. Hopeless
maladies, horrible surgical operations, far from unmanning him,
did not even discompose him. With courage he had the virtues
which are akin to courage. He spoke the truth, was open in enmity
and friendship, and upright in all his dealings. But his nature
was hard; and what seemed to him justice was rarely tempered with
mercy. He was, therefore, during many years, one of the most
unpopular men in England. The severity with which he had treated
the rebels after the battle of Culloden, had gained for him the
name of the Butcher. His attempts to introduce into the army of
England, then in a most disorderly state, the rigorous discipline
of Potsdam, had excited still stronger disgust. Nothing was too
bad to be believed of him. Many honest people were so absurd as
to fancy that, if he were left Regent during the minority of his
nephews, there would be another smothering in the Tower. These
feelings, however, had passed away. The Duke had been living,
during some years, in retirement. The English, full of animosity
against the Scots, now blamed his Royal Highness only for having
left so many Camerons and Macphersons to be made gaugers and
custom-house officers. He was, therefore, at present, a favourite
with his countrymen, and especially with the inhabitants of
London.

He had little reason to love the King, and had shown clearly,
though not obtrusively, his dislike of the system which had
lately been pursued. But he had high and almost romantic notions
of the duty which, as a prince of the blood, he owed to the head
of his house. He determined to extricate his nephew from bondage,
and to effect a reconciliation between the Whig party and the
throne, on terms honourable to both.

In this mind he set off for Hayes, and was admitted to Pitt's
sick-room; for Pitt would not leave his chamber, and would not
communicate with any messenger of inferior dignity. And now began
a long series of errors on the part of the illustrious statesman,
errors which involved his country in difficulties and distresses
more serious even than those from which his genius had formerly
rescued her. His language was haughty, unreasonable, almost
unintelligible. The only thing which could be discerned through a
cloud of vague and not very gracious phrases, was that he would
not at that moment take office. The truth, we believe, was this.
Lord Temple, who was Pitt's evil genius, had just formed a new
scheme of politics. Hatred of Bute and of the Princess had, it
should seem, taken entire possession of Temple's soul. He had
quarrelled with his brother George, because George had been
connected with Bute and the Princess. Now that George appeared to
be the enemy of Bute and of the Princess, Temple was eager to
bring about a general family reconciliation. The three brothers,
as Temple, Grenville, and Pitt, were popularly called, might make
a ministry without leaning for aid either on Bute or on the Whig
connection. With such views, Temple used all his influence to
dissuade Pitt from acceding to the propositions of the Duke of
Cumberland. Pitt was not convinced. But Temple had an influence
over him such as no other person had ever possessed. They were
very old friends, very near relations. If Pitt's talents and fame
had been useful to Temple, Temple's purse had formerly, in times
of great need, been useful to Pitt. They had never been parted in
politics. Twice they had come into the Cabinet together; twice
they had left it together. Pitt could not bear to think of taking
office without his chief ally. Yet he felt that he was doing
wrong, that he was throwing away a great opportunity of serving
his country. The obscure and unconciliatory style of the answers
which he returned to the overtures of the Duke of Cumberland, may
be ascribed to the embarrassment and vexation of a mind not at
peace with itself. It is said that he mournfully exclaimed to
Temple,

"Extinxti te meque, soror, populumque, patresque
Sidonios, urbemque tuam."

The prediction was but too just.

Finding Pitt impracticable, the Duke of Cumberland advised the
King to submit to necessity, and to keep Grenville and the
Bedfords. It was, indeed, not a time at which offices could
safely be left vacant. The unsettled state of the Government had
produced a general relaxation through all the departments of the
public service. Meetings, which at another time would have been
harmless, now turned to riots, and rapidly rose almost to the
dignity of rebellions. The Houses of Parliament were blockaded by
the Spitalfields weavers. Bedford House was assailed on all sides
by a furious rabble, and was strongly garrisoned with horse and
foot. Some people attributed these disturbances to the friends of
Bute, and some to the friends of Wilkes. But, whatever might be
the cause, the effect was general insecurity. Under such
circumstances the King had no choice. With bitter feelings of
mortification, he informed the ministers that he meant to retain
them.

They answered by demanding from him a promise on his royal word
never more to consult Lord Bute. The promise was given. They then
demanded something more. Lord Bute's brother, Mr. Mackenzie, held
a lucrative office in Scotland. Mr. Mackenzie must be dismissed.
The King replied that the office had been given under very
peculiar circumstances, and that he had promised never to take it
away while he lived. Grenville was obstinate; and the King, with
a very bad grace, yielded.

The session of Parliament was over. The triumph of the ministers
was complete. The King was almost as much a prisoner as Charles
the First had been when in the Isle of Wight. Such were the
fruits of the policy which, only a few months before, was
represented as having for ever secured the throne against the
dictation of insolent subjects.

His Majesty's natural resentment showed itself in every look and
word. In his extremity he looked wistfully towards that Whig
connection, once the object of his dread and hatred. The Duke of
Devonshire, who had been treated with such unjustifiable
harshness, had lately died, and had been succeeded by his son,
who was still a boy. The King condescended to express his regret
for what had passed, and to invite the young Duke to Court. The
noble youth came, attended by his uncles, and was received with
marked graciousness.

This and many other symptoms of the same kind irritated the
ministers. They had still in store for their sovereign an insult
which would have provoked his grandfather to kick them out of the
room. Grenville and Bedford demanded an audience of him, and read
him a remonstrance of many pages, which they had drawn up with
great care. His Majesty was accused of breaking his word, and of
treating his advisers with gross unfairness. The Princess was
mentioned in language by no means eulogistic. Hints were thrown
out that Bute's head was in danger. The King was plainly told
that he must not continue to show, as he had done, that he
disliked the situation in which he was placed, that he must frown
upon the Opposition, that he must carry it fair towards his
ministers in public. He several times interrupted the reading, by
declaring that he had ceased to hold any communication with Bute.
But the ministers, disregarding his denial, went on; and the King
listened in silence, almost choked by rage. When they ceased to
read, he merely made a gesture expressive of his wish to be left
alone. He afterwards owned that he thought he should have gone
into a fit.

Driven to despair, he again had recourse to the Duke of
Cumberland; and the Duke of Cumberland again had recourse to
Pitt. Pitt was really desirous to undertake the direction of
affairs, and owned, with many dutiful expressions, that the terms
offered by the King were all that any subject could desire. But
Temple was impracticable; and Pitt, with great regret, declared
that he could not, without the concurrence of his brother-in-law,
undertake the administration.

The Duke now saw only one way of delivering his nephew. An
administration must be formed of the Whigs in opposition, without
Pitt's help. The difficulties seemed almost insuperable. Death
and desertion had grievously thinned the ranks of the party
lately supreme in the State. Those among whom the Duke's choice
lay might be divided into two classes, men too old for important
offices, and men who had never been in any important office
before. The Cabinet must be composed of broken invalids or of raw
recruits.

This was an evil, yet not an unmixed evil. If the new Whig
statesmen had little experience in business and debate, they
were, on the other hand, pure from the taint of that political
immorality which had deeply infected their predecessors. Long
prosperity had corrupted that great party which had expelled the
Stuarts, limited the prerogatives of the Crown, and curbed the
intolerance of the Hierarchy. Adversity had already produced a
salutary effect. On the day of the accession of George the Third,
the ascendency of the Whig party terminated; and on that day the
purification of the Whig party began. The rising chiefs of that
party were men of a very different sort from Sandys and
Winnington, from Sir William Yonge and Henry Fox. They were men
worthy to have charged by the side of Hampden at Chalgrove, or to
have exchanged the last embrace with Russell on the scaffold in
Lincoln's Inn Fields. They carried into politics the same high
principles of virtue which regulated their private dealings, nor
would they stoop to promote even the noblest and most salutary
ends by means which honour and probity condemn. Such men were
Lord John Cavendish, Sir George Savile, and others whom we hold
in honour as the second founders of the Whig party, as the
restorers of its pristine health and energy after half a century
of degeneracy.

The chief of this respectable band was the Marquess of
Rockingham, a man of splendid fortune, excellent sense, and
stainless character. He was indeed nervous to such a degree that,
to the very close of his life, he never rose without great
reluctance and embarrassment to address the House of Lords.

But, though not a great orator, he had in a high degree some of
the qualities of a statesman. He chose his friends well; and he
had, in an extraordinary degree, the art of attaching them to him
by ties of the most honourable kind. The cheerful fidelity with
which they adhered to him through many years of almost hopeless
opposition was less admirable than the disinterestedness and
delicacy which they showed when he rose to power.

We are inclined to think that the use and the abuse of party
cannot be better illustrated than by a parallel between two
powerful connections of that time, the Rockinghams and the
Bedfords. The Rockingham party was, in our view, exactly what a
party should be. It consisted of men bound together by common
opinions, by common public objects, by mutual esteem. That they
desired to obtain, by honest and constitutional means, the
direction of affairs, they openly avowed. But, though often
invited to accept the honours and emoluments of office, they
steadily refused to do so on any conditions inconsistent with
their principles. The Bedford party, as a party, had, as far as
we can discover, no principle whatever. Rigby and Sandwich wanted
public money, and thought that they should fetch a higher price
jointly than singly. They therefore acted in concert, and
prevailed on a much more important and a much better man than
themselves to act with them.

It was to Rockingham that the Duke of Cumberland now had
recourse. The Marquess consented to take the Treasury. Newcastle,
so long the recognised chief of the Whigs, could not well be
excluded from the ministry. He was appointed Keeper of the Privy
Seal. A very honest clear-headed country gentleman, of the name
of Dowdeswell, became Chancellor of the Exchequer. General
Conway, who had served under the Duke of Cumberland, and was
strongly attached to his royal highness, was made Secretary of
State, with the lead in the House of Commons. A great Whig
nobleman, in the prime of manhood, from whom much was at that
time expected, Augustus, Duke of Grafton, was the other
Secretary.

The oldest man living could remember no Government so weak in
oratorical talents and in official experience. The general
opinion was, that the ministers might hold office during the
recess, but that the first day of debate in Parliament would be
the last day of their power. Charles Townshend was asked what he
thought of the new administration. "It is," said be, "mere
lutestring; pretty summer wear. It will never do for the winter."

At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom to discern the
value, and secure the aid, of an ally, who, to eloquence
surpassing the eloquence of Pitt, and to industry which shamed
the industry of Grenville, united an amplitude of comprehension
to which neither Pitt nor Grenville could lay claim. A young
Irishman had, some time before, come over to push his fortune in
London. He had written much for the booksellers; but he was best
known by a little treatise, in which the style and reasoning of
Bolingbroke were mimicked with exquisite skill, and by a theory,
of more ingenuity than soundness, touching the pleasures which we
receive from the objects of taste He had also attained a high
reputation as a talker, and was regarded by the men of letters
who supped together at the Turk's Head as the only match in
conversation for Dr. Johnson. He now became private secretary to
Lord Rockingham, and was brought into Parliament by his patron's
influence. These arrangements, indeed, were not made without some
difficulty. The Duke of Newcastle, who was always meddling and
chattering, adjured the First Lord of the Treasury to be on his
guard against this adventurer, whose real name was O'Bourke, and
whom his Grace knew to be a wild Irishman, a Jacobite, a Papist,
a concealed Jesuit. Lord Rockingham treated the calumny as it
deserved; and the Whig party was strengthened and adorned by the
accession of Edmund Burke.

The party, indeed, stood in need of accessions; for it sustained
about this time an almost irreparable loss. The Duke of
Cumberland had formed the Government, and was its main support.
His exalted rank and great name in some degree balanced the fame
of Pitt. As mediator between the Whigs and the Court, he held a
place which no other person could fill. The strength of his
character supplied that which was the chief defect of the new
ministry. Conway, in particular, who, with excellent intentions
and respectable talents, was the most dependent and irresolute
of human beings, drew from the counsels of that masculine mind a
determination not his own. Before the meeting of Parliament the
Duke suddenly died. His death was generally regarded as the
signal of great troubles, and on this account, as well as from
respect for his personal qualities, was greatly lamented. It was
remarked that the mourning in London was the most general ever
known, and was both deeper and longer than the Gazette had
prescribed.

In the meantime, every mail from America brought alarming
tidings. The crop which Grenville had sown his successors had now
to reap, The colonies were in a state bordering on rebellion. The
stamps were burned. The revenue officers were tarred and
feathered. All traffic between the discontented provinces and the
mother country was interrupted. The Exchange of London was in
dismay. Half the firms of Bristol and Liverpool were threatened
with bankruptcy. In Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, it was said
that three artisans out of every ten had been turned adrift.
Civil war seemed to be at hand; and it could not be doubted that,
if once the British nation were divided against itself, France
and Spain would soon take part in the quarrel.

Three courses were open to the ministers. The first was to
enforce the Stamp Act by the sword. This was the course on which
the King, and Grenville, whom the King hated beyond all living
men, were alike bent. The natures of both were arbitrary and
stubborn. They resembled each other so much that they could never
be friends; but they resembled each other also so much that they
saw almost all important practical questions in the same point of
view. Neither of them would bear to be governed by the other; but
they were perfectly agreed as to the best way of governing the
people.

Another course was that which Pitt recommended. He held that the
British Parliament was not constitutionally competent to pass a
law for taxing the colonies. He therefore considered the Stamp
Act as a nullity, as a document of no more validity than
Charles's writ of ship-money, or James's proclamation dispensing
with the penal laws. This doctrine seems to us, we must own, to
be altogether untenable.

Between these extreme courses lay a third way. The opinion of the
most judicious and temperate statesmen of those times was that
the British constitution had set no limit whatever to the
legislative power of the British King, Lords, and Commons, over
the whole British Empire. Parliament, they held, was legally
competent to tax America, as Parliament was legally competent to
commit any other act of folly or wickedness, to confiscate the
property of all the merchants in Lombard Street, or to attaint
any man in the kingdom of high treason, without examining
witnesses against him, or hearing him in his own defence. The
most atrocious act of confiscation or of attainder is just as
valid an act as the Toleration Act or the Habeas Corpus Act. But
from acts of confiscation and acts of attainder lawgivers are
bound, by every obligation of morality, systematically to
refrain. In the same manner ought the British legislature to
refrain from taxing the American colonies. The Stamp Act was
indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitutional
competence of Parliament, but because it was unjust and
impolitic, sterile of revenue, and fertile of discontents. These
sound doctrines were adopted by Lord Rockingham and his
colleagues, and were, during a long course of years, inculcated
by Burke, in orations, some of which will last as long as the
English language.

The winter came; the Parliament met; and the state of the
colonies instantly became the subject of fierce contention. Pitt,
whose health had been somewhat restored by the waters of Bath,
reappeared in the House of Commons, and, with ardent and pathetic
eloquence, not only condemned the Stamp Act, but applauded the
resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia, and vehemently
maintained, in defiance, we must say, of all reason and of all
authority, that, according to the British constitution, the
supreme legislative power does not include the power to tax.
The language of Grenville, on the other hand, was such as
Strafford might have used at the council-table of Charles the
First, when news came of the resistance to the liturgy at
Edinburgh. The colonists were traitors; those who excused them
were little better. Frigates, mortars, bayonets, sabres, were the
proper remedies for such distempers.

The ministers occupied an intermediate position; they proposed to
declare that the legislative authority of the British Parliament
over the whole Empire was in all cases supreme; and they
proposed, at the same time, to repeal the Stamp Act. To the
former measure Pitt objected; but it was carried with scarcely a
dissentient voice. The repeal of the Stamp Act Pitt strongly
supported; but against the Government was arrayed a formidable
assemblage of opponents. Grenville and the Bedfords were furious.
Temple, who had now allied himself closely with his brother, and
separated himself from Pitt, was no despicable enemy. This,
however, was not the worst. The ministry was without its natural
strength. It had to struggle, not only against its avowed
enemies, but against the insidious hostility of the King, and of
a set of persons who, about this time, began to be designated as
the King's friends.

The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with even
more than his usual force and vivacity. Those who know how
strongly, through his whole life, his judgment was biassed by his
passions, may not unnaturally suspect that he has left us rather
a caricature than a likeness; and yet there is scarcely, in the
whole portrait, a single touch of which the fidelity is not
proved by facts of unquestionable authenticity.

The public generally regarded the King's friends as a body of
which Bute was the directing soul. It was to no purpose that the
Earl professed to have done with politics, that he absented
himself year after year from the levee and the drawing-room, that
he went to the north, that he went to Rome. The notion that, in
some inexplicable manner, he dictated all the measures of the
Court, was fixed in the minds, not only of the multitude, but of
some who had good opportunities of obtaining information, and who
ought to have been superior to vulgar prejudices. Our own belief
is that these suspicions were unfounded, and that he ceased to
have any communication with the King on political matters some
time before the dismissal of George Grenville. The supposition of
Bute's influence is, indeed, by no means necessary to explain the
phaenomena. The King, in 1765, was no longer the ignorant and
inexperienced boy who had, in 1760, been managed by his mother
and his Groom of the Stole. He had, during several years,
observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily on high
questions of State with able and experienced politicians. His way
of life had developed his understanding and character. He was now
no longer a puppet, but had very decided opinions both of men and
things. Nothing could be more natural than that he should have
high notions of his own prerogatives, should be impatient of
opposition and should wish all public men to be detached from
each other and dependent on himself alone; nor could anything be
more natural than that, in the state in which the political world
then was, he should find instruments fit for his purposes.

Thus sprang into existence and into note a reptile species of
politicians never before and never since known in our country.
These men disclaimed all political ties, except those which bound
them to the throne. They were willing to coalesce with any party,
to abandon any party, to undermine any party, to assault any
party, at a moment's notice. To them, all administrations, and
all oppositions were the same. They regarded Bute, Grenville,
Rockingham, Pitt, without one sentiment either of predilection or
of aversion. They were the King's friends. It is to be observed
that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These people
had never lived with their master as Dodington at one time lived
with his father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived with his son.
They never hunted with him in the morning, or played cards with
him in the evening, never shared his mutton or walked with him
among his turnips. Only one or two of them ever saw his face,
except on public days. The whole band, however, always had early
and accurate information as to his personal inclinations. These
people were never high in the administration. They were generally
to be found in places of much emolument, little labour, and no
responsibility; and these places they continued to occupy
securely while the Cabinet was six or seven times reconstructed.
Their peculiar business was not to support the Ministry against
the Opposition, but to support the King against the Ministry.
Whenever his Majesty was induced to give a reluctant assent to
the introduction of some bill which his constitutional advisers
regarded as necessary, his friends in the House of Commons were
sure to speak against it, to vote against it, to throw in its way
every obstruction compatible with the forms of Parliament. If his
Majesty found it necessary to admit into his closet a Secretary
of State or a First Lord of the Treasury whom he disliked, his
friends were sure to miss no opportunity of thwarting and
humbling the obnoxious minister. In return for these services,
the King covered them with his protection. It was to no purpose
that his responsible servants complained to him that they were
daily betrayed and impeded by men who were eating the bread of
the Government He sometimes justified the offenders, sometimes
excused them, sometimes owned that they were to blame, but said
that he must take time to consider whether he could part with
them. He never would turn them out; and, while everything else in
the State was constantly changing, these sycophants seemed to
have a life estate in their offices.

It was well known to the King's friends that, though his Majesty
had consented to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he had consented
with a very bad grace, and that though he had eagerly welcomed
the Whigs, when, in his extreme need and at his earnest entreaty,
they had undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he
had by no means got over his early prejudices against his
deliverers. The ministers soon found that, while they were
encountered in front by the whole force of a strong Opposition,
their rear was assailed by a large body of those whom they had
regarded as auxiliaries.

Nevertheless, Lord Rockingham and his adherents went on
resolutely with the bill for repealing the Stamp Act. They had on
their side all the manufacturing and commercial interests of the
realm. In the debates the Government was powerfully supported.
Two great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different
generations, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defence of
the bill. The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and
Burke for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the
palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was indeed a splendid
sunset and a splendid dawn.

For a time the event seemed doubtful. In several divisions the
ministers were hard pressed. On one occasion, not less than
twelve of the King's friends, all men in office, voted against
the Government. It was to no purpose that Lord Rockingham
remonstrated with the King. His Majesty confessed that there was
ground for complaint, but hoped that gentle means would bring the
mutineers to a better mind. If they persisted in their
misconduct, he would dismiss them.

At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the lobby, the
Court of Requests, the staircases, were crowded with merchants
from all the great ports of the island. The debate lasted till
long after midnight. On the division the ministers had a great
majority. The dread of civil war, and the outcry of all the
trading towns of the kingdom, had been too strong for the
combined strength of the Court and the Opposition.

It was in the first dim twilight of a February morning that the
doors were thrown open, and that the chiefs of the hostile
parties showed themselves to the multitude. Conway was received
with loud applause. But, when Pitt appeared, all eyes were fixed
on him alone. All hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas
accompanied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted
him all the way to his home. Then came forth Grenville. As soon
as he was recognised, a storm of hisses and curses broke forth.
He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one by the throat.
The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none
could say how it might end. Fortunately the person who had been
collared only said, "If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I may laugh,"
and laughed in Grenville's face.

The majority had been so decisive, that all the opponents of the
Ministry, save one, were disposed to let the bill pass without
any further contention. But solicitation and expostulation were
thrown away on Grenville. His indomitable spirit rose up stronger
and stronger under the load of public hatred. He fought out the
battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he had a sharp
altercation with his brother-in-law, the last of their many sharp
altercations. Pitt thundered in his loftiest tones against the
man who had wished to dip the ermine of a British King in the
blood of the British people. Grenville replied with his wonted
intrepidity and asperity. "If the tax," he said, "were still to
be laid on, I would lay it on. For the evils which it may produce
my accuser is answerable. His profusion made it necessary. His
declarations against the constitutional powers of Kings, Lords,
and Commons, have made it doubly necessary. I do not envy him the
huzza. I glory in the hiss. If it were to be done again, I would
do it."

The repeal of the Stamp Act was the chief measure of Lord
Rockingham's Government. But that Government is entitled to the
praise of having put a stop to two oppressive practices, which,
in Wilkes's case, had attracted the notice and excited the just
indignation of the public. The House of Commons was induced by
the ministers to pass a resolution condemning the use of general
warrants, and another resolution condemning the seizure of papers
in cases of libel.

It must be added, to the lasting honour of Lord Rockingham, that
his administration was the first which, during a long course of
years, had the courage and the virtue to refrain from bribing
members of Parliament. His enemies accused him and his friends of
weakness, of haughtiness, of party spirit; but calumny itself
never dared to couple his name with corruption.

Unhappily his Government, though one of the best that has ever
existed in our country, was also one of the weakest. The King's
friends assailed and obstructed the ministers at every turn. To
appeal to the King was only to draw forth new promises and new
evasions. His Majesty was sure that there must be some
misunderstanding. Lord Rockingham had better speak to the
gentlemen. They should be dismissed on the next fault. The next
fault was soon committed, and his Majesty still continued to
shuffle. It was too bad. It was quite abominable; but it mattered
less as the prorogation was at hand. He would give the
delinquents one more chance. If they did not alter their conduct
next session, he should not have one word to say for them. He had
already resolved that, long before the commencement of the next
session, Lord Rockingham should cease to be minister.

We have now come to a part of our story which, admiring as we do
the genius and the many noble qualities of Pitt, we cannot relate
without much pain. We believe that, at this conjuncture, he had
it in his power to give the victory either to the Whigs or to the
King's friends. If he had allied himself closely with Lord
Rockingham, what could the Court have done? There would have been
only one alternative, the Whigs or Grenville; and there could be
no doubt what the King's choice would be. He still remembered, as
well he might, with the uttermost bitterness, the thraldom from
which his uncle had freed him, and said about this time, with
great vehemence, that he would sooner see the Devil come into his
closet than Grenville.

And what was there to prevent Pitt from allying himself with Lord
Rockingham? On all the most important questions their views were
the same. They had agreed in condemning the peace, the Stamp Act,
the general warrant, the seizure of papers. The points on which
they differed were few and unimportant. In integrity, in
disinterestedness, in hatred of corruption, they resembled each
other. Their personal interests could not clash. They sat in
different Houses, and Pitt had always declared that nothing
should induce him to be First Lord of the Treasury.

If the opportunity of forming a coalition beneficial to the
State, and honourable to all concerned, was suffered to escape,
the fault was not with the Whig ministers. They behaved towards
Pitt with an obsequiousness which, had it not been the effect of
sincere admiration and of anxiety for the public interests, might
have been justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to
understand that, if he chose to join their ranks, they were ready
to receive him, not as an associate, but as a leader. They had
proved their respect for him by bestowing a peerage on the person
who, at that time, enjoyed the largest share of his confidence,
Chief Justice Pratt. What then was there to divide Pitt from the
Whigs? What, on the other hand, was there in common between him
and the King's friends, that he should lend himself to their
purposes, he who had never owed anything to flattery or intrigue,
he whose eloquence and independent spirit had overawed two
generations of slaves and jobbers, he who had twice been forced
by the enthusiasm of an admiring nation on a reluctant Prince?

Unhappily the Court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, by those
ignoble means which were employed when such men as Rigby and
Wedderburn were to be won, but by allurements suited to a nature
noble even in its aberrations. The King set himself to seduce the
one man who could turn the Whigs out without letting Grenville
in. Praise, caresses, promises, were lavished on the idol of the
nation. He, and he alone, could put an end to faction, could bid
defiance to all the powerful connections in the land united,
Whigs and Tories, Rockinghams, Bedfords, and Grenvilles. These
blandishments produced a great effect. For though Pitt's spirit
was high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted with
formidable effect against the Court, and though his theory of
government had been learned in the school of Locke and Sydney,
he had always regarded the person of the sovereign with profound
veneration. As soon as he was brought face to face with royalty,
his imagination and sensibility were too strong for his principles.
His Whiggism thawed and disappeared; and he became, for the time,
a Tory of the old Ormond pattern. Nor was he by any means unwilling
to assist in the work of dissolving all political connections. His
own weight in the State was wholly independent of such
connections. He was therefore inclined to look on them with
dislike, and made far too little distinction between gangs of
knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and
confederacies of honourable men for the promotion of great public
objects. Nor had he the sagacity to perceive that the strenuous
efforts which he made to annihilate all parties tended only to
establish the ascendency of one party, and that the basest and
most hateful of all.

It may be doubted whether he would have been thus misled, if his
mind had been in full health and vigour. But the truth is that he
had for some time been in an unnatural state of excitement. No
suspicion of this sort had yet got abroad. His eloquence had
never shone with more splendour than during the recent debates.
But people afterwards called to mind many things which ought to
have roused their apprehensions. His habits were gradually
becoming more and more eccentric. A horror of all loud sounds,
such as is said to have been one of the many oddities of
Wallenstein, grew upon him. Though the most affectionate of
fathers, he could not at this time bear to hear the voices of his
own children, and laid out great sums at Hayes in buying up
houses contiguous to his own, merely that he might have no
neighbours to disturb him with their noise. He then sold Hayes,
and took possession of a villa at Hampstead, where he again began
to purchase houses to right and left. In expense, indeed, he
vied, during this part of his life, with the wealthiest of the
conquerors of Bengal and Tanjore. At Burton Pynsent, he ordered a
great extent of ground to be planted with cedars. Cedars enough
for the purpose were not to be found in Somersetshire. They were
therefore collected in London, and sent down by land carriage.
Relays of labourers were hired; and the work went on all night by
torchlight. No man could be more abstemious than Pitt; yet the
profusion of his kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. Several
dinners were always dressing; for his appetite was capricious and
fanciful; and at whatever moment he felt inclined to eat, he
expected a meal to be instantly on the table. Other circumstances
might be mentioned, such as separately are of little moment, but
such as, when taken altogether, and when viewed in connection
with the strange events which followed, justify us in believing
that his mind was already in a morbid state.

Soon after the close of the session of Parliament, Lord
Rockingham received his dismissal. He retired, accompanied by a
firm body of friends, whose consistency and uprightness enmity
itself was forced to admit. None of them had asked or obtained
any pension or any sinecure, either in possession or in
reversion. Such disinterestedness was then rare among
politicians. Their chief, though not a man of brilliant talents,
had won for himself an honourable fame, which he kept pure to the
last. He had, in spite of difficulties which seemed almost
insurmountable, removed great abuses and averted a civil war.
Sixteen years later, in a dark and terrible day, he was again
called upon to save the State, brought to the very brink of ruin
by the same perfidy and obstinacy which had embarrassed, and at
length overthrown his first administration.

Pitt was planting in Somersetshire when he was summoned to Court
by a letter written by the royal hand. He instantly hastened to
London. The irritability of his mind and body were increased by
the rapidity with which he travelled; and when he reached his
journey's end he was suffering from fever. Ill as he was, he saw
the King at Richmond, and undertook to form an administration.

Pitt was scarcely in the state in which a man should be who has
to conduct delicate and arduous negotiations. In his letters to
his wife, he complained that the conferences in which it was
necessary for him to bear a part heated his blood and accelerated
his pulse. From other sources of information we learn, that his
language, even to those whose co-operation he wished to engage,
was strangely peremptory and despotic. Some of his notes written
at this time have been preserved, and are in a style which Lewis
the Fourteenth would have been too well bred to employ in
addressing any French gentleman.

In the attempt to dissolve all parties, Pitt met with some
difficulties. Some Whigs, whom the Court would gladly have
detached from Lord Rockingham, rejected all offers. The Bedfords
were perfectly willing to break with Grenville; but Pitt would
not come up to their terms. Temple, whom Pitt at first meant to
place at the head of the Treasury, proved intractable. A coldness
indeed had, during some months, been fast growing between the
brothers-in-law, so long and so closely allied in politics. Pitt
was angry with Temple for opposing the repeal of the Stamp Act.
Temple was angry with Pitt for refusing to accede to that family
league which was now the favourite plan at Stowe. At length the
Earl proposed an equal partition of power and patronage, and
offered, on this condition, to give up his brother George. Pitt
thought the demand exorbitant, and positively refused compliance.
A bitter quarrel followed. Each of the kinsmen was true to his
character. Temple's soul festered with spite, and Pitt's swelled
into contempt. Temple represented Pitt as the most odious of
hypocrites and traitors. Pitt held a different and perhaps a more
provoking tone. Temple was a good sort of man enough, whose
single title to distinction was, that he had a large garden, with
a large piece of water, and had a great many pavilions and
summer-houses. To his fortunate connection with a great orator
and statesman he was indebted for an importance in the State
which his own talents could never have gained for him. That
importance had turned his head. He had begun to fancy that he
could form administrations, and govern empires. It was piteous to
see a well meaning man under such a delusion.

In spite of all these difficulties, a ministry was made such as
the King wished to see, a ministry in which all his Majesty's
friends were comfortably accommodated, and which, with the
exception of his Majesty's friends, contained no four persons who
had ever in their lives been in the habit of acting together. Men
who had never concurred in a single vote found themselves seated
at the same board. The office of Paymaster was divided between
two persons who had never exchanged a word. Most of the chief
posts were filled either by personal adherents of Pitt, or by
members of the late ministry, who had been induced to remain in
place after the dismissal of Lord Rockingham. To the former class
belonged Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted the great seal, and
Lord Shelburne, who was made one of the Secretaries of State. To
the latter class belonged the Duke of Grafton, who became First
Lord of the Treasury, and Conway, who kept his old position both
in the Government and in the House of Commons. Charles Townshend,
who had belonged to every party, and cared for none, was
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt himself was declared Prime
Minister, but refused to take any laborious office. He was
created Earl of Chatham, and the Privy Seal was delivered to him.

It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failure, the complete
and disgraceful failure, of this arrangement, is not to be
ascribed to any want of capacity in the persons whom we have
named. None of them was deficient in abilities; and four of them,
Pitt himself, Shelburne, Camden, and Townshend, were men of high
intellectual eminence. The fault was not in the materials, but in
the principle on which the materials were put together. Pitt had
mixed up these conflicting elements, in the full confidence that
he should be able to keep them all in perfect subordination to
himself, and in perfect harmony with other. We shall soon see how
the experiment succeeded.

On the very day on which the new Prime Minister kissed hands,
three-fourths of that popularity which he had long enjoyed
without a rival, and to which he owed the greater part of his
authority, departed from him. A violent outcry was raised, not
against that part of his conduct which really deserved severe
condemnation, but against a step in which we can see nothing to
censure. His acceptance of a peerage produced a general burst of
indignation. Yet surely no peerage had ever been better earned;
nor was there ever a statesman who more needed the repose of the
Upper House. Pitt was now growing old. He was much older in
constitution than in years. It was with imminent risk to his life
that he had, on some important occasions, attended his duty in
Parliament. During the session of 1764, he had not been able to
take part in a single debate. It was impossible that he should go
through the nightly labour of conducting the business of the
Government in the House of Commons. His wish to be transferred,
under such circumstances, to a less busy and a less turbulent
assembly, was natural and reasonable. The nation, however,
overlooked all these considerations. Those who had most loved and
honoured the Great Commoner were loudest in invective against the
new-made Lord. London had hitherto been true to him through every
vicissitude. When the citizens learned that he had been sent for
from Somersetshire, that he had been closeted with the King at
Richmond, and that he was to be first minister, they had been in
transports of joy. Preparations were made for a grand
entertainment and for a general illumination. The lamps had
actually been placed round the monument, when the Gazette
announced that the object of all this enthusiasm was an Earl.
Instantly the feast was countermanded. The lamps were taken down.
The newspapers raised the roar of obloquy. Pamphlets, made up of
calumny and scurrility, filled the shops of all the booksellers;
and of those pamphlets, the most galling were written under the
direction of the malignant Temple. It was now the fashion to
compare the two Williams, William Pulteney and William Pitt.
Both, it was said, had, by eloquence and simulated patriotism,
acquired a great ascendency in the House of Commons and in the
country. Both had been intrusted with the office of reforming the
Government. Both had, when at the height of power and popularity,
been seduced by the splendour of the coronet. Both had been made
earls, and both had at once become objects of aversion and scorn
to the nation which a few hours before had regarded them with
affection and veneration.

The clamour against Pitt appears to have had a serious effect on
the foreign relations of the country. His name had till now acted
like a spell at Versailles and Saint Ildefonso. English
travellers on the Continent had remarked that nothing more was
necessary to silence a whole room full of boasting Frenchmen than
to drop a hint of the probability that Mr. Pitt would return to
power. In an instant there was deep silence: all shoulders rose,
and all faces were lengthened. Now, unhappily, every foreign
court, in learning that he was recalled to office, learned also
that he no longer possessed the hearts of his countrymen. Ceasing
to be loved at home, he ceased to be feared abroad. The name of
Pitt had been a charmed name. Our envoys tried in vain to conjure
with the name of Chatham.

The difficulties which beset Chatham were daily increased by the
despotic manner in which he treated all around him. Lord
Rockingham had, at the time of the change of ministry, acted with
great moderation, had expressed a hope that the new Government
would act on the principles of the late Government, and had even
interfered to prevent many of his friends from quitting office.
Thus Saunders and Keppel, two naval commanders of great eminence,
had been induced to remain at the Admiralty, where their services
were much needed. The Duke of Portland was still Lord
Chamberlain, and Lord Besborough Postmaster. But within a quarter
of a year, Lord Chatham had so deeply affronted these men, that
they all retired in disgust. In truth, his tone, submissive in
the closet, was at this time insupportably tyrannical in the
Cabinet. His colleagues were merely his clerks for naval,
financial, and diplomatic business. Conway, meek as he was, was
on one occasion provoked into declaring that such language as
Lord Chatham's had never been heard west of Constantinople, and
was with difficulty prevented by Horace Walpole from resigning,
and rejoining the standard of Lord Rockingham.

The breach which had been made in the Government by the defection
of so many of the Rockinghams, Chatham hoped to supply by the
help of the Bedfords. But with the Bedfords he could not deal as
he had dealt with other parties. It was to no purpose that he
bade high for one or two members of the faction, in the hope of
detaching them from the rest. They were to be had; but they were
to be had only in the lot. There was indeed for a moment some
wavering and some disputing among them. But at length the
counsels of the shrewd and resolute Rigby prevailed. They
determined to stand firmly together, and plainly intimated to
Chatham that he must take them all, or that he should get none of
them. The event proved that they were wiser in their generation
than any other connection in the State. In a few months they were
able to dictate their own terms.

The most important public measure of Lord Chatham's
administration was his celebrated interference with the corn
trade. The harvest had been bad; the price of food was high; and
he thought it necessary to take on himself the responsibility of
laying an embargo on the exportation of grain. When Parliament
met, this proceeding was attacked by the Opposition as
unconstitutional, and defended by the ministers as indispensably
necessary. At last an act was passed to indemnify all who had
been concerned in the embargo.

The first words uttered by Chatham, in the House of Lords, were
in defence of his conduct on this occasion. He spoke with a
calmness, sobriety, and dignity, well suited to the audience
which he was addressing. A subsequent speech which he made on the
same subject was less successful. He bade defiance to
aristocratical connections, with a superciliousness to which the
Peers were not accustomed, and with tones and gestures better
suited to a large and stormy assembly than to the body of which
he was now a member. A short altercation followed, and he was
told very plainly that he should not be suffered to browbeat the
old nobility of England.

It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in a
distempered state of mind. His attention had been drawn to the
territorial acquisitions of the East India Company, and he
determined to bring the whole of that great subject before
Parliament. He would not, however, confer on the subject with any
of his colleagues. It was in vain that Conway, who was charged
with the conduct of business in the House of Commons, and Charles
Townshend, who was responsible for the direction of the finances,
begged for some glimpse of light as to what was in contemplation.
Chatham's answers were sullen and mysterious. He must decline any
discussion with them; he did not want their assistance; he had
fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in the House of
Commons. This person was a member who was not connected with the
Government, and who neither had, nor deserved to have the ear of
the House, a noisy, purseproud, illiterate demagogue, whose
Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest
of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be supposed
that these strange proceedings produced a ferment through the
whole political world. The city was in commotion. The East India
Company invoked the faith of charters. Burke thundered against
the ministers. The ministers looked at each other, and knew not
what to say. In the midst of the confusion, Lord Chatham
proclaimed himself gouty, and retired to Bath. It was announced,
after some time, that he was better, that he would shortly
return, that he would soon put everything in order. A day was
fixed for his arrival in London. But when he reached the Castle
inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up in his room, and
remained there some weeks. Everybody who travelled that road was
amazed by the number of his attendants. Footmen and grooms,
dressed in his family livery filled the whole inn, though one of
the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the little
town. The truth was that the invalid had insisted that, during
his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should
wear his livery.

His colleagues were in despair. The Duke of Grafton proposed to
go down to Marlborough in order to consult the oracle. But he was
informed that Lord Chatham must decline all conversation on
business. In the meantime, all the parties which were out of
office, Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Rockinghams, joined to oppose
the distracted Government on the vote for the land tax. They were
reinforced by almost all the county members, and had a
considerable majority. This was the first time that a ministry
had been beaten on an important division in the House of Commons
since the fall of Sir Robert Walpole. The administration, thus
furiously assailed from without, was torn by internal
dissensions. It had been formed on no principle whatever. From
the very first, nothing but Chatham's authority had prevented the
hostile contingents which made up his ranks from going to blows
with each other. That authority was now withdrawn, and everything
was in commotion. Conway, a brave soldier, but in civil affairs
the most timid and irresolute of men, afraid of disobliging the
King, afraid of being abused in the newspapers, afraid of being
thought factious if he went out, afraid of being thought
interested if he stayed in, afraid of everything, and afraid of
being known to be afraid of anything, was beaten backwards and
forwards like a shuttlecock between Horace Walpole who wished to
make him Prime Minister, and Lord John Cavendish who wished to
draw him into opposition. Charles Townshend, a man of splendid
eloquence, of lax principles, and of boundless vanity and
presumption, would submit to no control. The full extent of his
parts, of his ambition, and of his arrogance, had not yet been
made manifest; for he had always quailed before the genius and
the lofty character of Pitt. But now that Pitt had quitted the
House of Commons, and seemed to have abdicated the part of chief
minister, Townshend broke loose from all restraint.

While things were in this state, Chatham at length returned to
London. He might as well have remained at Marlborough. He would
see nobody. He would give no opinion on any public matter. The
Duke of Grafton begged piteously for an interview, for an hour,
for half an hour, for five minutes. The answer was, that it was
impossible. The King himself repeatedly condescended to
expostulate and implore. "Your duty," he wrote, "your own honour,
require you to make an effort." The answers to these appeals were
commonly written in Lady Chatham's hand, from her lord's
dictation; for he had not energy even to use a pen. He flings
himself at the King's feet. He is penetrated by the royal
goodness so signally shown to the most unhappy of men. He
implores a little more indulgence. He cannot as yet transact
business. He cannot see his colleagues. Least of all can he bear
the excitement of an interview with majesty.

Some were half inclined to suspect that he was, to use a military
phrase, malingering. He had made, they said, a great blunder, and
had found it out. His immense popularity, his high reputation for
statesmanship, were gone for ever. Intoxicated by pride, he had
undertaken a task beyond his abilities. He now saw nothing before
him but distresses and humiliations; and he had therefore
simulated illness, in order to escape from vexations which he had
not fortitude to meet. This suspicion, though it derived some
colour from that weakness which was the most striking blemish of
his character, was certainly unfounded. His mind, before he
became first minister, had been, as we have said, in an unsound
state; and physical and moral causes now concurred to make the
derangement of his faculties complete. The gout, which had been
the torment of his whole life, had been suppressed by strong
remedies. For the first time since he was a boy at Oxford, he had
passed several months without a twinge. But his hand and foot had
been relieved at the expense of his nerves. He became melancholy,
fanciful, irritable. The embarrassing state of public affairs,
the grave responsibility which lay on him, the consciousness of
his errors, the disputes of his colleagues, the savage clamours
raised by his detractors, bewildered his enfeebled mind. One
thing alone, he said, could save him. He must repurchase Hayes.
The unwilling consent of the new occupant was extorted by Lady
Chatham's entreaties and tears; and her lord was somewhat easier.
But if business were mentioned to him, he, once the proudest and
boldest of mankind, behaved like a hysterical girl, trembled from
head to foot, and burst into a flood of tears.

His colleagues for a time continued to entertain the expectation
that his health would soon be restored, and that he would emerge
from his retirement. But month followed month, and still he
remained hidden in mysterious seclusion, and sunk, as far as they
could learn, in the deepest dejection of spirits. They at length
ceased to hope or to fear anything from him; and though he was
still nominally Prime Minister, took without scruple steps which
they knew to be diametrically opposed to all his opinions and
feelings, allied themselves with those whom he had proscribed,
disgraced those whom he most esteemed, and laid taxes on the
colonies, in the face of the strong declarations which he had
recently made.

When he had passed about a year and three quarters in gloomy
privacy, the King received a few lines in Lady Chatham's hand.
They contained a request, dictated by her lord, that he might be
permitted to resign the Privy Seal. After some civil show of
reluctance, the resignation was accepted. Indeed Chatham was, by
this time, almost as much forgotten as if he had already been
lying in Westminster Abbey.

At length the clouds which had gathered over his mind broke and
passed away. His gout returned, and freed him from a more cruel
malady. His nerves were newly braced. His spirits became buoyant.
He woke as from a sickly dream. It was a strange recovery. Men
had been in the habit of talking of him as of one dead, and, when
he first showed himself at the King's levee, started as if they
had seen a ghost. It was more than two years and a half since he
had appeared in public.

He, too, had cause for wonder. The world which he now entered was
not the world which he had quitted. The administration which he
had formed had never been, at any one moment, entirely changed.
But there had been so many losses and so many accessions, that he
could scarcely recognise his own work. Charles Townshend was
dead. Lord Shelburne had been dismissed. Conway had sunk into
utter insignificance. The Duke of Grafton had fallen into the
hands of the Bedfords. The Bedfords had deserted Grenville, had
made their peace with the King and the King's friends, and had
been admitted to office. Lord North was Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and was rising fast in importance. Corsica had been
given up to France without a struggle. The disputes with the
American colonies had been revived. A general election had taken
place. Wilkes had returned from exile, and, outlaw as he was, had
been chosen knight of the shire for Middlesex. The multitude was
on his side. The Court was obstinately bent on ruining him, and
was prepared to shake the very foundations of the constitution
for the sake of a paltry revenge. The House of Commons, assuming
to itself an authority which of right belongs only to the whole
legislature, had declared Wilkes incapable of sitting in
Parliament. Nor had it been thought sufficient to keep him out.
Another must be brought in. Since the freeholders of Middlesex
had obstinately refused to choose a member acceptable to the
Court, the House had chosen a member for them. This was not the
only instance, perhaps not the most disgraceful instance, of the
inveterate malignity of the Court. Exasperated by the steady
opposition of the Rockingham party, the King's friends had tried
to rob a distinguished Whig nobleman of his private estate, and
had persisted in their mean wickedness till their own servile
majority had revolted from mere disgust and shame. Discontent had
spread throughout the nation, and was kept up by stimulants such
as had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius had taken
the field, and trampled Sir William Draper in the dust, had well-
nigh broken the heart of Blackstone, and had so mangled the
reputation of the Duke of Grafton, that his grace had become sick
of office, and was beginning to look wistfully towards the shades
of Euston. Every principle of foreign, domestic, and colonial
policy which was dear to the heart of Chatham had, during the
eclipse of his genius, been violated by the Government which he
had formed.

The remaining years of his life were spent in vainly struggling
against that fatal policy which, at the moment when he might have
given it a death-blow, he had been induced to take under his
protection. His exertions redeemed his own fame, but they
effected little for his country.

He found two parties arrayed against the Government, the party of
his own brothers-in-law, the Grenvilles, and the party of Lord
Rockingham. On the question of the Middlesex election these
parties were agreed. But on many other important questions they
differed widely; and they were, in truth, not less hostile to
each other than to the Court. The Grenvilles had, during several
years, annoyed the Rockinghams with a succession of acrimonious
pamphlets. It was long before the Rockinghams could be induced to
retaliate. But an ill-natured tract, written under Grenville's
direction, and entitled A State of the Nation, was too much for
their patience. Burke undertook to defend and avenge his friends,
and executed the task with admirable skill and vigour. On every
point he was victorious, and nowhere more completely victorious
than when he joined issue on those dry and minute questions of
statistical and financial detail in which the main strength of
Grenville lay. The official drudge, even on his own chosen
ground, was utterly unable to maintain the fight against the
great orator and philosopher. When Chatham reappeared, Grenville
was still writhing with the recent shame and smart of this well-
merited chastisement. Cordial co-operation between the two
sections of the Opposition was impossible. Nor could Chatham
easily connect himself with either. His feelings, in spite of
many affronts given and received, drew him towards the
Grenvilles. For he had strong domestic affections; and his
nature, which, though haughty, was by no means obdurate, had been
softened by affliction. But from his kinsmen he was separated by
a wide difference of opinion on the question of colonial
taxation. A reconciliation, however, took place. He visited
Stowe: he shook hands with George Grenville; and the Whig
freeholders of Buckinghamshire, at their public dinners, drank
many bumpers to the union of the three brothers.

In opinions, Chatham was much nearer to the Rockinghams than to
his own relatives. But between him and the Rockinghams there was
a gulf not easily to be passed. He had deeply injured them, and
in injuring them, had deeply injured his country. When the
balance was trembling between them and the Court, he had thrown
the whole weight of his genius, of his renown, of his popularity,
into the scale of misgovernment. It must be added, that many
eminent members of the party still retained a bitter recollection
of the asperity and disdain with which they had been treated by
him at the time when he assumed the direction of affairs. It is
clear from Burke's pamphlets and speeches, and still more clear
from his private letters, and from the language which he held in
conversation, that he regarded Chatham with a feeling not far
removed from dislike. Chatham was undoubtedly conscious of his
error, and desirous to atone for it. But his overtures of
friendship, though made with earnestness, and even with unwonted
humility, were at first received by Lord Rockingham with cold and
austere reserve. Gradually the intercourse of the two statesmen
became courteous and even amicable. But the past was never wholly
forgotten.

Chatham did not, however, stand alone. Round him gathered a
party, small in number, but strong in great and various talents.
Lord Camden, Lord Shelburne, Colonel Barre, and Dunning,
afterwards Lord Ashburton, were the principal members of this
connection.

There is no reason to believe that, from this time till within a
few weeks of Chatham's death, his intellect suffered any decay.
His eloquence was almost to the last heard with delight. But it
was not exactly the eloquence of the House of Lords. That lofty
and passionate, but somewhat desultory declamation, in which he
excelled all men, and which was set off by looks, tones, and
gestures, worthy of Garrick or Talma, was out of place in a small
apartment where the audience often consisted of three or four
drowsy prelates, three or four old judges, accustomed during many
years to disregard rhetoric, and to look only at facts and
arguments, and three or four listless and supercilious men of
fashion, whom anything like enthusiasm moved to a sneer. In the
House of Commons, a flash of his eye, a wave of his arm, had
sometimes cowed Murray. But, in the House of Peers, his utmost
vehemence and pathos produced less effect than the moderation,
the reasonableness, the luminous order and the serene dignity,
which characterised the speeches of Lord Mansfield.

On the question of the Middlesex election, all the three
divisions of the Opposition acted in concert. No orator in either
House defended what is now universally admitted to have been the
constitutional cause with more ardour or eloquence than Chatham.
Before this subject had ceased to occupy the public mind, George
Grenville died. His party rapidly melted away; and in a short
time most of his adherents appeared on the ministerial benches.

Had George Grenville lived many months longer, the friendly ties
which, after years of estrangement and hostility, had been
renewed between him and his brother-in-law, would, in all
probability, have been a second time violently dissolved. For now
the quarrel between England and the North American colonies took
a gloomy and terrible aspect. Oppression provoked resistance;
resistance was made the pretext for fresh oppression. The
warnings of all the greatest statesmen of the age were lost on an
imperious Court and a deluded nation. Soon a colonial senate
confronted the British Parliament. Then the colonial militia
crossed bayonets with the British regiments. At length the
commonwealth was torn asunder. Two millions of Englishmen, who,
fifteen years before, had been as loyal to their prince and as
proud of their country as the people of Kent or Yorkshire,
separated themselves by a solemn act from the Empire. For a time
it seemed that the insurgents would struggle to small purpose
against the vast financial and military means of the mother
country. But disasters, following one another in rapid
succession, rapidly dispelled the illusions of national vanity.
At length a great British force, exhausted, famished, harassed on
every side by a hostile peasantry, was compelled to deliver up
its arms. Those Governments which England had, in the late war,
so signally humbled, and which had during many years been
sullenly brooding over the recollections of Quebec, of Minden,
and of the Moro, now saw with exultation that the day of revenge
was at hand. France recognised the independence of the United
States, and there could be little doubt that the example would
soon be followed by Spain.

Chatham and Rockingham had cordially concurred in opposing every
part of the fatal policy which had brought the State into this
dangerous situation. But their paths now diverged. Lord
Rockingham thought, and, as the event proved, thought most
justly, that the revolted colonies were separated from the Empire
for ever, and that the only effect of prolonging the war on the
American continent would be to divide resources which it was
desirable to concentrate. If the hopeless attempt to subjugate
Pennsylvania and Virginia were abandoned, war against the House
of Bourbon might possibly be avoided, or, if inevitable, might be
carried on with success and glory. We might even indemnify
ourselves for part of what we had lost, at the expense of those
foreign enemies who had hoped to profit by our domestic
dissensions. Lord Rockingham, therefore, and those who acted with
him, conceived that the wisest course now open to England was to
acknowledge the independence of the United States, and to turn
her whole force against her European enemies.

Chatham, it should seem, ought to have taken the same side.
Before France had taken any part in our quarrel with the
colonies, he had repeatedly, and with great energy of language,
declared that it was impossible to conquer America, and he could
not without absurdity maintain that it was easier to conquer
France and America together than America alone. But his passions
overpowered his judgment, and made him blind to his own
inconsistency. The very circumstances which made the separation
of the colonies inevitable made it to him altogether
insupportable. The dismemberment of the Empire seemed to him less
ruinous and humiliating, when produced by domestic dissensions,
than when produced by foreign interference. His blood boiled at
the degradation of his country. Whatever lowered her among the
nations of the earth, he felt as a personal outrage to himself.
And the feeling was natural. He had made her so great. He had
been so proud of her; and she had been so proud of him, He
remembered how, more than twenty years before, in a day of gloom
and dismay, when her possessions were torn from her, when her
flag was dishonoured, she had called on him to save her. He
remembered the sudden and glorious change which his energy had
wrought, the long series of triumphs, the days of thanksgiving,
the nights of illumination. Fired by such recollections, he
determined to separate himself from those who advised that the
independence of the colonies should be acknowledged. That he was
in error will scarcely, we think, be disputed by his warmest
admirers. Indeed, the treaty, by which, a few years later, the
republic of the United States was recognised, was the work of his
most attached adherents and of his favourite son.

The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an address to the
throne, against the further prosecution of hostilities with
America. Chatham had, during some time, absented himself from
Parliament, in consequence of his growing infirmities. He
determined to appear in his place on this occasion, and to
declare that his opinions were decidedly at variance with those
of the Rockingham party. He was in a state of great excitement.
His medical attendants were uneasy, and strongly advised him to
calm himself, and to remain at home. But he was not to be
controlled. His son William and his son-in-law Lord Mahon,
accompanied him to Westminster. He rested himself in the
Chancellor's room till the debate commenced, and then, leaning on
his two young relations, limped to his seat. The slightest
particulars of that day were remembered, and have been carefully
recorded. He bowed, it was remarked, with great courtliness to
those peers who rose to make way for him and his supporters. His
crutch was in his hand. He wore, as was his fashion, a rich
velvet coat. His legs were swathed in flannel. His wig was so
large, and his face so emaciated, that none of his features could
be discerned, except the high curve of his nose, and his eyes,
which still retained a gleam of the old fire.

When the Duke of Richmond had spoken, Chatham rose. For some time
his voice was inaudible. At length his tones became distinct and
his action animated. Here and there his hearers caught a thought
or an expression which reminded them of William Pitt. But it was
clear that he was not himself. He lost the thread of his
discourse, hesitated, repeated the same words several times, and
was so confused that, in speaking of the Act of Settlement, he
could not recall the name of the Electress Sophia. The House
listened in solemn silence, and with the aspect of profound
respect and compassion. The stillness was so deep that the
dropping of a handkerchief would have been heard. The Duke of
Richmond replied with great tenderness and courtesy; but while he
spoke, the old man was observed to be restless and irritable. The
Duke sat down. Chatham stood up again, pressed his hand on his
breast, and sank down in an apoplectic fit. Three or four lords
who sat near him caught him in his fall. The House broke up in
confusion. The dying man was carried to the residence of one of
the officers of Parliament, and was so far restored as to be able
to bear a journey to Hayes. At Hayes, after lingering a few
weeks, he expired in his seventieth year. His bed was watched to
the last, with anxious tenderness, by his wife and children; and
he well deserved their care. Too often haughty and wayward to
others, to them he had been almost effeminately kind. He had
through life been dreaded by his political opponents, and
regarded with more awe than love even by his political
associates. But no fear seems to have mingled with the affection
which his fondness, constantly overflowing in a thousand
endearing forms, had inspired in the little circle at Hayes.

Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses of
Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the public men of the
age had been estranged from him by his errors, and the other half
by the exertions which he had made to repair his errors. His last
speech had been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the
Government, and on the policy recommended by the Opposition. But
death restored him to his old place in the affection of his
country. Who could hear unmoved of the fall of that which had
been so great, and which had stood so long? The circumstances,
too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real
life. A great statesman, full of years and honours, led forth to
the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in
full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the
drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with
peculiar veneration and tenderness. The few detractors who
ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamours of a
nation which remembered only the lofty genius, the unsullied
probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more. For
once, the chiefs of all parties were agreed. A public funeral, a
public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the deceased
were paid. A provision was made for his family. The City of
London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had
so long loved and honoured might rest under the dome of her
magnificent cathedral. But the petition came too late. Everything
was already prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey.

Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous
honours to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost
exclusively by opponents of the Government. The banner of the
lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the
Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning
upheld the pall. Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession.
The chief mourner was young William Pitt. After the lapse of more
than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his
own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same
pomp, in the same consecrated mould.

Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the Church, in a spot
which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other
end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests
there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and
Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many great
citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable
graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and from above,
his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle
face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and
to hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that
memorial of him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash
and indiscriminate judgments which his contemporaries passed on
his character may be calmly revised by history. And history,
while, for the warning of vehement, high, and daring natures, she
notes his many errors, will yet deliberately pronounce, that,
among the eminent men whose bones lie near his, scarcely one has
left a more stainless, and none a more splendid name.


LORD CLIVE

(January 1840)

The Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers,
communicated by the Earl of Powis. By MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JOHN
MALCOLM, K.C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1836.

We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the
Spanish empire in America is familiarly known to all the nations
of Europe, the great actions of our countrymen in the East
should, even among ourselves, excite little interest. Every
schoolboy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and who strangled
Atahualpa. But we doubt whether one in ten, even among English
gentlemen of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle
of Buxar, who perpetrated  the massacre of Patna, whether Sujah
Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a
Hindoo, or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained
over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of
metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who
wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of
sticks, flints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horse-soldier as a
monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a
sorcerer, able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies.
The people of India, when we subdued them, were ten times as
numerous as the Americans whom the Spaniards vanquished, and were
at the same time quite as highly civilised as the victorious
Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than
Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than
the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the
richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz, viceroys whose splendour far
surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic, myriads of cavalry and
long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great
Captain. It might have been expected, that every Englishman who
takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to
know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home
by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years,
one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly
err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but
positively distasteful. Perhaps the fault lies partly with the
historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and
rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to
attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no
English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even
to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely
printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The
consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most
authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has
never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those
readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials placed at
the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were
indeed of great value. But we cannot say that they have been very
skilfully worked up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise
with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete
and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation
and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to perform the
pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to
which the public owes so much useful and curious information.

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance
for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who
have digested the materials, is, on the whole, greatly to raise
the character of Lord Clive. We are far indeed from sympathising
with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers,
and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of
his idol. But we are at least equally far from concurring in the
severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less
discrimination in his account of Clive than in any other part of
his valuable work. Clive, like most men who are born with strong
passions and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults.
But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his
whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and
statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great
either in arms or in council.

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, on
an estate of no great value, near Market-Drayton, in Shropshire.
In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient
inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have
been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred
to the law, and divided his time between professional business
and the avocations of a small proprietor.

He married a lady from Manchester, of the name of Gaskill, and
became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son,
Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was born at
the old seat of his ancestors on the twenty-ninth of September,
1725.

Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned
in the child. There remain letters written by his relations when
he was in his seventh year; and from these letters it appears
that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery
passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which
sometimes seemed hardly compatible with soundness of mind, had
begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. "Fighting," says
one of his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives
his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness, that he flies out
on every trifling occasion." The old people of the neighbourhood
still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive
climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and
with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout
near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the idle lads
of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the
shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and half-pence, in
consideration of which he guaranteed the security of their
windows. He was sent from school to school, making very little
progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the
character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it
is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would
make a great figure in the world. But the general opinion seems
to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate.
His family expected nothing good from such slender parts and such
a headstrong temper. It is not strange therefore, that they
gladly accepted for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, a
writer-ship in the service of the East India Company, and shipped
him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras.

Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of the
youths whom the East India College now annually sends to the
Presidencies of our Asiatic empire. The Company was then purely a
trading corporation. Its territory consisted of few square miles,
for which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops
were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of three or
four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the
protection of the warehouses. The natives who composed a
considerable part of these little garrisons, had not yet been
trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with
swords and shields, some with bows and arrows. The business of
the servant of the Company was not, as now, to conduct the
judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country,
but to take stock, to make advances to weavers, to ship cargoes,
and above all to keep an eye on private traders who dared to
infringe the monopoly. The younger clerks were so miserably paid
that they could scarcely subsist without incurring debt; the
elder enriched themselves by trading on their own account; and
those who lived to rise to the top of the service often
accumulated considerable fortunes.

Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, was, at this time,
perhaps, the first in importance of the Company's settlements. In
the preceding century Fort St. George had arisen on a barren spot
beaten by a raging surf; and in the neighbourhood a town,
inhabited by many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as towns
spring up in the East, with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd.
There were already in the suburbs many white villas, each
surrounded by its garden, whither the wealthy agents of the
Company retired, after the labours of the desk and the warehouse,
to enjoy the cool breeze which springs up at sunset from the Bay
of Bengal. The habits of these mercantile grandees appear to have
been more profuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than those of the
high judicial and political functionaries who have succeeded
them. But comfort was far less understood. Many devices which now
mitigate the heat of the climate, preserve health, and prolong
life, were unknown. There was far less intercourse with Europe
than at present. The voyage by the Cape, which in our time has
often been performed within three months, was then very seldom
accomplished in six, and was sometimes protracted to more than a
year. Consequently, the Anglo-Indian was then much more estranged
from his country, much more addicted to Oriental usages, and much
less fitted to mix in society after his return to Europe, than
the Anglo-Indian of the present day.

Within the fort and its precinct, the English exercised, by
permission of the native government, an extensive authority, such
as every great Indian landowner exercised within his own domain.
But they had never dreamed of claiming independent power. The
surrounding country was ruled by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a
deputy of the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly called the Nizam,
who was himself only a deputy of the mighty prince designated by
our ancestors as the Great Mogul. Those names, once so august and
formidable, still remain.

There is still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives on a pension
allowed to him by the English out of the revenues of the
provinces which his ancestors ruled. There is still a Nizam,
whose capital is overawed by a British cantonment, and to whom a
British resident gives, under the name of advice, commands which
are not to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, who is permitted
to play at holding courts and receiving petitions, but who has
less power to help or hurt than the youngest civil servant of the
Company.

Clive's voyage was unusually tedious even for that age. The ship
remained some months at the Brazils, where the young adventurer
picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, and spent all his pocket-
money. He did not arrive in India till more than a year after he
had left England. His situation at Madras was most painful. His
funds were exhausted. His pay was small. He had contracted debts.
He was wretchedly lodged, no small calamity in a climate which
can be made tolerable to an European only by spacious and well
placed apartments. He had been furnished with letters of
recommendation to a gentleman who might have assisted him; but
when he landed at Fort St. George he found that this gentleman
had sailed for England. The lad's shy and haughty disposition
withheld him from introducing himself to strangers. He was
several months in India before he became acquainted with a single
family. The climate affected his health and spirits. His duties
were of a kind ill-suited to his ardent and daring character. He
pined for his home, and in his letters to his relations expressed
his feelings in language softer and more pensive than we should
have expected either from the waywardness of his boyhood, or from
the inflexible sternness of his later years. "I have not enjoyed"
says he "one happy day since I left my native country"; and
again, "I must confess, at intervals, when I think of my dear
native England, it affects me in a very peculiar manner....
If I should be so far blest as to revisit again my own country,
but more especially Manchester, the centre of all my wishes,
all that I could hope or desire for would be presented before
me in one view."

One solace he found of the most respectable kind. The Governor
possessed a good library, and permitted Clive to have access to
it. The young man devoted much of his leisure to reading, and
acquired at this time almost all the knowledge of books that he
ever possessed. As a boy he had been too idle, as a man he soon
became too busy, for literary pursuits.

But neither climate nor poverty, neither study nor the sorrows of
a home-sick exile, could tame the desperate audacity of his
spirit. He behaved to his official superiors as he had behaved to
his schoolmasters, and he was several times in danger of losing
his situation. Twice, while residing in the Writers' Buildings,
he attempted to destroy himself; and twice the pistol which he
snapped at his own head failed to go off. This circumstance, it
is said, affected him as a similar escape affected Wallenstein.
After satisfying himself that the pistol was really well loaded,
he burst forth into an exclamation that surely he was reserved
for something great.

About this time an event which at first seemed likely to destroy
all his hopes in life suddenly opened before him a new path to
eminence. Europe had been, during some years, distracted by the
war of the Austrian succession. George the Second was the steady
ally of Maria Theresa. The house of Bourbon took the opposite
side. Though England was even then the first of maritime powers,
she was not, as she has since become, more than a match on the
sea for all the nations of the world together; and she found it
difficult to maintain a contest against the united navies of
France and Spain. In the eastern seas France obtained the
ascendency. Labourdonnais, governor of Mauritius, a man of
eminent talents and virtues, conducted an expedition to the
continent of India in spite of the opposition of the British
fleet, landed, assembled an army, appeared before Madras, and
compelled the town and fort to capitulate. The keys were
delivered up; the French colours were displayed on Fort St.
George; and the contents of the Company's warehouses were seized
as prize of war by the conquerors. It was stipulated by the
capitulation that the English inhabitants should be prisoners of
war on parole, and that the town should remain in the hands of
the French till it should be ransomed. Labourdonnais pledged his
honour that only a moderate ransom should be required.

But the success of Labourdonnais had awakened the jealousy of his
countryman, Dupleix, governor of Pondicherry. Dupleix, moreover,
had already begun to revolve gigantic schemes, with which the
restoration of Madras to the English was by no means compatible.
He declared that Labourdonnais had gone beyond his powers; that
conquests made by the French arms on the continent of India were
at the disposal of the governor of Pondicherry alone; and that
Madras should be razed to the ground. Labourdonnais was compelled
to yield. The anger which the breach of the capitulation excited
among the English was increased by the ungenerous manner in which
Dupleix treated the principal servants of the Company. The
Governor and several of the first gentlemen of Fort St. George
were carried under a guard to Pondicherry, and conducted through
the town in a triumphal procession under the eyes of fifty
thousand spectators. It was with reason thought that this gross
violation of public faith absolved the inhabitants of Madras from
the engagements into which they had entered with Labourdonnais.
Clive fled from the town by night in the disguise of a Mussulman,
and took refuge at Fort St. David, one of the small English
settlements subordinate to Madras.

The circumstances in which he was now placed naturally led him to
adopt a profession better suited to his restless and intrepid
spirit than the business of examining packages and casting
accounts. He solicited and obtained an ensign's commission in the
service of the Company, and at twenty-one entered on his military
career. His personal courage, of which he had, while still a
writer, given signal proof by a desperate duel with a military
bully who was the terror of Fort St. David, speedily made him
conspicuous even among hundreds of brave men. He soon began to
show in his new calling other qualities which had not before been
discerned in him, judgment, sagacity, deference to legitimate
authority. He distinguished himself highly in several operations
against the French, and was particularly noticed by Major
Lawrence, who was then considered as the ablest British officer
in India.

Clive had been only a few months in the army when intelligence
arrived that peace had been concluded between Great Britain and
France. Dupleix was in consequence compelled to restore Madras to
the English Company; and the young ensign was at liberty to
resume his former business. He did indeed return for a short time
to his desk. He again quitted it in order to assist Major
Lawrence in some petty hostilities with the natives, and then
again returned to it. While he was thus wavering between a
military and a commercial life, events took place which decided
his choice. The politics of India assumed a new aspect. There was
peace between the English and French Crowns; but there arose
between the English and French Companies trading to the East a
war most eventful and important, a war in which the prize was
nothing less than the magnificent inheritance of the house of
Tamerlane.

The empire which Baber and his Moguls reared in the sixteenth
century was long one of the most extensive and splendid in the
world. In no European kingdom was so large a population subject
to a single prince, or so large a revenue poured into the
treasury. The beauty and magnificence of the buildings erected by
the sovereigns of Hindostan amazed even travellers who had seen
St. Peter's. The innumerable retinues and gorgeous decorations
which surrounded the throne of Delhi dazzled even eyes which were
accustomed to the pomp of Versailles. Some of the great viceroys
who held their posts by virtue of commissions from the Mogul
ruled as many subjects as the King of France or the Emperor of
Germany. Even the deputies of these deputies might well rank, as
to extent of territory and amount of revenue, with the Grand Duke
of Tuscany, or the Elector of Saxony.

There can be little doubt that this great empire, powerful and
prosperous as it appears on a superficial view, was yet, even in
its best days, far worse governed than the worst governed parts
of Europe now are. The administration was tainted with all the
vices of Oriental despotism, and with all the vices inseparable
from the domination of race over race. The conflicting
pretensions of the princes of the royal house produced a long
series of crimes and public disasters. Ambitious lieutenants of
the sovereign sometimes aspired to independence. Fierce tribes Of
Hindoos, impatient of a foreign yoke, frequently withheld
tribute, repelled the armies of the government from the mountain
fastnesses, and poured down in arms on the cultivated plains. In
spite, however, of much constant maladministration, in spite of
occasional convulsions which shook the whole frame of society,
this great monarchy, on the whole, retained, during some
generations, an outward appearance of unity, majesty, and energy.
But, throughout the long reign of Aurungzebe, the state,
notwithstanding all that the vigour and policy of the prince
could effect, was hastening to dissolution. After his death,
which took place in the year 1707, the ruin was fearfully rapid.
Violent shocks from without co-operated with an incurable decay
which was fast proceeding within; and in a few years the empire
had undergone utter decomposition.

The history of the successors of Theodosius bears no small
analogy to that of the successors of Aurungzebe. But perhaps the
fall of the Carlovingians furnishes the nearest parallel to the
fall of the Moguls. Charlemagne was scarcely interred when the
imbecility and the disputes of his descendants began to bring
contempt on themselves and destruction on their subjects. The
wide dominion of the Franks was severed into a thousand pieces.
Nothing more than a nominal dignity was left to the abject heirs
of an illustrious name, Charles the Bald, and Charles the Fat,
and Charles the Simple. Fierce invaders, differing, from each
other in race, language, and religion, flocked, as if by concert,
from the farthest corners of the earth, to plunder provinces
which the government could no longer defend. The pirates of the
Northern Sea extended their ravages from the Elbe to the
Pyrenees, and at length fixed their seat in the rich valley of
the Seine. The Hungarian, in whom the trembling monks fancied
that they recognised the Gog or Magog of prophecy, carried back
the plunder of the cities of Lombardy to the depths of the
Pannonian forests. The Saracen ruled in Sicily, desolated the
fertile plains of Campania, and spread terror even to the walls
of Rome. In the midst of these sufferings, a great internal
change passed upon the empire. The corruption of death began to
ferment into new forms of life. While the great body, as a whole,
was torpid and passive, every separate member began to feel with
a sense and to move with an energy all its own. Just here, in the
most barren and dreary tract of European history, all feudal
privileges, all modern nobility, take their source. It is to this
point, that we trace the power of those princes who, nominally
vassals, but really independent, long governed, with the titles
of dukes, marquesses, and counts, almost every part of the
dominions which had obeyed Charlemagne.

Such or nearly such was the change which passed on the Mogul
empire during the forty years which followed the death of
Aurungzebe. A succession of nominal sovereigns, sunk in indolence
and debauchery, sauntered away life in secluded palaces, chewing
bang, fondling concubines, and listening to buffoons. A
succession of ferocious invaders descended through the western
passes, to prey on the defenceless wealth of Hindostan. A Persian
conqueror crossed the Indus, marched through the gates of Delhi,
and bore away in triumph those treasures of which the
magnificence had astounded Roe and Bernier, the Peacock Throne,
on which the richest jewels of Golconda had been disposed by the
most skilful hands of Europe, and the inestimable Mountain of
Light, which, after many strange vicissitudes, lately shone in
the bracelet of Runjeet Sing, and is now destined to adorn the
hideous idol of Orissa. The Afghan soon followed to complete the
work of the devastation which the Persian had begun. The warlike
tribes of Rajpootana, threw off the Mussulman yoke. A band of
mercenary soldiers occupied Rohilcund. The Seiks ruled or the
Indus. The Jauts spread dismay along the Jumna. The highlands
which border on the western sea-coast of India
poured forth a yet more formidable race, a race which was long
the terror of every native power, and which, after many desperate
and doubtful struggles, yielded only to the fortune and genius of
England. It was under the reign of Aurungzebe that this wild clan
of plunderers first descended from their mountains; and soon
after his death, every corner of his wide empire learned to
tremble at the mighty name of the Mahrattas. Many fertile
viceroyalties were entirely subdued by them. Their dominions
stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. Mahratta captains
reigned at Poonah, at Gualior, in Guzerat, in Berar, and in
Tanjore. Nor did they, though they had become great sovereigns,
therefore cease to be freebooters. They still retained the
predatory habits of their forefathers. Every region which was not
subject to their rule was wasted by their incursions. Wherever
their kettle-drums were heard, the peasant threw his bag of rice
on his shoulder, hid his small savings in his girdle, and fled
with his wife and children to the mountains or the jungles, to
the milder neighbourhood of the hyaena and the tiger. Many
provinces redeemed their harvests by the payment of an annual
ransom. Even the wretched phantom who still bore the imperial
title stooped to pay this ignominious black-mail. The camp-fires
of one rapacious leader were seen from the walls of the palace of
Delhi. Another, at the head of his innumerable cavalry, descended
year after year on the rice-fields of Bengal. Even the European
factors trembled for their magazines. Less than a hundred years
ago, it was thought necessary to fortify Calcutta against the
horsemen of Berar, and the name of the Mahratta ditch still
preserves the memory of the danger.

Wherever the viceroys of the Mogul retained authority they became
sovereigns. They might still acknowledge in words the superiority
of the house of Tamerlane; as a Count of Flanders or a Duke of
Burgundy might have acknowledged the superiority of the most
helpless driveller among the later Carlovingians. They might
occasionally send to their titular sovereign a complimentary
present, or solicit from him a title of honour. In truth,
however, they were no longer lieutenants removable at pleasure,
but independent hereditary princes. In this way originated those
great Mussulman houses which formerly ruled Bengal and the
Carnatic, and those which still, though in a state of vassalage,
exercise some of the powers of royalty at Lucknow and Hyderabad.

In what was this confusion to end? Was the strife to continue
during centuries? Was it to terminate in the rise of another
great monarchy ? Was the Mussulman or the Mahratta to be the Lord
of India? Was another Baber to descend from the mountains, and to
lead the hardy tribes of Cabul and Chorasan against a wealthier
and less warlike race? None of these events seemed improbable.
But scarcely any man, however sagacious, would have thought it
possible that a trading company, separated from India by fifteen
thousand miles of sea, and possessing in India only a few acres
for purposes of commerce, would, in less than a hundred years,
spread its empire from Cape Comorin to the eternal snow of the
Himalayas; would compel Mahratta and Mahommedan to forget their
mutual feuds in common subjection; would tame down even those
wild races which had resisted the most powerful of the Moguls;
and, having united under its laws a hundred millions of subjects,
would carry its victorious arms far to the cast of the
Burrampooter, and far to the west of the Hydaspes, dictate terms
of peace at the gates of Ava, and seat its vassal on the throne
of Candahar.

The man who first saw that it was possible to found an European
empire on the ruins of the Mogul monarchy was Dupleix. His
restless, capacious, and inventive mind had formed this scheme,
at a time when the ablest servants of the English Company were
busied only about invoices and bills of lading. Nor had he only
proposed to himself the end. He had also a just and distinct view
of the means by which it was to be attained. He clearly saw that
the greatest force which the princes of India could bring into
the field would be no match for a small body of men trained in
the discipline, and guided by the tactics, of the West. He saw
also that the natives of India might, under European commanders,
be formed into armies, such as Saxe or Frederic would be proud to
command. He was perfectly aware that the most easy and convenient
way in which an European adventurer could exercise sovereignty in
India, was to govern the motions, and to speak through the mouth
of some glittering puppet dignified by the title of Nabob or
Nizam. The arts both of war and policy, which a few years later
were employed with such signal success by the English, were first
understood and practised by this ingenious and aspiring
Frenchman.

The situation of India was such that scarcely any aggression
could be without a pretext, either in old laws or in recent
practice. All rights were in a state of utter uncertainty; and
the Europeans who took part in the disputes of the natives
confounded the confusion, by applying to Asiatic politics the
public law of the West, and analogies drawn from the feudal
system. If it was convenient to treat a Nabob as an independent
prince, there was an excellent plea for doing so. He was
independent, in fact. If it was convenient to treat him as a mere
deputy of the Court of Delhi, there was no difficulty; for he was
so in theory. If it was convenient to consider his office as an
hereditary dignity, or as a dignity held during life only, or as
a dignity held only during the good pleasure of the Mogul,
arguments and precedents might be found for every one of those
views. The party who had the heir of Baber in their hands,
represented him as the undoubted, the legitimate, the absolute
sovereign, whom all subordinate authorities were bound to obey.
The party against whom his name was used did not want plausible
pretexts for maintaining that the empire was in fact dissolved,
and that though it might be decent to treat the Mogul with
respect, as a venerable relic of an order of things which had
passed away, it was absurd to regard him as the real master of
Hindostan.

In the year 1748, died one of the most powerful of the new
masters of India, the great Nizam al Mulk, Viceroy of the Deccan.
His authority descended to his son, Nazir Jung. Of the provinces
subject to this high functionary, the Carnatic was the wealthiest
and the most extensive. It was governed by an ancient Nabob,
whose name the English corrupted into Anaverdy Khan.

But there were pretenders to the government both of the
viceroyalty and of the subordinate province. Mirzapha Jung, a
grandson of Nizam al Mulk, appeared as the competitor of Nazir
Jung. Chunda Sahib, son-in-law of a former Nabob of the Carnatic,
disputed the title of Anaverdy Khan. In the unsettled state of
Indian law it was easy for both Mirzapha Jung and Chunda Sahib to
make out something like a claim of right. In a society altogether
disorganised, they had no difficulty in finding greedy
adventurers to follow their standards. They united their
interests, invaded the Carnatic, and applied for assistance to
the French, whose fame had been raised by their success against
the English in a recent war on the coast of Coromandel.

Nothing could have happened more pleasing to the subtle and
ambitious Dupleix. To make a Nabob of the Carnatic, to make a
Viceroy of the Deccan, to rule under their names the whole of
Southern India; this was indeed an attractive prospect. He allied
himself with the pretenders, and sent four hundred French
soldiers, and two thousand sepoys, disciplined after the European
fashion, to the assistance of his confederates. A battle was
fought. The French distinguished themselves greatly. Anaverdy
Khan was defeated and slain. His son, Mahommed Ali, who was
afterwards well known in England as the Nabob of Arcot, and who
owes to the eloquence of Burke a most unenviable immortality,
fled with a scanty remnant of his army to Trichinopoly; and the
conquerors became at once masters of almost every part of the
Carnatic.

This was but the beginning of the greatness of Dupleix. After
some months of fighting, negotiation and intrigue, his ability
and good fortune seemed to have prevailed everywhere. Nazir Jung
perished by the hands of his own followers; Mirzapha Jung was
master of the Deccan; and the triumph of French arms and French
policy was complete. At Pondicherry all was exultation and
festivity. Salutes were fired from the batteries, and Te Deum
sung in the churches. The new Nizam came thither to visit his
allies; and the ceremony of his installation was performed there
with great pomp. Dupleix, dressed in the garb worn by Mahommedans
of the highest rank, entered the town in the same palanquin with
the Nizam, and, in the pageant which followed, took precedence of
all the court. He was declared Governor of India from the river
Kristna to Cape Comorin, a country about as large as France, with
authority superior even to that of Chunda Sahib. He was intrusted
with the command of seven thousand cavalry. It was announced that
no mint would be suffered to exist in the Carnatic except that at
Pondicherry. A large portion of the treasures which former
Viceroys of the Deccan had accumulated had found its way into the
coffers of the French governor. It was rumoured that he had
received two hundred thousand pounds sterling in money, besides
many valuable jewels. In fact, there could scarcely be any limit
to his gains. He now ruled thirty millions of people with almost
absolute power. No honour or emolument could be obtained from the
government but by his intervention. No petition, unless signed by
him, was perused by the Nizam.

Mirzapha Jung survived his elevation only a few months, But
another prince of the same house was raised to the throne by
French influence, and ratified all the promises of his
predecessor. Dupleix was now the greatest potentate in India.

His countrymen boasted that his name was mentioned with awe even
in the chambers of the palace of Delhi. The native population
looked with amazement on the progress which, in the short space
of four years, an European adventurer had made towards dominion
in Asia. Nor was the vainglorious Frenchman content with the
reality of power. He loved to display his greatness with
arrogant ostentation before the eyes of his subjects and of
his rivals. Near the spot where his policy had obtained its
chief triumph, by the fall of Nazir Jung, and the elevation
of Mirzapha, he determined to erect a column, on the four
sides of which four pompous inscriptions, in four languages,
should proclaim his glory to all the nations of the East. Medals
stamped with emblems of his successes were buried beneath the
foundations of his stately pillar, and round it arose a town
bearing the haughty name of Dupleix Fatihabad, which is, being
interpreted, the City of the Victory of Dupleix.

The English had made some feeble and irresolute attempts to stop
the rapid and brilliant career of the rival Company, and
continued to recognise Mahommed Ali as Nabob of the Carnatic. But
the dominions of Mahommed Ali consisted of Trichinopoly alone:
and Trichinopoly was now invested by Chunda Sahib and his French
auxiliaries. To raise the siege seemed impossible. The small
force which was then at Madras had no commander. Major Lawrence
had returned to England; and not a single officer of established
character remained in the settlement. The natives had learned to
look with contempt on the mighty nation which was soon to conquer
and to rule them. They had seen the French colours flying on Fort
St. George; they had seen the chiefs of the English factory led
in triumph through the streets of Pondicherry; they had seen the
arms and counsels of Dupleix everywhere successful, while the
opposition which the authorities of Madras had made to his
progress, had served only to expose their own weakness, and to
heighten his glory. At this moment, the valour and genius of an
obscure English youth suddenly turned the tide of fortune.

Clive was now twenty-five years old. After hesitating for some
time between a military and a commercial life, he had at length
been placed in a post which partook of both characters, that of
commissary to the troops, with the rank of captain. The present
emergency called forth all his powers. He represented to his
superiors that unless some vigorous effort were made,
Trichinopoly would fall, the house of Anaverdy Khan would perish,
and the French would become the real masters of the whole
peninsula of India. It was absolutely necessary to strike some
daring blow. If an attack were made on Arcot, the capital of the
Carnatic, and the favourite residence of the Nabobs, it was not
impossible that the siege of Trichinopoly would be raised. The
heads of the English settlement, now thoroughly alarmed by the
success of Dupleix, and apprehensive that, in the event of a new
war between France and Great Britain, Madras would be instantly
taken and destroyed, approved of Clive's plan, and intrusted the
execution of it to himself. The young captain was put at the head
of two hundred English soldiers, and three hundred sepoys, armed
and disciplined after the European fashion. Of the eight officers
who commanded this little force under him, only two had ever been
in action, and four of the eight were factors of the Company,
whom Clive's example had induced to offer their services. The
weather was stormy; but Clive pushed on, through thunder,
lightning, and rain, to the gates of Arcot. The garrison, in a
panic, evacuated the fort, and the English entered it without a
blow.

But Clive well knew that he should not be suffered to retain
undisturbed possession of his conquest. He instantly began to
collect provisions, to throw up works, and to make preparations
for sustaining a siege. The garrison, which had fled at his
approach, had now recovered from its dismay, and, having been
swelled by large reinforcements from the neighbourhood to a force
of three thousand men, encamped close to the town. At dead of
night, Clive marched out of the fort, attacked the camp by
surprise, slew great numbers, dispersed the rest, and returned to
his quarters without having lost a single man.

The intelligence of these events was soon carried to Chunda
Sahib, who, with his French allies, was besieging Trichinopoly.
He immediately detached four thousand men from his camp, and sent
them to Arcot. They were speedily joined by the remains of the
force which Clive had lately scattered. They were further
strengthened by two thousand men from Vellore, and by a still
more important reinforcement of a hundred and fifty French
soldiers whom Dupleix despatched from Pondicherry. The whole of
his army, amounting to about ten thousand men, was under the
command of Rajah Sahib, son of Chunda Sahib.

Rajah Sahib proceeded to invest the fort of Arcot, which seemed
quite incapable of sustaining a siege. The walls were ruinous,
the ditches dry, the ramparts too narrow to admit the guns, the
battlements too low to protect the soldiers. The little garrison
had been greatly reduced by casualties. It now consisted of a
hundred and twenty Europeans and two hundred sepoys. Only four
officers were left; the stock of provisions was scanty; and the
commander, who had to conduct the defence under circumstances so
discouraging, was a young man of five-and-twenty, who had been
bred a bookkeeper.

During fifty days the siege went on. During fifty days the young
captain maintained the defence, with a firmness, vigilance, and
ability, which would have done honour to the oldest marshal in
Europe. The breach, however, increased day by day. The garrison
began to feel the pressure of hunger. Under such circumstances,
any troops so scantily provided with officers might have been
expected to show signs of insubordination; and the danger was
peculiarly great in a force composed of men differing widely from
each other in extraction, colour, language, manners, and
religion. But the devotion of the little band to its chief
surpassed anything that is related of the Tenth Legion of Caesar,
or of the Old Guard of Napoleon. The sepoys came to Clive, not to
complain of their scanty fare, but to propose that all the grain
should be given to the Europeans, who required more nourishment
than the natives of Asia. The thin gruel, they said, which was
strained away from the rice, would suffice for themselves.
History contains no more touching instance of military fidelity,
or of the influence of a commanding mind.

An attempt made by the government of Madras to relieve the place
had failed. But there was hope from another quarter. A body of
six thousand Mahrattas, half soldiers, half robbers, under the
command of a chief named Morari Row, had been hired to assist
Mahommed Ali; but thinking the French power irresistible, and the
triumph of Chunda Sahib certain, they had hitherto remained
inactive on the frontiers of the Carnatic. The fame of the
defence of Arcot roused them from their torpor. Morari Row
declared that he had never before believed that Englishmen could
fight, but that he would willingly help them since he saw that
they had spirit to help themselves. Rajah Sahib learned that the
Mahrattas were in motion. It was necessary for him to be
expeditious. He first tried negotiation. He offered large bribes
to Clive, which were rejected with scorn. He vowed that, if his
proposals were not accepted, he would instantly storm the fort,
and put every man in it to the sword. Clive told him in reply,
with characteristic haughtiness, that his father was an usurper,
that his army was a rabble, and that he would do well to think
twice before he sent such poltroons into a breach defended by
English soldiers.

Rajah Sahib determined to storm the fort. The day was well suited
to a bold military enterprise. It was the great Mahommedan
festival which is sacred to the memory of Hosein, the son of Ali.
The history of Islam contains nothing more touching than the
event which gave rise to that solemnity. The mournful legend
relates how the chief of the Fatimites, when all his brave
followers had perished round him, drank his latest draught of
water, and uttered his latest prayer, how the assassins carried
his head in triumph, how the tyrant smote the lifeless lips with
his staff, and how a few old men recollected with tears that they
had seen those lips pressed to the lips of the Prophet of God.
After the lapse of near twelve centuries, the recurrence of this
solemn season excites the fiercest and saddest emotions in the
bosoms of the devout Moslem of India. They work themselves up to
such agonies of rage and lamentation that some, it is said, have
given up the ghost from the mere effect of mental excitement.
They believe that, whoever, during this festival, falls in arms
against the infidels, atones by his death for all the sins of his
life, and passes at once to the garden of the Houris. It was at
this time that Rajah Sahib determined to assault Arcot.
Stimulating drugs were employed to aid the effect of religious
zeal, and the besiegers, drunk with enthusiasm, drunk with bang,
rushed furiously to the attack.

Clive had received secret intelligence of the design, had made
his arrangements, and, exhausted by fatigue, had thrown himself
on his bed. He was awakened by the alarm, and was instantly at
his post. The enemy advanced, driving before them elephants whose
foreheads were armed with iron plates. It was expected that the
gates would yield to the shock of these living battering-rams.
But the huge beasts no sooner felt the English musket-balls than
they turned round, and rushed furiously away, trampling on the
multitude which had urged them forward. A raft was launched on
the water which filled one part of the ditch. Clive, perceiving
that his gunners at that post did not understand their business,
took the management of a piece of artillery himself, and cleared
the raft in a few minutes. When the moat was dry the assailants
mounted with great boldness; but they were received with a fire
so heavy and so well directed, that it soon quelled the courage
even of fanaticism and of intoxication. The rear ranks of the
English kept the front ranks supplied with a constant succession
of loaded muskets, and every shot told on the living mass below.
After three desperate onsets, the besiegers retired behind the ditch.

The struggle lasted about an hour. Four hundred of the assailants
fell. The garrison lost only five or six men. The besieged passed
an anxious night, looking for a renewal of the attack. But when
the day broke, the enemy were no more to be seen. They had
retired, leaving to the English several guns and a large quantity
of ammunition.

The news was received at Fort St. George with transports of joy
and pride. Clive was justly regarded as a man equal to any
command. Two hundred English soldiers and seven hundred sepoys
were sent to him, and with this force he instantly commenced
offensive operations. He took the fort of Timery, effected a
junction with a division of Morari Row's army, and hastened, by
forced marches, to attack Rajah Sahib, who was at the head of
about five thousand men, of whom three hundred were French. The
action was sharp; but Clive gained a complete victory. The
military chest of Rajah Sahib fell into the hands of the
conquerors. Six hundred sepoys, who had served in the enemy's
army, came over to Clive's quarters, and were taken into the
British service. Conjeveram surrendered without a blow. The
governor of Arnee deserted Chunda Sahib, and recognised the title
of Mahommed Ali.

Had the entire direction of the war been intrusted to Clive, it
would probably have been brought to a speedy close. But the
timidity and incapacity which appeared in all the movements of
the English, except where he was personally present, protracted
the struggle. The Mahrattas muttered that his soldiers were of a
different race from the British whom they found elsewhere. The
effect of this languor was that in no long time Rajah Sahib, at
the head of a considerable army, in which were four hundred
French troops, appeared almost under the guns of Fort St. George,
and laid waste the villas and gardens of the gentlemen of the
English settlement. But he was again encountered and defeated by
Clive. More than a hundred of the French were killed or taken, a
loss more serious than that of thousands of natives. The
victorious army marched from the field of battle to Fort St.
David. On the road lay the City of the Victory of Dupleix, and
the stately monument which was designed to commemorate the
triumphs of France in the East. Clive ordered both the city and
the monument to be razed to the ground.  He was induced, we
believe, to take this step, not by personal or national
malevolence, but by a just and profound policy. The town and its
pompous name, the pillar and its vaunting inscriptions, were
among the devices by which Dupleix had laid the public mind of
India under a spell. This spell it was Clive's business to break.
The natives had been taught that France was confessedly the first
power in Europe, and that the English did not presume to dispute
her supremacy. No measure could be more effectual for the
removing of this delusion than the public and solemn demolition
of the French trophies.

The government of Madras, encouraged by these events, determined
to send a strong detachment, under Clive, to reinforce the
garrison of Trichinopoly. But just at this conjuncture, Major
Lawrence arrived from England, and assumed the chief command.
From the waywardness and impatience of control which had
characterised Clive, both at school and in the counting-house, it
might have been expected that he would not, after such
achievements, act with zeal and good humour in a subordinate
capacity. But Lawrence had early treated him with kindness; and
it is bare justice to Clive, to say that, proud and overbearing
as he was, kindness was never thrown away upon him. He cheerfully
placed himself under the orders of his old friend, and exerted
himself as strenuously in the second post as he could have done
in the first. Lawrence well knew the value of such assistance.
Though himself gifted with no intellectual faculty higher than
plain good sense, he fully appreciated the powers of his
brilliant coadjutor. Though he had made a methodical study of
military tactics, and, like all men regularly bred to a
profession, was disposed to look with disdain on interlopers, he
had yet liberality enough to acknowledge that Clive was an
exception to common rules. "Some people," he wrote, "are pleased
to term Captain Clive fortunate and lucky; but, in my opinion,
from the knowledge I have of the gentleman, he deserved and might
expect from his conduct everything as it fell out;--a man of an
undaunted resolution, of a cool temper, and of a presence of mind
which never left him in the greatest danger--born a soldier; for,
without a military education of any sort, or much conversing with
any of the profession, from his judgment and good sense, he led
on an army like an experienced officer and a brave soldier, with
a prudence that certainly warranted success."

The French had no commander to oppose to the two friends.
Dupleix, not inferior in talents for negotiation and intrigue to
any European who has borne a part in the revolutions of India,
was ill qualified to direct in person military operations. He had
not been bred a soldier, and had no inclination to become one.
His enemies accused him of personal cowardice; and he defended
himself in a strain worthy of Captain Bobadil. He kept away from
shot, he said, because silence and tranquillity were propitious
to his genius, and he found it difficult to pursue his
meditations amidst the noise of fire-arms. He was thus under the
necessity of intrusting to others the execution of his great
warlike designs; and he bitterly complained that he was ill
served. He had indeed been assisted by one officer of eminent
merit, the celebrated Bussy. But Bussy had marched northward with
the Nizam, and was fully employed in looking after his own
interests, and those of France, at the court of that prince.
Among the officers who remained with Dupleix, there was not a
single man of capacity; and many of them were boys, at whose
ignorance and folly the common soldiers laughed.

The English triumphed everywhere. The besiegers of Trichinopoly
were themselves besieged and compelled to capitulate. Chunda
Sahib fell into the hands of the Mahrattas, and was put to death,
at the instigation probably of his competitor, Mahommed Ali. The
spirit of Dupleix, however, was unconquerable, and his resources
inexhaustible. From his employers in Europe he no longer received
help or countenance. They condemned his policy. They gave him no
pecuniary assistance. They sent him for troops only the sweepings
of the galleys. Yet still he persisted, intrigued, bribed,
promised, lavished his private fortune, strained his credit,
procured new diplomas from Delhi, raised up new enemies to the
government of Madras on every side, and found tools even among
the allies of the English Company. But all was in vain. Slowly,
but steadily, the power of Britain continued to increase, and
that of France to decline.

The health of Clive had never been good during his residence in
India; and his constitution was now so much impaired that he
determined to return to England. Before his departure he
undertook a service of considerable difficulty, and performed it
with his usual vigour and dexterity. The forts of Covelong and
Chingleput were occupied by French garrisons. It was determined
to send a force against them. But the only force available for
this purpose was of such a description that no officer but Clive
would risk his reputation by commanding it. It consisted of five
hundred newly levied sepoys and two hundred recruits who had just
landed from England, and who were the worst and lowest wretches
that the Company's crimps could pick up in the flash-houses of
London. Clive, ill and exhausted as he was, undertook to make an
army of this undisciplined rabble, and marched with them to
Covelong. A shot from the fort killed one of these extraordinary
soldiers; on which all the rest faced about and ran away, and it
was with the greatest difficulty that Clive rallied them. On
another occasion, the noise of a gun terrified the sentinels so
much that one of them was found, some hours later, at the bottom
of a well. Clive gradually accustomed them to danger, and, by
exposing himself constantly in the most perilous situations,
shamed them into courage. He at length succeeded in forming a
respectable force out of his unpromising materials. Covelong
fell. Clive learned that a strong detachment was marching to
relieve it from Chingleput. He took measures to prevent the enemy
from learning that they were too late, laid an ambuscade for them
on the road, killed a hundred of them with one fire, took three
hundred prisoners, pursued the fugitives to the gates of
Chingleput, laid siege instantly to that fastness, reputed one of
the strongest in India, made a breach, and was on the point of
storming, when the French commandant capitulated and retired with
his men.

Clive returned to Madras victorious, but in a state of health
which rendered it impossible for him to remain there long. He
married at this time a young lady of the name of Maskelyne,
sister of the eminent mathematician, who long held the post of
Astronomer Royal. She is described as handsome and accomplished;
and her husband's letters, it is said, contain proofs that he was
devotedly attached to her.

Almost immediately after the marriage, Clive embarked with his
bride for England. He returned a very different person from the
poor slighted boy who had been sent out ten years before to seek
his fortune. He was only twenty-seven; yet his country already
respected him as one of her first soldiers. There was then
general peace in Europe. The Carnatic was the only part of the
world where the English and French were in arms against each
other. The vast schemes of Dupleix had excited no small
uneasiness in the city of London; and the rapid turn of fortune,
which was chiefly owing to the courage and talents of Clive, had
been hailed with great delight. The young captain was known at
the India House by the honourable nickname of General Clive, and
was toasted by that appellation at the feasts of the Directors.
On his arrival in England, he found himself an object of general
interest and admiration. The East India Company thanked him for
his services in the warmest terms, and bestowed on him a sword
set with diamonds. With rare delicacy, he refused to receive this
token of gratitude, unless a similar compliment were paid to his
friend and commander, Lawrence.

It may easily be supposed that Clive was most cordially welcomed
home by his family, who were delighted by his success, though
they seem to have been hardly able to comprehend how their
naughty idle Bobby had become so great a man. His father had been
singularly hard of belief. Not until the news of the defence of
Arcot arrived in England was the old gentleman heard to growl out
that, after all, the booby had something in him. His expressions
of approbation became stronger and stronger as news arrived of
one brilliant exploit after another; and he was at length
immoderately fond and proud of his son.

Clive's relations had very substantial reasons for rejoicing at
his return. Considerable sums of prize money had fallen to his
share; and he had brought home a moderate fortune, part of which
he expended in extricating his father from pecuniary
difficulties, and in redeeming the family estate. The remainder
he appears to have dissipated in the course of about two years.
He lived splendidly, dressed gaily even for those times, kept a
carriage and saddle-horses, and, not content with these ways of
getting rid of his money, resorted to the most speedy and
effectual of all modes of evacuation, a contested election
followed by a petition.

At the time of the general election of 1754, the Government was
in a very singular state. There was scarcely any formal
opposition. The Jacobites had been cowed by the issue of the last
rebellion. The Tory party had fallen into utter contempt. It had
been deserted by all the men of talents who had belonged to it,
and had scarcely given a symptom of life during some years. The
small faction which had been held together by the influence and
promises of Prince Frederic, had been dispersed by his death.
Almost every public man of distinguished talents in the kingdom,
whatever his early connections might have been, was in office,
and called himself a Whig. But this extraordinary appearance of
concord was quite delusive. The administration itself was
distracted by bitter enmities and conflicting pretensions. The
chief object of its members was to depress and supplant each
other. The Prime Minister, Newcastle, weak, timid, jealous, and
perfidious, was at once detested and despised by some of the most
important members of his Government, and by none more than by
Henry Fox, the Secretary-at-War. This able, daring, and ambitious
man seized every opportunity of crossing the First Lord of the
Treasury, from whom he well knew that he had little to dread and
little to hope; for Newcastle was through life equally afraid of
breaking with men of parts and of promoting them.

Newcastle had set his heart on returning two members for St.
Michael, one of those wretched Cornish boroughs which were swept
away by the Reform Act of 1832. He was opposed by Lord Sandwich,
whose influence had long been paramount there: and Fox exerted
himself strenuously in Sandwich's behalf. Clive, who had been
introduced to Fox, and very kindly received by him, was brought
forward on the Sandwich interest, and was returned. But a
petition was presented against the return, and was backed by the
whole influence of the Duke of Newcastle.

The case was heard, according to the usage of that time, before a
committee of the whole House. Questions respecting elections were
then considered merely as party questions. Judicial impartiality
was not even affected. Sir Robert Walpole was in the habit of
saying openly that, in election battles, there ought to be no
quarter. On the present occasion the excitement was great. The
matter really at issue was, not whether Clive had been properly
or improperly returned, but whether Newcastle or Fox was to be
master of the new House of Commons, and consequently first
minister. The contest was long and obstinate, and success seemed
to lean sometimes to one side and sometimes to the other. Fox put
forth all his rare powers of debate, beat half the lawyers in the
House at their own weapons, and carried division after division
against the whole influence of the Treasury. The committee
decided in Clive's favour. But when the resolution was reported
to the House, things took a different course. The remnant of the
Tory Opposition, contemptible as it was, had yet sufficient
weight to turn the scale between the nicely balanced parties of
Newcastle and Fox. Newcastle the Tories could only despise. Fox
they hated, as the boldest and most subtle politician and the
ablest debater among the Whigs, as the steady friend of Walpole,
as the devoted adherent of the Duke of Cumberland. After wavering
till the last moment, they determined to vote in a body with the
Prime Minister's friends. The consequence was that the House, by
a small majority, rescinded the decision of the committee, and
Clive was unseated.

Ejected from Parliament, and straitened in his means, he
naturally began to look again towards India. The Company and the
Government were eager to avail themselves of his services. A
treaty favourable to England had indeed been concluded in the
Carnatic. Dupleix had been superseded, and had returned with the
wreck of his immense fortune to Europe, where calumny and
chicanery soon hunted him to his grave. But many signs indicated
that a war between France and Great Britain was at hand; and it
was therefore thought desirable to send an able commander to the
Company's settlements in India. The Directors appointed Clive
governor of Fort St. David. The King gave him the commission of a
lieutenant-colonel in the British army, and in 1755 he again
sailed for Asia.

The first service on which he was employed after his return to
the East was the reduction of the stronghold of Gheriah. This
fortress, built on a craggy promontory, and almost surrounded by
the ocean, was the den of a pirate named Angria, whose barks had
long been the terror of the Arabian Gulf. Admiral Watson, who
commanded the English squadron in the Eastern seas, burned
Angria's fleet, while Clive attacked the fastness by land. The
place soon fell, and a booty of a hundred and fifty thousand
pounds sterling was divided among the conquerors.

After this exploit, Clive proceeded to his government of Fort St.
David. Before he had been there two months, he received
intelligence which called forth all the energy of his bold and
active mind.

Of the provinces which had been subject to the house of
Tamerlane, the wealthiest was Bengal. No part of India possessed
such natural advantages both for agriculture and for commerce.
The Ganges, rushing through a hundred channels to the sea, has
formed a vast plain of rich mould which, even under the tropical
sky, rivals the verdure of an English April. The rice-fields
yield an increase such as is elsewhere unknown. Spices, sugar,
vegetable oils, are produced with marvellous exuberance. The
rivers afford an inexhaustible supply of fish. The desolate
islands along the sea-coast, overgrown by noxious vegetation, and
swarming with deer and tigers, supply the cultivated districts
with abundance of salt. The great stream which fertilises the
soil is, at the same time, the chief highway of Eastern commerce.
On its banks, and on those of its tributary waters, are the
wealthiest marts, the most splendid capitals, and the most sacred
shrines of India. The tyranny of man had for ages struggled in
vain against the overflowing bounty of nature. In spite of the
Mussulman despot and of the Mahratta freebooter, Bengal was known
through the East as the garden of Eden, as the rich kingdom. Its
population multiplied exceedingly. Distant provinces were
nourished from the overflowing of its granaries - and the noble
ladies of London and Paris were clothed in the delicate produce
of its looms, The race by whom this rich tract was peopled,
enervated by a soft climate and accustomed to peaceful
employments, bore the same relation to other Asiatics which the
Asiatics generally bear to the bold and energetic children of
Europe. The Castilians have a proverb, that in Valencia the earth
is water and the men women; and the description is at least
equally applicable to the vast plain of the Lower Ganges.
Whatever the Bengalee does he does languidly. His favourite
pursuits are sedentary. He shrinks from bodily exertion; and,
though voluble in dispute, and singularly pertinacious in the war
of chicane, he seldom engages in a personal conflict, and
scarcely ever enlists as a soldier. We doubt whether there be a
hundred genuine Bengalees in the whole army of the East India
Company. There never, perhaps, existed a people so thoroughly
fitted by nature and by habit for a foreign yoke.

The great commercial companies of Europe had long possessed
factories in Bengal. The French were settled, as they still are,
at Chandernagore on the Hoogley. Higher up the stream the Dutch
held Chinsurah. Nearer to the sea, the English had built Fort
William. A church and ample warehouses rose in the vicinity. A
row of spacious houses, belonging to the chief factors of the
East India Company, lined the banks of the river; and in the
neighbourhood had sprung up a large and busy native town, where
some Hindoo merchants of great opulence had fixed their abode.
But the tract now covered by the palaces of Chowringhee contained
only a few miserable huts thatched with straw. A jungle,
abandoned to waterfowl and alligators, covered the site of the
present Citadel, and the Course, which is now daily crowded at
sunset with the gayest equipages of Calcutta. For the ground on
which the settlement stood, the English, like other great
landholders, paid rent to the Government; and they were, like
other great landholders, permitted to exercise a certain
jurisdiction within their domain.

The great province of Bengal, together with Orissa and Bahar, had
long been governed by a viceroy, whom the English called Aliverdy
Khan, and who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul, had become
virtually independent. He died in 1756, and the sovereignty
descended to his grandson, a youth under twenty years of age, who
bore the name of Surajah Dowlah. Oriental despots are perhaps the
worst class of human beings; and this unhappy boy was one of the
worst specimens of his class. His understanding was naturally
feeble, and his temper naturally unamiable. His education had
been such as would have enervated even a vigorous intellect, and
perverted even a generous disposition. He was unreasonable,
because nobody ever dared to reason with him, and selfish,
because he had never been made to feel himself dependent on the
goodwill of others. Early debauchery had unnerved his body and
his mind. He indulged immoderately in the use of ardent spirits,
which inflamed his weak brain almost to madness. His chosen
companions were flatterers sprung from the dregs of the people,
and recommended by nothing but buffoonery and, servility. It is
said that he had arrived at the last stage of human depravity,
when cruelty becomes pleasing for its own sake, when the sight of
pain as pain, where no advantage is to be gained, no offence
punished, no danger averted, is an agreeable excitement. It had
early been his amusement to torture beasts and birds; and, when
he grew up, he enjoyed with still keener relish the misery of his
fellow-creatures.

From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his
whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also
formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be
obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind
was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they
been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for
what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a
chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other
quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. The English,
in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their
settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich
native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta,
and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah
Dowlah marched with a great army against Fort William.

The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix
to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere
traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching
danger. The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah's
cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and
took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought
that he could not do better than follow so good an example. The
fort was taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of
the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob
seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the
factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the
prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about
the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of
the treasure which he had found, but promised to spare their
lives, and retired to rest.

Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular
atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it
was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the
guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in
the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name
of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that
dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow.
The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small
and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the
fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to
natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of
fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six.
When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the
soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of
the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and
jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their
mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain. The
guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives
were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door
was instantly shut and locked upon them.

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino
told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody
lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which
were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for
mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that
extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes
to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done
without the Nabob's orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that
he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went
mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the
places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with
which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies,
raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among
them. The gaolers in the meantime held lights to the bars,
and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their
victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and
moanings. The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch,
and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before
the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up
on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate
had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a
passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their
own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of
the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies,
a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it
promiscuously and covered up.

But these things--which, after the lapse of more than eighty
years, cannot be told or read without horror--awakened neither
remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted
no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the
survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got,
were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that
anything could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty.
Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who
reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in
irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of
knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the
Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of
that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only
with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the
female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One
Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem
of the Prince at Moorshedabad.

Surajah Dowlah, in the meantime, sent letters to his nominal
sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most
pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade
Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in
memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be
called Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God.

In August the news of the fall of Calcutta reached Madras, and
excited the fiercest and bitterest resentment. The cry of the
whole settlement was for vengeance. Within forty-eight hours
after the arrival of the intelligence it was determined that an
expedition should be sent to the Hoogley, and that Clive should
be at the head of the land forces. The naval armament was under
the command of Admiral Watson. Nine hundred English infantry,
fine troops and full of spirit, and fifteen hundred sepoys,
composed the army which sailed to punish a Prince who had more
subjects than Lewis the Fifteenth or the Empress Maria Theresa.
In October the expedition sailed; but it had to make its way
against adverse winds and did not reach Bengal till December.

The Nabob was revelling in fancied security at Moorshedabad. He
was so profoundly ignorant of the state of foreign countries that
he often used to say that there were not ten thousand men in all
Europe; and it had never occurred to him as possible that the
English would dare to invade his dominions. But, though
undisturbed by any fear of their military power, he began to miss
them greatly. His revenues fell off; and his ministers succeeded
in making him understand that a ruler may sometimes find it more
profitable to protect traders in the open enjoyment of their
gains than to put them to the torture for the purpose of
discovering hidden chests of gold and jewels. He was already
disposed to permit the Company to resume its mercantile
operations in his country, when he received the news that an
English armament was in the Hoogley. He instantly ordered all his
troops to assemble at Moorshedabad, and marched towards Calcutta.

Clive had commenced operations with his usual vigour. He took
Budgebudge, routed the garrison of Fort William, recovered
Calcutta, stormed and sacked Hoogley. The Nabob, already disposed
to make some concessions to the English, was confirmed in his
pacific disposition by these proofs of their power and spirit. He
accordingly made overtures to the chiefs of the invading
armament, and offered to restore the factory, and to give
compensation to those whom he had despoiled.

Clive's profession was war; and he felt that there was something
discreditable in an accommodation with Surajah Dowlah. But his
power was limited. A committee, chiefly composed of servants of
the Company who had fled from Calcutta, had the principal
direction of affairs; and these persons were eager to be restored
to their posts and compensated for their losses. The government
of Madras, apprised that war had commenced in Europe, and
apprehensive of an attack from the French, became impatient for
the return of the armament. The promises of the Nabob were large,
the chances of a contest doubtful; and Clive consented to treat,
though he expressed his regret that things should not be
concluded in so glorious a manner as he could have wished.

With this negotiation commences a new chapter in the life of
Clive. Hitherto he had been merely a soldier carrying into
effect, with eminent ability and valour, the plans of others.
Henceforth he is to be chiefly regarded as a statesman; and his
military movements are to be considered as subordinate to his
political designs. That in his new capacity he displayed great
ability, and obtained great success, is unquestionable. But it is
also unquestionable that the transactions in which he now began
to take a part have left a stain on his moral character.

We can by no means agree with Sir John Malcolm, who is
obstinately resolved to see nothing but honour and integrity in
the conduct of his hero. But we can as little agree with Mr.
Mill, who has gone so far as to say that Clive was a man "to whom
deception, when it suited his purpose, never cost a pang." Clive
seems to us to have been constitutionally the very opposite of a
knave, bold even to temerity, sincere even to indiscretion,
hearty in friendship, open in enmity. Neither in his private
life, nor in those parts of his public life in which he had to do
with his countrymen, do we find any signs of a propensity to
cunning. On the contrary, in all the disputes in which he was
engaged as an Englishman against Englishmen, from his boxing-
matches at school to those stormy altercations at the India House
and in Parliament amidst which his later years were passed, his
very faults were those of a high and magnanimous spirit. The
truth seems to have been that he considered Oriental politics as
a game in which nothing was unfair. He knew that the standard of
morality among the natives of India differed widely from that
established in England. He knew that he had to deal with men
destitute of what in Europe is called honour, with men who would
give any promise without hesitation, and break any promise
without shame, with men who would unscrupulously employ
corruption, perjury, forgery, to compass their ends. His letters
show that the great difference between Asiatic and European
morality was constantly in his thoughts. He seems to have
imagined, most erroneously in our opinion, that he could effect
nothing against such adversaries, if he was content to be bound
by ties from which they were free, if he went on telling truth,
and hearing none, if he fulfilled, to his own hurt, all his
engagements with confederates who never kept an engagement that
was not to their advantage. Accordingly this man, in the other
parts of his life an honourable English gentleman and a soldier,
was no sooner matched against an Indian intriguer, than he became
himself an Indian intriguer, and descended, without scruple, to
falsehood, to hypocritical caresses, to the substitution of
documents, and to the counterfeiting of hands.

The negotiations between the English and the Nabob were carried
on chiefly by two agents, Mr. Watts, a servant of the Company,
and a Bengalee of the name of Omichund. This Omichund had been
one of the wealthiest native merchants resident at Calcutta, and
had sustained great losses in consequence of the Nabob's
expedition against that place. In the course of his commercial
transactions, he had seen much of the English, and was peculiarly
qualified to serve as a medium of communication between them and
a native court. He possessed great influence with his own race,
and had in large measure the Hindoo talents, quick observation,
tact, dexterity, perseverance, and the Hindoo vices, servility,
greediness, and treachery.

The Nabob behaved with all the faithlessness of an Indian
statesman, and with all the levity of a boy whose mind had been
enfeebled by power and self-indulgence. He promised, retracted,
hesitated, evaded. At one time he advanced with his army in a
threatening manner towards Calcutta; but when he saw the resolute
front which the English presented, he fell back in alarm, and
consented to make peace with them on their own terms. The treaty
was no sooner concluded than he formed new designs against them.
He intrigued with the French authorities at Chandernagore. He
invited Bussy to march from the Deccan to the Hoogley, and to
drive the English out of Bengal. All this was well known to Clive
and Watson. They determined accordingly to strike a decisive
blow, and to attack Chandernagore, before the force there could
be strengthened by new arrivals, either from the south of India,
or from Europe. Watson directed the expedition by water, Clive by
land. The success of the combined movements was rapid and
complete. The fort, the garrison, the artillery, the military
stores, all fell into the hands of the English. Near five hundred
European troops were among the prisoners.

The Nabob had feared and hated the English, even while he was
still able to oppose to them their French rivals. The French were
now vanquished; and he began to regard the English with still
greater fear and still greater hatred. His weak and unprincipled
mind oscillated between servility and insolence. One day he sent
a large sum to Calcutta, as part of the compensation due for the
wrongs which he had committed, The next day he sent a present of
jewels to Bussy, exhorting that distinguished officer to hasten
to protect Bengal "against Clive, the daring in war, on whom,"
says his Highness, "may all bad fortune attend." He ordered his
army to march against the English. He countermanded his orders.
He tore Clive's letters. He then sent answers in the most florid
language of compliment. He ordered Watts out of his presence, and
threatened to impale him. He again sent for Watts, and begged
pardon for the insult. In the meantime, his wretched
maladministration, his folly, his dissolute manners, and his love
of the lowest company, had disgusted all classes of his subjects,
soldiers, traders, civil functionaries, the proud and
ostentatious Mahommedans, the timid, supple, and parsimonious
Hindoos. A formidable confederacy was formed against him, in
which were included Roydullub, the minister of finance, Meer
Jaffier, the principal commander of the troops, and Jugget Seit,
the richest banker in India. The plot was confided to the English
agents, and a communication was opened between the malcontents at
Moorshedabad and the committee at Calcutta.

In the committee there was much hesitation; but Clive's voice was
given in favour of the conspirators, and his vigour and firmness
bore down all opposition. It was determined that the English
should lend their powerful assistance to depose Surajah Dowlah,
and to place Meer Jaffier on the throne of Bengal. In return,
Meer Jaffier promised ample compensation to the Company and its
servants, and a liberal donative to the army, the navy, and the
committee. The odious vices of Surajah Dowlah, the wrongs which
the English had suffered at his hands, the dangers to which our
trade must have been exposed, had he continued to reign, appear to
us fully to justify the resolution of deposing him. But nothing
can justify the dissimulation which Clive stooped to practise. He
wrote to Surajah Dowlah in terms so affectionate that they for a
time lulled that weak prince into perfect security. The same
courier who carried this "soothing letter," as Clive calls it, to
the Nabob, carried to Mr. Watts a letter in the following terms:
"Tell Meer Jaffier to fear nothing. I will join him with five
thousand men who never turned their backs. Assure him I will
march nigh and day to his assistance, and stand by him as long as
I have a man left."

It was impossible that a plot which had so many ramifications
should long remain entirely concealed. Enough reached the ear of
the Nabob to arouse his suspicions. But he was soon quieted by
the fictions and artifices which the inventive genius of Omichund
produced with miraculous readiness. All was going well; the plot
was nearly ripe; when Clive learned that Omichund was likely to
play false. The artful Bengalee had been promised a liberal
compensation for all that he had lost at Calcutta. But this would
not satisfy him. His services had been great. He held the thread
of the whole intrigue. By one word breathed in the ear of Surajah
Dowlah, he could undo all that he had done. The lives of Watts,
of Meer Jaffier of all the conspirators, were at his mercy; and
he determined to take advantage of his situation and to make his
own terms. He demanded three hundred thousand pounds sterling as
the price of his secrecy and of his assistance. The committee,
incensed by the treachery and appalled by the danger, knew not
what course to take. But Clive was more than Omichund's match in
Omichund's own arts. The man, he said, was a villain. Any
artifice which would defeat such knavery was justifiable. The
best course would be to promise what was asked. Omichund would
soon be at their mercy; and then they might punish him by
withholding from him, not only the bribe which he now demanded,
but also the compensation which all the other sufferers of
Calcutta were to receive.

His advice was taken. But how was the wary and sagacious Hindoo
to be deceived? He had demanded that an article touching his
claims should be inserted in the treaty between Meer Jaffier and
the English, and he would not be satisfied unless he saw it with
his own eyes. Clive had an expedient ready. Two treaties were
drawn up, one on white paper, the other on red, the former real,
the latter fictitious. In the former Omichund's name was not
mentioned; the latter, which was to be shown to him, contained a
stipulation in his favour.

But another difficulty arose. Admiral Watson had scruples about
signing the red treaty. Omichund's vigilance and acuteness were
such that the absence of so important a name would probably
awaken his suspicions. But Clive was not a man to do anything by
halves. We almost blush to write it He forged Admiral Watson's
name.

All was now ready for action. Mr. Watts fled secretly from
Moorshedabad. Clive put his troops in motion, and wrote to the
Nabob in a tone very different from that of his previous letters.
He set forth all the wrongs which the British had suffered,
offered to submit the points in dispute to the arbitration of
Meer Jaffier, and concluded by announcing that, as the rains were
about to set in, he and his men would do themselves the honour of
waiting on his Highness for an answer.

Surajah Dowlah instantly assembled his whole force, and marched
to encounter the English. It had been agreed that Meer Jaffier
should separate himself from the Nabob, and carry over his
division to Clive. But, as the decisive moment approached, the
fears of the conspirator overpowered his ambition. Clive had
advanced to Cossimbuzar; the Nabob lay with a mighty power a few
miles off at Plassey; and still Meer Jaffier delayed to fulfil
his engagements, and returned evasive answers to the earnest
remonstrances of the English general.

Clive was in a painfully anxious situation. He could place no
confidence in the sincerity or in the courage of his confederate;
and, whatever confidence he might place in his own military
talents, and in the valour and discipline of his troops, it was
no light thing to engage an army twenty times numerous as his
own. Before him lay a river over which it was easy to advance,
but over which, if things went ill, not one of his little band
would ever return. On this occasion, for the first and for the
last time, his dauntless spirit, during a few hours, shrank from
the fearful responsibility of making a decision He called a
council of war. The majority pronounced against fighting; and
Clive declared his concurrence with the majority. Long afterwards,
he said that he had never called but one council of war, and
that, if he had taken the advice of that council, the British
would never have been masters of Bengal. But scarcely had the
meeting broken up when he was himself again. He retired alone
under the shade of some trees, and passed near an hour there in
thought. He came back determined to put everything to the
hazard, and gave orders that all should be in readiness for
passing the river on the morrow.

The river was passed; and, at the close of a toilsome day's march,
the army, long after sunset, took up its quarters in grove of
mango-trees near Plassey, within a mile of the enemy. Clive was
unable to sleep; he heard, through the whole night the sound of
drums and cymbals from the vast camp of the Nabob. It is not
strange that even his stout heart should no and then have sunk,
when he reflected against what odds, and for what a prize, he was
in a few hours to contend.

Nor was the rest of Surajah Dowlah more peaceful. His mind, at
once weak and stormy, was distracted by wild and horrible
apprehensions. Appalled by the greatness and nearness of the
crisis, distrusting his captains, dreading every one who
approached him, dreading to be left alone, he sat gloomily in his
tent, haunted, a Greek poet would have said, by the furies of
those who had cursed him with their last breath in the Black
Hole.

The day broke, the day which was to decide the fate of India. At
sunrise the army of the Nabob, pouring through many openings of
the camp, began to move towards the grove where the English lay.
Forty thousand infantry, armed with firelocks, pikes, swords,
bows and arrows, covered the plain. They were accompanied by
fifty pieces of ordnance of the largest size, each tugged by a
long team of white oxen, and each pushed on from behind by an
elephant. Some smaller guns, under the direction of a few French
auxiliaries, were perhaps more formidable. The cavalry were
fifteen thousand, drawn, not from the effeminate population of
Bengal, but from the bolder race which inhabits the northern
provinces; and the practised eye of Clive could perceive that
both the men and the horses were more powerful than those of the
Carnatic. The force which he had to oppose to this great
multitude consisted of only three thousand men. But of these
nearly a thousand were English; and all were led by English
officers, and trained in the English discipline. Conspicuous in
the ranks of the little army were the men of the Thirty-Ninth
Regiment, which still bears on its colours, amidst many
honourable additions won under Wellington in Spain and Gascony,
the name of Plassey, and the proud motto, Primus in Indis.

The battle commenced with a cannonade in which the artillery of
the Nabob did scarcely any execution, while the few fieldpieces
of the English produced great effect. Several of the most
distinguished officers in Surajah Dowlah's service fell. Disorder
began to spread through his ranks. His own terror increased every
moment. One of the conspirators urged on him the expediency of
retreating. The insidious advice, agreeing as it did with what
his own terrors suggested, was readily received. He ordered his
army to fall back, and this order decided his fate. Clive
snatched the moment, and ordered his troops to advance. The
confused and dispirited multitude gave way before the onset of
disciplined valour. No mob attacked by regular soldiers was ever
more completely routed. The little band of Frenchmen, who alone
ventured to confront the English, were swept down the stream of
fugitives. In an hour the forces of Surajah Dowlah were
dispersed, never to reassemble. Only five hundred of the
vanquished were slain. But their camp, their guns, their baggage,
innumerable waggons, innumerable cattle, remained in the power of
the conquerors. With the loss of twenty-two soldiers killed and
fifty wounded, Clive had scattered an army of near sixty thousand
men, and subdued an empire larger and more populous than Great
Britain.

Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the
action. But, as soon as he saw that the fate of the day was
decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when the
battle was over, sent his congratulations to his ally. The next
morning he repaired to the English quarters, not a little uneasy
as to the reception which awaited him there. He gave evident
signs of alarm when a guard was drawn out to receive him with the
honours due to his rank. But his apprehensions were speedily
removed, Clive came forward to meet him, embraced him, saluted
him as Nabob of the three great provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and
Orissa, listened graciously to his apologies, and advised him to
march without delay to Moorshedabad.

Surajah Dowlah had fled from the field of battle with all the
speed with which a fleet camel could carry him, and arrived at
Moorshedabad in little more than twenty-four hours. There he
called his councillors round him. The wisest advised him to put
himself into the hands of the English, from whom he had nothing
worse to fear than deposition and confinement. But he attributed
this suggestion to treachery. Others urged him to try the chance
of war again. He approved the advice, and issued orders
accordingly. But he wanted spirit to adhere even during one day
to a manly resolution. He learned that Meer Jaffier had arrived,
and his terrors became insupportable. Disguised in a mean dress,
with a casket of jewels in his hand, he let himself down at night
from a window of his palace, and accompanied by only two
attendants, embarked on the river for Patna.

In a few days Clive arrived at Moorshedabad, escorted by two
hundred English soldiers and three hundred sepoys. For his
residence had been assigned a palace, which was surrounded by a
garden so spacious that all the troops who accompanied him could
conveniently encamp within it. The ceremony of the installation
of Meer Jaffier was instantly performed. Clive led the new Nabob
to the seat of honour, placed him on it, presented to him, after
the immemorial fashion of the East, an offering of gold, and
then, turning to the natives who filled the hall, congratulated
them on the good fortune which had freed them from a tyrant. He
was compelled on this occasion to use the services of an
interpreter; for it is remarkable that, long as he resided in
India, intimately acquainted as he was with Indian politics and
with the Indian character, and adored as he was by his Indian
soldiery, he never learned to express himself with facility in
any Indian language. He is said indeed to have been sometimes
under the necessity of employing, in his intercourse with natives
of India, the smattering of Portuguese which he had acquired,
when a lad, in Brazil.

The new sovereign was now called upon to fulfil the engagements
into which he had entered with his allies. A conference was held
at the house of Jugget Seit, the great banker, for the purpose of
making the necessary arrangements. Omichund came thither, fully
believing himself to stand high in the favour of Clive, who, with
dissimulation surpassing even the dissimulation of Bengal, had up
to that day treated him with undiminished kindness. The white
treaty was produced and read. Clive then turned to Mr. Scrafton,
one of the servants of the Company, and said in English, "It is
now time to undeceive Omichund." "Omichund," said Mr. Scrafton in
Hindostanee, "the red treaty is a trick, you are to have
nothing." Omichund fell back insensible into the arms of his
attendants. He revived; but his mind was irreparably ruined.
Clive, who, though little troubled by scruples of conscience in
his dealings with Indian politicians, was not inhuman, seems to
have been touched. He saw Omichund a few days later, spoke to him
kindly, advised him to make a pilgrimage to one of the great
temples of India, in the hope that change of scene might restore
his health, and was even disposed, notwithstanding all that had
passed, again to employ him in the public service. But from the
moment of that sudden shock, the unhappy man sank gradually into
idiocy. He who had formerly been distinguished by the strength of
his understanding and the simplicity of his habits, now
squandered the remains of his fortune on childish trinkets, and
loved to exhibit himself dressed in rich garments, and hung with
precious stones. In this abject state he languished a few months,
and then died.

We should not think it necessary to offer any remarks for the
purpose of directing the judgment of our readers, with respect to
this transaction, had not Sir John Malcolm undertaken to defend
it in all its parts. He regrets, indeed, that it was necessary to
employ means so liable to abuse as forgery; but he will not admit
that any blame attaches to those who deceived the deceiver. He
thinks that the English were not bound to keep faith with one who
kept no faith with them and that, if they had fulfilled their
engagements with the wily Bengalee, so signal an example of
successful treason would have produced a crowd of imitators. Now,
we will not discus this point on any rigid principles of
morality. Indeed, it is quite unnecessary to do so for, looking
at the question as a question of expediency in the lowest sense
of the word, and using no arguments but such as Machiavelli might
have employed in his conferences with Borgia, we are convinced
that Clive was altogether in the wrong, and that he committed,
not merely a crime, but a blunder. That honesty is the best
policy is a maxim which we firmly believe to be generally
correct, even with respect to the temporal interest of
individuals; but with respect to societies, the rule is subject
to still fewer exceptions, and that for this reason, that the
life of societies is longer than the life of individuals. It is
possible to mention men who have owed great worldly prosperity to
breaches of private faith; but we doubt whether it be possible to
mention a state which has on the whole been a gainer by a breach
of public faith. The entire history of British India is an
illustration of the great truth, that it is not prudent to oppose
perfidy to perfidy, and that the most efficient weapon with which
men can encounter falsehood is truth. During a long course of
years, the English rulers of India, surrounded by allies and
enemies whom no engagement could bind, have generally acted with
sincerity and uprightness; and the event has proved that
sincerity and uprightness are wisdom. English valour and English
intelligence have done less to extend and to preserve our
Oriental empire than English veracity. All that we could have
gained by imitating the doublings, the evasions, the fictions,
the perjuries which have been employed against us, is as nothing,
when compared with what we have gained by being the one power in
India on whose word reliance can be placed. No oath which
superstition can devise, no hostage however precious, inspires a
hundredth part of the confidence which is produced by the "yea,
yea," and "nay, nay," of a British envoy. No fastness, however
strong by art or nature, gives to its inmates a security like
that enjoyed by the chief who, passing through the territories of
powerful and deadly enemies, is armed with the British guarantee.
The mightiest princes of the East can scarcely, by the offer of
enormous usury, draw forth any portion of the wealth which is
concealed under the hearths of their subjects. The British
Government offers little more than four per cent. and avarice
hastens to bring forth tens of millions of rupees from its most
secret repositories. A hostile monarch may promise mountains of
gold to our sepoys on condition that they will desert the
standard of the Company The Company promises only a moderate
pension after a long service. But every sepoy knows that the
promise of the Company will be kept; he knows that if he lives a
hundred years his rice and salt are as secure as the salary of
the Governor-General; and he knows that there is not another
state in India which would not, in spite of the most solemn vows,
leave him to die of hunger in a ditch as soon as he had ceased to
be useful. The greatest advantage which government can possess is
to be the one trustworthy government in the midst of
governments which nobody can trust This advantage we enjoy in
Asia. Had we acted during the last two generations on the
principles which Sir John Malcolm appears to have considered as
sound, had we as often as we had to deal with people like
Omichund, retaliated by lying and forging, and breaking faith,
after their fashion, it is our firm belief that no courage or
capacity could have upheld our empire.

Sir John Malcolm admits that Clive's breach of faith could be
justified only by the strongest necessity. As we think that
breach of faith not only unnecessary, but most inexpedient, we
need hardly say that we altogether condemn it.

Omichund was not the only victim of the revolution. Surajah Dowlah
was taken a few days after his flight, and was brought before
Meer Jaffier. There he flung himself on the ground in convulsions
of fear, and with tears and loud cries implored the mercy which
he had never shown. Meer Jaffier hesitated; but his son Meeran, a
youth of seventeen, who in feebleness of brain and savageness of
nature greatly resemble the wretched captive, was implacable.
Surajah Dowlah was led into a secret chamber, to which in a short
time the minister of death were sent. In this act the English bore
no part and Meer Jaffier understood so much of their feelings
that h thought it necessary to apologise to them for having
avenge them on their most malignant enemy.

The shower of wealth now fell copiously on the Company and its
servants. A sum of eight hundred thousand pound sterling, in
coined silver, was sent down the river from Moorshedabad to Fort
William. The fleet which conveyed this treasure consisted of more
than a hundred boats, and performed its triumphal voyage with
flags flying and music playing. Calcutta, which a few months
before had been desolate, was now more prosperous than ever.
Trade revived; and the signs of affluence appeared in every
English house. As to Clive, there was no limit to his
acquisitions but his own moderation. The treasury of Bengal was
thrown open to him. There were piled up, after the usage of
Indian princes, immense masses of coin, among which might not
seldom he detected the florins and byzants with which, before any
European ship had turned the Cape of Good Hope, the Venetians
purchased the stuffs and spices of the East. Clive walked between
heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and
was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two and
three hundred thousand pounds.

The pecuniary transactions between Meer Jaffier and Clive were
sixteen years later condemned by the public voice, and severely
criticised in Parliament. They are vehemently defended by Sir
John Malcolm. The accusers of the victorious general represented
his gains as the wages of corruption, or as plunder extorted at
the point of the sword from a helpless ally. The biographer, on
the other hand, considers these great acquisitions as free gifts,
honourable alike to the donor and to the receiver, and compares
them to the rewards bestowed by foreign powers on Marlborough, on
Nelson, and on Wellington. It had always, he says, been customary
in the East to give and receive presents; and there was, as yet,
no Act of Parliament positively prohibiting English functionaries
in India from profiting by this Asiatic usage. This reasoning, we
own, does not quite satisfy us. We do not suspect Clive of
selling the interests of his employers or his country; but we
cannot acquit him of having done what, if not in itself evil, was
yet of evil example. Nothing is more clear than that a general
ought to be the servant of his own government, and of no other.
It follows that whatever rewards he receives for his services
ought to be given either by his own government, or with the full
knowledge and approbation of his own government. This rule ought
to be strictly maintained even with respect to the merest bauble,
with respect to a cross, a medal, or a yard of coloured riband.
But how can any government be well served, if those who command
its forces are at liberty, without its permission, without its
privity, to accept princely fortunes from its allies? It is idle
to say that there was then no Act of Parliament prohibiting the
practice of taking presents from Asiatic sovereigns. It is not on
the Act which was passed at a later period for the purpose of
preventing any such taking of presents, but on grounds which were
valid before that Act was passed, on grounds of common law and
common sense, that we arraign the conduct of Clive. There is no
Act that we know of, prohibiting the Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs from being in the pay of continental powers, but
it is not the less true that a Secretary who should receive a
secret pension from France would grossly violate his duty, and
would deserve severe punishment. Sir John Malcolm compares the
conduct of Clive with that of the Duke of Wellington. Suppose,--
and we beg pardon for putting such a supposition even for the
sake of argument,--that the Duke of Wellington had, after the
campaign of 1815, and while he commanded the army of occupation
in France, privately accepted two hundred thousand pounds from
Lewis the Eighteenth, as a mark of gratitude for the great
services which his Grace had rendered to the House of Bourbon;
what would be thought of such a transaction? Yet the statute-book
no more forbids the taking of presents in Europe now than it
forbade the taking of presents in Asia then.

At the same time, it must be admitted that, in Clive's case,
there were many extenuating circumstances. He considered himself
as the general, not of the Crown, but of the Company. The Company
had, by implication at least, authorised its agents to enrich
themselves by means of the liberality of the native princes, and
by other means still more objectionable. It was hardly to be
expected that the servant should entertain strict notions of his
duty than were entertained by his masters. Though Clive did not
distinctly acquaint his employers with what had taken place and
request their sanction, he did not, on the other hand, by studied
concealment, show that he was conscious of having done wrong. On
the contrary, he avowed with the greatest openness that the
Nabob's bounty had raised him to affluence. Lastly, though we
think that he ought not in such a way to have taken anything, we
must admit that he deserves praise for having taken so little. He
accepted twenty lacs of rupees. It would have cost him only a
word to make the twenty forty. It was a very easy exercise of
virtue to declaim in England against Clive's rapacity; but not
one in a hundred of his accusers would have shown so much self-
command in the treasury of Moorshedabad.

Meer Jaffier could be upheld on the throne only by the hand which
had placed him on it. He was not, indeed, a mere boy; nor had he
been so unfortunate as to be born in the purple. He was not
therefore quite so imbecile or quite so depraved as his
predecessor had been. But he had none of the talents or virtues
which his post required; and his son and heir, Meeran, was
another Surajah Dowlah. The recent revolution had unsettled the
minds of men. Many chiefs were in open insurrection against the
new Nabob. The viceroy of the rich and powerful province of Oude,
who, like the other viceroys of the Mogul was now in truth an
independent sovereign, menaced Bengal with invasion. Nothing but
the talents and authority of Clive could support the tottering
government. While things were in this state, a ship arrived with
despatches which had been written at the India House before the
news of the battle of Plassey had reached London. The Directors
had determined to place the English settlements in Bengal under a
government constituted in the most cumbrous and absurd manner;
and to make the matter worse, no place in the arrangement was
assigned to Clive. The persons who were selected to form this new
government, greatly to their honour, took on themselves the
responsibility of disobeying these preposterous orders, and
invited Clive to exercise the supreme authority. He consented;
and it soon appeared that the servants of the Company had only
anticipated the wishes of their employers. The Directors, on
receiving news of Clive's brilliant success, instantly appointed
him governor of their possessions in Bengal, with the highest
marks of gratitude and esteem. His power was now boundless, and
far surpassed even that which Dupleix had attained in the south
of India. Meer Jaffier regarded him with slavish awe. On one
occasion, the Nabob spoke with severity to a native chief of high
rank, whose followers had been engaged in a brawl with some of
the Company's sepoys. "Are you yet to learn," he said, "who that
Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed him?" The
chief, who, as a famous jester and an old friend of Meer Jaffier,
could venture to take liberties, answered, "I affront the
Colonel! I, who never get up in the morning without making three
low bows to his jackass!" This was hardly an exaggeration.
Europeans and natives were alike at Clive's feet. The English
regarded him as the only man who could force Meer Jaffier to keep
his engagements with them. Meer Jaffier regarded him as the only
man who could protect the new dynasty against turbulent subjects
and encroaching neighbours.

It is but justice to say that Clive used his power ably and
vigorously for the advantage of his country. He sent forth an
expedition against the tract lying to the north of the Carnatic.
In this tract the French still had the ascendency; and it was
important to dislodge them. The conduct of the enterprise was
intrusted to an officer of the name of Forde, who was then little
known, but in whom the keen eye of the governor had detected
military talents of a high order. The success of the expedition
was rapid and splendid.

While a considerable part of the army of Bengal was thus engaged
at a distance, a new and formidable danger menaced the western
frontier. The Great Mogul was a prisoner at Delhi in the hands of
a subject. His eldest son, named Shah Alum, destined to be,
during many years, the sport of adverse fortune, and to be a tool
in the hands, first of the Mahrattas, and then of the English,
had fled from the palace of his father. His birth was still
revered in India. Some powerful princes, the Nabob of Oude in
particular, were inclined to favour him. Shah Alum found it easy
to draw to his standard great numbers of the military adventurers
with whom every part of the country swarmed. An army of forty
thousand men, of various races and religions, Mahrattas,
Rohillas, Jauts, and Afghans, were speedily assembled round him;
and he formed the design of overthrowing the upstart whom the
English had elevated to a throne, and of establishing his own
authority throughout Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar.

Meer Jaffier's terror was extreme; and the only expedient which
occurred to him was to purchase, by the payment of a large sum of
money, an accommodation with Shah Alum. This expedient had been
repeatedly employed by those who, before him, had ruled the rich
and unwarlike provinces near the mouth of the Ganges. But Clive
treated the suggestion with a scorn worthy of his strong sense
and dauntless courage. "If you do this," he wrote, "you will have
the Nabob of Oude, the Mahrattas, and many more, come from all
parts of the confines of your country, who will bully you out of
money till you have none left in your treasury. I beg your
Excellency will rely on the fidelity of the English, and of those
troops which are attached to you." He wrote in a similar strain
to the governor of Patna, a brave native soldier whom he highly
esteemed. "Come to no terms; defend your city to the last. Rest
assured that the English are staunch and firm friends, and that
they never desert a cause in which they have once taken a part."

He kept his word. Shah Alum had invested Patna, and was on the
point of proceeding to storm, when he learned that the Colonel
was advancing by forced marches. The whole army which was
approaching consisted of only four hundred and fifty Europeans
and two thousand five hundred sepoys. But Clive and his
Englishmen were now objects of dread over all the East. As soon
as his advance guard appeared, the besiegers fled before him. A
few French adventurers who were about the person of the prince
advised him to try the chance of battle; but in vain. In a few
days this great army, which had been regarded with so much
uneasiness by the court of Moorshedabad, melted away before the
mere terror of the British name.

The conqueror returned in triumph to Fort William. The joy of
Meer Jaffier was as unbounded as his fears had been, and led him
to bestow on his preserver a princely token of gratitude. The
quit-rent which the East India Company were bound to pay to the
Nabob for the extensive lands held by them to the south of
Calcutta amounted to near thirty thousand pounds sterling a year.
The whole of this splendid estate, sufficient to support with
dignity the highest rank of the British peerage, was now
conferred on Clive for life.

This present we think Clive justified in accepting. It was a
present which, from its very nature, could be no secret. In fact,
the Company itself was his tenant, and, by its acquiescence,
signified its approbation of Meer Jaffier's grant.

But the gratitude of Meer Jaffier did not last long. He had for
some time felt that the powerful ally who had set him up, might
pull him down, and had been looking round for support against the
formidable strength by which he had himself been hitherto
supported. He knew that it would be impossible to find among the
natives of India any force which would look the Colonel's little
army in the face. The French power in Bengal was extinct. But the
fame of the Dutch had anciently been great in the Eastern seas;
and it was not yet distinctly known in Asia how much the power of
Holland had declined in Europe. Secret communications passed
between the court of Moorshedabad and the Dutch factory at
Chinsurah; and urgent letters were sent from Chinsurah, exhorting
the government of Batavia to fit out an expedition which might
balance the power of the English in Bengal. The authorities of
Batavia, eager to extend the influence of their country, and
still more eager to obtain for themselves a share of the wealth
which had recently raised so many English adventurers to
opulence, equipped a powerful armament. Seven large ships from
Java arrived unexpectedly in the Hoogley. The military force on
board amounted to fifteen hundred men, of whom about one half
were Europeans. The enterprise was well timed. Clive had sent
such large detachments to oppose the French in the Carnatic that
his army was now inferior in number to that of the Dutch. He knew
that Meer Jaffier secretly favoured the invaders. He knew that he
took on himself a serious responsibility if he attacked the
forces of a friendly power; that the English ministers could not
wish to see a war with Holland added to that in which they were
already engaged with France; that they might disavow his acts;
that they might punish him. He had recently remitted a great part
of his fortune to Europe, through the Dutch East India Company;
and he had therefore a strong interest in avoiding any quarrel.
But he was satisfied that, if he suffered the Batavian armament
to pass up the river and to join the garrison of Chinsurah, Meer
Jaffier would throw himself into the arms of these new allies,
and that the English ascendency in Bengal would be exposed to
most serious danger. He took his resolution with characteristic
boldness, and was most ably seconded by his officers,
particularly by Colonel Forde, to whom the most important part of
the operations was intrusted. The Dutch attempted to force a
passage. The English encountered them both by land and water. On
both elements the enemy had a great superiority of force. On both
they were signally defeated. Their ships were taken. Their troops
were put to a total rout. Almost all the European soldiers, who
constituted the main strength of the invading army, were killed
or taken. The conquerors sat down before Chinsurah; and the
chiefs of that settlement, now thoroughly humbled, consented to
the terms which Clive dictated. They engaged to build no
fortifications, and to raise no troops beyond a small force
necessary for the police of their factories; and it was
distinctly provided that any violation of these covenants should
be punished with instant expulsion from Bengal.

Three months after this great victory, Clive sailed for England.
At home, honours and rewards awaited him, not indeed equal to his
claims or to his ambition, but still such as, when his age, his
rank in the army, and his original place in society are
considered, must be pronounced rare and splendid. He was raised
to the Irish peerage, and encouraged to expect an English title.
George the Third, who had just ascended the throne, received him
with great distinction. The ministers paid him marked attention;
and Pitt, whose influence in the House of Commons and in the
country was unbounded, was eager to mark his regard for one whose
exploits had contributed so much to the lustre of that memorable
period. The great orator had already in Parliament described
Clive as a heaven-born general, as a man who, bred to the labour
of the desk, had displayed a military genius which might excite
the admiration of the King of Prussia. There were then no
reporters in the gallery; but these words, emphatically spoken by
the first statesman of the age, had passed from mouth to mouth,
had been transmitted to Clive in Bengal, and had greatly
delighted and flattered him. Indeed, since the death of Wolfe,
Clive was the only English general of whom his countrymen had
much reason to be proud. The Duke of Cumberland had been
generally unfortunate; and his single victory, having been gained
over his countrymen and used with merciless severity, had been
more fatal to his popularity than his many defeats. Conway,
versed in the learning of his profession, and personally
courageous, wanted vigour and capacity. Granby, honest, generous,
and brave as a lion, had neither science nor genius. Sackville,
inferior in knowledge and abilities to none of his
contemporaries, had incurred, unjustly as we believe, the
imputation most fatal to the character of a soldier. It was under
the command of a foreign general that the British had triumphed
at Minden and Warburg. The people therefore, as was natural,
greeted with pride and delight a captain of their own, whose
native courage and self-taught skill had placed him on a level
with the great tacticians of Germany.

The wealth of Clive was such as enabled him to vie with the first
grandees of England. There remains proof that he had remitted
more than a hundred and eighty thousand pounds through the Dutch
East India Company, and more than forty thousand pounds through
the English Company. The amount which he had sent home through
private houses was also considerable. He had invested great sums
in jewels, then a very common mode of remittance from India. His
purchases of diamonds, at Madras alone, amounted to twenty-five
thousand pounds. Besides a great mass of ready money, he had his
Indian estate, valued by himself at twenty-seven thousand a year.
His whole annual income, in the opinion of Sir John Malcolm, who
is desirous to state it as low as possible, exceeded forty
thousand pounds; and incomes of forty thousand pounds at the time
of the accession of George the Third were at least as rare as
incomes of a hundred thousand pounds now. We may safely affirm
that no Englishman who started with nothing has ever, in any line
of life, created such a fortune at the early age of thirty-four.

It would be unjust not to add that Clive made a creditable use of
his riches. As soon as the battle of Plassey had laid the
foundation of his fortune, he sent ten thousand pounds to his
sisters, bestowed as much more on other poor friends and
relations, ordered his agent to pay eight hundred a year to his
parents, and to insist that they should keep a carriage, and
settled five hundred a year on his old commander Lawrence, whose
means were very slender. The whole sum which Clive expended in
this manner may be calculated at fifty thousand pounds.

He now set himself to cultivate Parliamentary interest. His
purchases of land seem to have been made in a great measure with
that view, and, after the general election of 1761, he found
himself in the House of Commons, at the head of a body of
dependants whose support must have been important to any
administration. In English politics, however, he did not take a
prominent part. His first attachments, as we have seen, were to
Mr. Fox; at a later period he was attracted by the genius and
success of Mr. Pitt; but finally he connected himself in the
closest manner with George Grenville. Early in the session Of
1764, when the illegal and impolitic persecution of that
worthless demagogue Wilkes had strongly excited the public mind,
the town was amused by an anecdote, which we have seen in some
unpublished memoirs of Horace Walpole. Old Mr. Richard Clive,
who, since his son's elevation, had been introduced into society
for which his former habits had not well fitted him, presented
himself at the levee. The King asked him where Lord Clive was.
"He will be in town very soon," said the old gentleman, loud
enough to be heard by the whole circle, "and then your Majesty
will have another vote."

But in truth all Clive's views were directed towards the country
in which he had so eminently distinguished himself as a soldier
and a statesman; and it was by considerations relating to India
that his conduct as a public man in England was regulated. The
power of the Company, though an anomaly, is in our time, we are
firmly persuaded, a beneficial anomaly. In the time of Clive, it
was not merely an anomaly, but a nuisance. There was no Board of
Control. The Directors were for the most part mere traders,
ignorant of general politics, ignorant of the peculiarities of
the empire which had strangely become subject to them. The Court
of Proprietors, wherever it chose to interfere, was able to have
its way. That Court was more numerous, as well as more powerful,
than at present; for then every share of five hundred pounds
conferred a vote. The meetings were large, stormy, even riotous,
the debates indecently virulent. All the turbulence of a
Westminster election, all the trickery and corruption of a
Grampound election, disgraced the proceedings of this assembly on
questions of the most solemn importance. Fictitious votes were
manufactured on a gigantic scale. Clive himself laid out a
hundred thousand pounds in the purchase of stock, which he then
divided among nominal proprietors on whom he could depend, and
whom he brought down in his train to every discussion and every
ballot. Others did the same, though not to quite so enormous an
extent.

The interest taken by the public of England in Indian questions
was then far greater than at present, and the reason is obvious.
At present a writer enters the service young; he climbs slowly;
he is fortunate if, at forty-five, he can return to his country
with an annuity of a thousand a year, and with savings amounting
to thirty thousand pounds. A great quantity of wealth is made by
English functionaries in India; but no single functionary makes a
very large fortune, and what is made is slowly, hardly, and
honestly earned. Only four or five high political offices are
reserved for public men from England. The residencies, the
secretaryships, the seats in the boards of revenue and in the
Sudder courts are all filled by men who have given the best years
of life to the service of the Company; nor can any talents
however splendid or any connections however powerful obtain those
lucrative posts for any person who has not entered by the regular
door, and mounted by the regular gradations. Seventy years ago,
less money was brought home from the East than in our time. But
it was divided among a very much smaller number of persons, and
immense sums were often accumulated in a few months. Any
Englishman, whatever his age might be, might hope to be one of
the lucky emigrants. If he made a good speech in Leadenhall
Street, or published a clever pamphlet in defence of the
chairman, he might be sent out in the Company's service, and
might return in three or four years as rich as Pigot or as Clive.
Thus the India House was a lottery-office, which invited
everybody to take a chance, and held out ducal fortunes as the
prizes destined for the lucky few. As soon as it was known that
there was a part of the world where a lieutenant-colonel had one
morning received as a present an estate as large as that of the
Earl of Bath or the Marquess of Rockingham, and where it seemed
that such a trifle as ten or twenty thousand pounds was to be had
by any British functionary for the asking, society began to
exhibit all the symptoms of the South Sea year, a feverish
excitement, an ungovernable impatience to be rich, a contempt for
slow, sure, and moderate gains.

At the head of the preponderating party in the India House, had
long stood a powerful, able, and ambitious director of the name
of Sulivan. He had conceived a strong jealousy of Clive, and
remembered with bitterness the audacity with which the late
governor of Bengal had repeatedly set at nought the authority of
the distant Directors of the Company. An apparent reconciliation
took place after Clive's arrival; but enmity remained deeply
rooted in the hearts of both. The whole body of Directors was
then chosen annually. At the election of 1763, Clive attempted to
break down the power of the dominant faction. The contest was
carried on with a violence which he describes as tremendous.
Sulivan was victorious, and hastened to take his revenge. The
grant of rent which Clive had received from Meer Jaffier was, in
the opinion of the best English lawyers, valid. It had been made
by exactly the same authority from which the Company had received
their chief possessions in Bengal, and the Company had long
acquiesced in it. The Directors, however, most unjustly
determined to confiscate it, and Clive was forced to file a bill
in chancery against them.

But a great and sudden turn in affairs was at hand. Every ship
from Bengal had for some time brought alarming tidings. The
internal misgovernment of the province had reached such a point
that it could go no further. What, indeed, was to be expected
from a body of public servants exposed to temptation such that,
as Clive once said, flesh and blood could not bear it, armed with
irresistible power, and responsible only to the corrupt,
turbulent, distracted, ill-informed Company, situated at such a
distance that the average interval between the sending of a
despatch and the receipt of an answer was above a year and a
half? Accordingly, during the five years which followed the
departure of Clive from Bengal, the misgovernment of the English
was carried to a point such as seems hardly compatible with the
very existence of society. The Roman proconsul, who, in a year or
two, squeezed out of a province the means of rearing marble
palaces and baths on the shores of Campania, of drinking from
amber, of feasting on singing birds, of exhibiting armies of
gladiators and flocks of camelopards; the Spanish viceroy, who,
leaving behind him the curses of Mexico or Lima, entered Madrid
with a long train of gilded coaches, and of sumpter-horses
trapped and shod with silver, were now outdone. Cruelty, indeed,
properly so called, was not among the vices of the servants of
the Company. But cruelty itself could hardly have produced
greater evils than sprang from their unprincipled eagerness to be
rich. They pulled down their creature, Meer Jaffier. They set up
in his place another Nabob, named Meer Cossim. But Meer Cossim
had parts and a will; and, though sufficiently inclined to
oppress his subjects himself, he could not bear to see them
ground to the dust by oppressions which yielded him no profit,
nay, which destroyed his revenue in the very source. The English
accordingly pulled down Meer Cossim, and set up Meer Jaffier
again; and Meer Cossim, after revenging himself by a massacre
surpassing in atrocity that of the Black Hole, fled to the
dominions of the Nabob of Oude. At every one of these
revolutions, the new prince divided among his foreign masters
whatever could be scraped together in the treasury of his fallen
predecessor. The immense population of his dominions was given up
as a prey to those who had made him a sovereign, and who could
unmake him. The servants of the Company obtained, not for their
employers, but for themselves, a monopoly of almost the whole
internal trade. They forced the natives to buy dear and to sell
cheap. They insulted with impunity the tribunals, the police, and
the fiscal authorities of the country. They covered with their
protection a set of native dependants who ranged through the
provinces, spreading desolation and terror wherever they
appeared. Every servant of a British factor was armed with all
the power of his master; and his master was armed with all the
power of the Company. Enormous fortunes were thus rapidly
accumulated at Calcutta, while thirty millions of human beings
were reduced to the extremity of wretchedness. They had been
accustomed to live under tyranny, but never under tyranny like
this. They found the little finger of the Company thicker than
the loins of Surajah Dowlah. Under their old masters they had at
least one resource: when the evil became insupportable, the
people rose and pulled down the government. But the English
government was not to be so shaken off. That government,
oppressive as the most oppressive form of barbarian despotism,
was strong with all the strength of civilisation. It resembled
the government of evil Genii, rather than the government of human
tyrants. Even despair could not inspire the soft Bengalee with
courage to confront men of English breed, the hereditary nobility
of mankind, whose skill and valour had so often triumphed in
spite of tenfold odds. The unhappy race never attempted
resistance. Sometimes they submitted in patient misery. Sometimes
they fled from the white man, as their fathers had been used to
fly from the Mahratta; and the palanquin of the English traveller
was often carried through silent villages and towns, which the
report of his approach had made desolate.

The foreign lords of Bengal were naturally objects of hatred to
all the neighbouring powers; and to all the haughty race
presented a dauntless front. The English armies, everywhere
outnumbered, were everywhere victorious. A succession of
commanders, formed in the school of Clive, still maintained the
fame of their country. "It must be acknowledged," says the
Mussulman historian of those times, "that this nation's presence
of mind, firmness of temper, and undaunted bravery, are past all
question. They join the most resolute courage to the most
cautious prudence; nor have they their equals in the art of
ranging themselves in battle array and fighting in order. If to
so many military qualifications they knew how to join the arts of
government, if they exerted as much ingenuity and solicitude in
relieving the people of God, as they do in whatever concerns
their military affairs, no nation in the world would be
preferable to them, or worthier of command. But the people under
their dominion groan everywhere, and are reduced to poverty and
distress. Oh God! come to the assistance of thine afflicted
servants, and deliver them from the oppressions which they
suffer."

It was impossible, however, that even the military establishment
should long continue exempt from the vices which pervaded every
other part of the government. Rapacity, luxury, and the spirit of
insubordination spread from the civil service to the officers of
the army, and from the officers to the soldiers. The evil
continued to grow till every mess-room became the seat of
conspiracy and cabal, and till the sepoys could be kept in order
only by wholesale executions.

At length the state of things in Bengal began to excite
uneasiness at home. A succession of revolutions; a disorganised
administration; the natives pillaged, yet the Company not
enriched; every fleet bringing back fortunate adventurers who
were able to purchase manors and to build stately dwellings, yet
bringing back also alarming accounts of the financial prospects
of the government; war on the frontiers; disaffection in the
army; the national character disgraced by excesses resembling
those of Verres and Pizarro; such was the spectacle which
dismayed those who were conversant with Indian affairs. The
general cry was that Clive, and Clive alone, could save the
empire which he had founded.

This feeling manifested itself in the strongest manner at a very
full General Court of Proprietors. Men of all parties, forgetting
their feuds and trembling for their dividends, exclaimed that
Clive was the man whom the crisis required, that the oppressive
proceedings which had been adopted respecting his estate ought to
be dropped, and that he ought to be entreated to return to India.

Clive rose. As to his estate, he said, he would make such
propositions to the Directors, as would, he trusted, lead to an
amicable settlement. But there was a still greater difficulty. It
was proper to tell them that he never would undertake the
government of Bengal while his enemy Sulivan was chairman of the
Company. The tumult was violent. Sulivan could scarcely obtain a
hearing. An overwhelming majority of the assembly was on Clive's
side. Sulivan wished to try the result of a ballot. But,
according to the bye-laws of the Company, there can be no ballot
except on a requisition signed by nine proprietors; and, though
hundreds were present, nine persons could not be found to set
their hands to such a requisition.

Clive was in consequence nominated Governor and Commander-in-
chief of the British possessions in Bengal. But he adhered to his
declaration, and refused to enter on his office till the event of
the next election of Directors should be known. The contest was
obstinate; but Clive triumphed. Sulivan, lately absolute master
of the India House, was within a vote of losing his own seat; and
both the chairman and the deputy-chairman were friends of the new
governor.

Such were the circumstances under which Lord Clive sailed for the
third and last time to India. In May 1765, he reached Calcutta;
and he found the whole machine of government even more fearfully
disorganised than he had anticipated. Meer Jaffier, who had some
time before lost his eldest son Meeran, had died while Clive was
on his voyage out. The English functionaries at Calcutta had
already received from home strict orders not to accept presents
from the native princes. But, eager for gain, and unaccustomed to
respect the commands of their distant, ignorant, and negligent
masters, they again set up the throne of Bengal to sale. About
one hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling was distributed
among nine of the most powerful servants of the Company; and, in
consideration of this bribe, an infant son of the deceased Nabob
was placed on the seat of his father. The news of the ignominious
bargain met Clive on his arrival. In a private letter, written
immediately after his landing, to an intimate friend, he poured
out his feelings in language, which, proceeding from a man so
daring, so resolute, and so little given to theatrical display of
sentiment, seems to us singularly touching. "Alas!" he says, "how
is the English name sunk! I could not avoid paying the tribute of
a few tears to the departed and lost fame of the British nation--
irrecoverably so, I fear. However, I do declare, by that great
Being who is the searcher of all hearts, and to whom we must be
accountable if there be a hereafter, that I am come out with a
mind superior to all corruption, and that I am determined to
destroy these great and growing evils, or perish in the attempt."

The Council met, and Clive stated to them his full determination
to make a thorough reform, and to use for that purpose the whole
of the ample authority, civil and military, which had been
confided to him. Johnstone, one of the boldest and worst men in
the assembly, made some show of opposition. Clive interrupted
him, and haughtily demanded whether he meant to question the
power of the new government. Johnstone was cowed, and disclaimed
any such intention. All the faces round the board grew long and
pale; and not another syllable of dissent was uttered.

Clive redeemed his pledge. He remained in India about a year and
a half; and in that short time effected one of the most
extensive, difficult, and salutary reforms that ever was
accomplished by any statesman. This was the part of his life on
which he afterwards looked back with most pride. He had it in his
power to triple his already splendid fortune; to connive at
abuses while pretending to remove them; to conciliate the
goodwill of all the English in Bengal, by giving up to their
rapacity a helpless and timid race, who knew not where lay the
island which sent forth their oppressors, and whose complaints
had little chance of being heard across fifteen thousand miles of
ocean. He knew that if he applied himself in earnest to the work
of reformation, he should raise every bad passion in arms against
him. He knew how unscrupulous, how implacable, would be the
hatred of those ravenous adventurers who, having counted on
accumulating in a few months fortunes sufficient to support
peerages, should find all their hopes frustrated. But he had
chosen the good part; and he called up all the force of his mind
for a battle far harder than that of Plassey. At first
success seemed hopeless; but soon all obstacles began to bend
before that iron courage and that vehement will. The receiving of
presents from the natives was rigidly prohibited. The private
trade of the servants of the Company was put down. The whole
settlement seemed to be set, as one man, against these measures.
But the inexorable governor declared that, if he could not find
support at Fort William, he would procure it elsewhere, and sent
for some civil servants from Madras to assist him in carrying on
the administration. The most factious of his opponents he turned
out of their offices. The rest submitted to what was inevitable;
and in a very short time all resistance was quelled.

But Clive was far too wise a man not to see that the recent
abuses were partly to be ascribed to a cause which could not fail
to produce similar abuses, as soon as the pressure of his strong
hand was withdrawn. The Company had followed a mistaken policy
with respect to the remuneration of its servants. The salaries
were too low to afford even those indulgences which are necessary
to the health and comfort of Europeans in a tropical climate. To
lay by a rupee from such scanty pay was impossible. It could not
be supposed that men of even average abilities would consent to
pass the best years of life in exile, under a burning sun, for no
other consideration than these stinted wages. It had accordingly
been understood, from a very early period, that the Company's
agents were at liberty to enrich themselves by their private
trade. This practice had been seriously injurious to the
commercial interests of the corporation. That very intelligent
observer, Sir Thomas Roe, in the reign of James the First,
strongly urged the Directors to apply a remedy to the abuse.
"Absolutely prohibit the private trade," said he; "for your
business will be better done. I know this is harsh. Men profess
they come not for bare wages. But you will take away this plea if
you give great wages to their content; and then you know what you
part from."

In spite of this excellent advice, the Company adhered the old
system, paid low salaries, and connived at the indirect gains of
the agents. The pay of a member of Council was only three hundred
pounds a year. Yet it was notorious that such a functionary could
not live in India for less than ten times that sum; and it could
not be, expected that he would be content to live even handsomely
in India without laying up something against the time of his
return to England. This system, before the conquest of Bengal,
might affect the amount of the dividends payable to the
proprietors, but could do little harm in any other way. But the
Company was now a ruling body. Its servants might still be called
factors, junior merchants, senior merchants. But they were in
truth proconsuls, propraetors, procurators, of extensive,
regions. They had immense power. Their regular pay was
universally admitted to be insufficient. They were, by the
ancient usage of the service, and by the implied permission of
their employers, warranted in enriching themselves by indirect
means; and this had been the origin of the frightful oppression
and corruption which had desolated Bengal. Clive saw clearly that
it was absurd to give men power, and to require them to live in
penury. He justly concluded that no reform could be effectual
which should not be coupled with a plan for liberally
remunerating the civil servants of the Company. The Directors, he
knew, were not disposed to sanction any increase of the salaries
out of their own treasury. The only course which remained open to
the governor was one which exposed him to much misrepresentation,
but which we think him fully justified in adopting. He
appropriated to the support of the service the monopoly of salt,
which has formed, down to our own time, a principal head of
Indian revenue; and he divided the proceeds according to a scale
which seems to have been not unreasonably fixed. He was in
consequence accused by his enemies, and has been accused by
historians, of disobeying his instructions, of violating his
promises, of authorising that very abuse which it was his special
mission to destroy, namely, the trade of the Company's servants.
But every discerning and impartial judge will admit, that there
was really nothing in common between the system which he set up
and that which he was sent to destroy. The monopoly of salt had
been a source of revenue to the Government of India before Clive
was born. It continued to be so long after his death. The civil
servants were clearly entitled to a maintenance out of the
revenue; and all that Clive did was to charge a particular
portion of the revenue with their maintenance. He thus, while he
put an end to the practices by which gigantic fortunes had been
rapidly accumulated, gave to every British functionary employed
in the East the means of slowly, but surely, acquiring a
competence. Yet, such is the injustice of mankind, that none of
those acts which are the real stains of his life has drawn on him
so much obloquy as this measure, which was in truth a reform
necessary to the success of all his other reforms.

He had quelled the opposition of the civil servants: that of the
army was more formidable. Some of the retrenchments which had
been ordered by the Directors affected the interests of the
military service; and a storm arose, such as even Caesar would
not willingly have faced. It was no light thing to encounter the
resistance of those who held the power of the sword, in a country
governed only by the sword. Two hundred English officers engaged
in a conspiracy against the government, and determined to resign
their commissions on the same day, not doubting that Clive would
grant any terms, rather than see the army, on which alone the
British empire in the East rested, left without commanders. They
little knew the unconquerable spirit with which they had to deal.
Clive had still a few officers round his person on whom he could
rely. He sent to Fort St George for a fresh supply. He gave
commissions even to mercantile agents who were disposed to
support him at this crisis; and he sent orders that every officer
who resigned should be instantly brought up to Calcutta. The
conspirators found that they had miscalculated. The governor was
inexorable. The troops were steady. The sepoys, over whom Clive
had always possessed extraordinary influence, stood by him with
unshaken fidelity. The leaders in the plot were arrested, tried,
and cashiered. The rest, humbled and dispirited, begged to be
permitted to withdraw their resignations. Many of them declared
their repentance even with tears. The younger offenders Clive
treated with lenity. To the ringleaders he was inflexibly severe;
but his severity was pure from all taint of private malevolence.
While he sternly upheld the just authority of his office, he
passed by personal insults and injuries with magnanimous disdain.
One of the conspirators was accused of having planned the
assassination of the governor; but Clive would not listen to the
charge. "The officers," he said, "are Englishmen, not assassins."

While he reformed the civil service and established his authority
over the army, he was equally successful in his foreign policy.
His landing on Indian ground was the signal for immediate peace.
The Nabob of Oude, with a large army, lay at that time on the
frontier of Bahar. He had been joined by many Afghans and
Mahrattas, and there was no small reason to expect a general
coalition of all the native powers against the English. But the
name of Clive quelled in an instant all opposition. The enemy
implored peace in the humblest language, and submitted to such
terms as the new governor chose to dictate.

At the same time, the Government of Bengal was placed on a new
footing. The power of the English in that province had hitherto
been altogether undefined. It was unknown to the ancient
constitution of the empire, and it had been ascertained by no
compact. It resembled the power which, in the last decrepitude of
the Western Empire, was exercised over Italy by the great chiefs
of foreign mercenaries, the Ricimers and the Odoacers, who put up
and pulled down at their pleasure a succession of insignificant
princes, dignified with the names of Caesar and Augustus. But as
in Italy, so in India, the warlike strangers at length found it
expedient to give to a domination which had been established by
arms the sanction of law and ancient prescription. Theodoric
thought it politic to obtain from the distant Court of Byzantium
a commission appointing him ruler of Italy; and Clive, in the
same manner, applied to the Court of Delhi for a formal grant of
the powers of which he already possessed the reality. The Mogul
was absolutely helpless; and, though he murmured, had reason to
be well pleased that the English were disposed to give solid
rupees, which he never could have extorted from them, in exchange
for a few Persian characters which cost him nothing. A bargain
was speedily struck; and the titular sovereign of Hindostan
issued a warrant, empowering the Company to collect and
administer the revenues of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar.

There was still a Nabob, who stood to the British authorities in
the same relation in which the last drivelling Chilperics and
Childerics of the Merovingian line stood to their able and
vigorous Mayors of the Palace, to Charles Martel, and to Pepin.
At one time Clive had almost made up his mind to discard this
phantom altogether; but he afterwards thought that it might be
convenient still to use the name of the Nabob, particularly in
dealings with other European nations. The French, the Dutch, and
the Danes, would, he conceived, submit far more readily to the
authority of the native Prince, whom they had always been
accustomed to respect, than to that of a rival trading
corporation. This policy may, at that time, have been judicious.
But the pretence was soon found to be too flimsy to impose on
anybody; and it was altogether laid aside. The heir of Meer
Jaffier still resides at Moorshedabad, the ancient capital of his
house, still bears the title of Nabob, is still accosted by the
English as "Your Highness," and is still suffered to retain a
portion of the regal state which surrounded his ancestors. A
pension of a hundred and sixty thousand pounds a year is annually
paid to him by the government. His carriage is surrounded by
guards, and preceded by attendants with silver maces. His person
and his dwelling are exempted from the ordinary authority of the
ministers of justice. But he has not the smallest share of
political power, and is, in fact, only a noble and wealthy subject
of the Company.

It would have been easy for Clive, during his second administration
in Bengal, to accumulate riches such as no subject in Europe
possessed. He might indeed, without subjecting the rich
inhabitants of the province to any pressure beyond that to which
their mildest rulers had accustomed them, have received presents
to the amount of three hundred thousand pounds a year. The
neighbouring princes would gladly have paid any price for his
favour. But he appears to have strictly adhered to the rules
which he had laid down for the guidance of others. The Rajah of
Benares offered him diamonds of great value. The Nabob of Oude
pressed him to accept a large sum of money and a casket of costly
jewels. Clive courteously, but peremptorily refused; and it
should be observed that he made no merit of his refusal, and that
the facts did not come to light till after his death. He kept an
exact account of his salary, of his share of the profits accruing
from the trade in salt, and of those presents which, according to
the fashion of the East, it would be churlish to refuse. Out of
the sum arising from these resources, he defrayed the expenses of
his situation. The surplus he divided among a few attached
friends who had accompanied him to India. He always boasted, and
as far as we can judge, he boasted with truth, that this last
administration diminished instead of increasing his fortune.

One large sum indeed he accepted. Meer Jaffier had left him by
will above sixty thousand pounds sterling in specie and jewels:
and the rules which had been recently laid down extended only to
presents from the living, and did not affect legacies from the
dead. Clive took the money, but not for himself. He made the
whole over to the Company, in trust for officers and soldiers
invalided in their service. The fund which still bears his name
owes its origin to this princely donation.

After a stay of eighteen months, the state of his health made it
necessary for him to return to Europe. At the close of January
1767, he quitted for the last time the country, on whose
destinies he had exercised so mighty an influence.

His second return from Bengal was not, like his first, greeted by
the acclamations of his countrymen. Numerous causes were already
at work which embittered the remaining years of his life, and
hurried him to an untimely grave. His old enemies at the India
House were still powerful and active; and they had been
reinforced by a large band of allies whose violence far exceeded
their own. The whole crew of pilferers and oppressors from whom
he had rescued Bengal persecuted him with the implacable rancour
which belongs to such abject natures. Many of them even invested
their property in India stock, merely that they might be better
able to annoy the man whose firmness had set bounds to their
rapacity. Lying newspapers were set up for no purpose but to
abuse him; and the temper of the public mind was then such, that
these arts, which under ordinary circumstances would have been
ineffectual against truth and merit produced an extraordinary
impression.

The great events which had taken place in India had called into
existence a new class of Englishmen, to whom their countrymen
gave the name of Nabobs. These persons had generally sprung from
families neither ancient nor opulent; they had generally been
sent at an early age to the East; and they had there acquired
large fortunes, which they had brought back to their native land.
It was natural that, not having had much opportunity of mixing
with the best society, they should exhibit some of the
awkwardness and some of the pomposity of upstarts. It was natural
that, during their sojourn in Asia, they should have acquired
some tastes and habits surprising, if not disgusting, to persons
who never had quitted Europe. It was natural that, having enjoyed
great consideration in the East, they should not be disposed to
sink into obscurity at hom; and as they had money, and had not
birth or high connection, it was natural that they should display
a little obtrusively the single advantage which they possessed.
Wherever they settled there was a kind of feud between them and
the old nobility and gentry, similar to that which raged in
France between the farmer-general and the marquess. This enmity
to the aristocracy long continued to distinguish the servants of
the Company. More than twenty years after the time of which we
are now speaking, Burke pronounced that among the Jacobins might
be reckoned "the East Indians almost to a man, who cannot bear to
find that their present importance does not bear a proportion to
their wealth."

The Nabobs soon became a most unpopular class of men. Some of
them had in the East displayed eminent talents, and rendered
great services to the state; but at home their talents were not
shown to advantage, and their services were little known. That
they had sprung from obscurity, that they had acquired great
wealth, that they exhibited it insolently, that they spent it
extravagantly, that they raised the price of everything in their
neighbourhood, from fresh eggs to rotten boroughs, that their
liveries outshone those of dukes, that their coaches were finer
than that of the Lord Mayor, that the examples of their large and
ill-governed households corrupted half the servants in the
country, that some of them, with all their magnificence, could
not catch the tone of good society, but, in spite of the stud and
the crowd of menials, of the plate and the Dresden china, of the
venison and the Burgundy, were still low men; these were things
which excited, both in the class from which they had sprung and
in the class into which they attempted to force themselves, the
bitter aversion which is the effect of mingled envy and contempt.
But when it was also rumoured that the fortune which had enabled
its possessor to eclipse the Lord Lieutenant on the race-ground,
or to carry the county against the head of a house as old as
Domesday Book, had been accumulated by violating public faith, by
deposing legitimate princes, by reducing whole provinces to
beggary, all the higher and better as well as all the low and
evil parts of human nature were stirred against the wretch who
had obtained by guilt and dishonour the riches which he now
lavished with arrogant and inelegant profusion. The unfortunate
Nabob seemed to be made up of those foibles against which comedy
has pointed the most merciless ridicule, and of those crimes
which have thrown the deepest gloom over tragedy, of Turcaret and
Nero, of Monsieur Jourdain and Richard the Third. A tempest of
execration and derision, such as can be compared only to that
outbreak of public feeling against the Puritans which took place
at the time of the Restoration, burst on the servants of the
Company. The humane man was horror-struck at the way in which
they had got their money, the thrifty man at the way in which
they spent it. The Dilettante sneered at their want of taste. The
Maccaroni black-balled them as vulgar fellows. Writers the most
unlike in sentiment and style, Methodists and libertines,
philosophers and buffoons, were for once on the same side. It is
hardly too much to say that, during a space of about thirty
years, the whole lighter literature of England was coloured by
the feelings which we have described. Foote brought on the stage
an Anglo-Indian chief, dissolute, ungenerous, and tyrannical,
ashamed of the humble friends of his youth, hating the
aristocracy, yet childishly eager to be numbered among them,
squandering his wealth on pandars and flatterers, tricking out
his chairmen with the most costly hot-house flowers, and
astounding the ignorant with jargon about rupees, lacs, and
jaghires. Mackenzie, with more delicate humour, depicted a
plain country family raised by the Indian acquisitions of
one of its members to sudden opulence, and exciting derision
by an awkward mimicry of the manners of the great. Cowper,
in that lofty expostulation which glows with the very spirit
of the Hebrew poets, placed the oppression of India foremost
in the list of those national crimes for which God had
punished England with years of disastrous war, with discomfiture
in her own seas, and with the loss of her transatlantic empire.
If any of our readers will take the trouble to search in the
dusty recesses of circulating libraries for some novel published
sixty years ago, the chance is that the villain or sub-villain of
the story will prove to be a savage old Nabob, with an immense
fortune, a tawny complexion, a bad liver, and a worse heart.

Such, as far as we can now judge, was the feeling of the country
respecting Nabobs in general. And Clive was eminently the Nabob,
the ablest, the most celebrated, the highest in rank, the highest
in fortune, of all the fraternity. His wealth was exhibited in a
manner which could not fail to excite odium. He lived with great
magnificence in Berkeley Square. He reared one palace in
Shropshire and another at Claremont. His parliamentary influence
might vie with that of the greatest families. But in all this
splendour and power envy found something to sneer at. On some of
his relations wealth and dignity seem to have sat as awkwardly as
on Mackenzie's Margery Mushroom. Nor was he himself, with all his
great qualities, free from those weaknesses which the satirists
of that age represented as characteristic of his whole class. In
the field, indeed, his habits were remarkably simple. He was
constantly on horseback, was never seen but in his uniform, never
wore silk, never entered a palanquin, and was content with the
plainest fare. But when he was no longer at the head of an army,
he laid aside this Spartan temperance for the ostentatious luxury
of a Sybarite. Though his person was ungraceful, and though his
harsh features were redeemed from vulgar ugliness only by their
stern, dauntless, and commanding expression, he was fond of rich
and gay clothing, and replenished his wardrobe with absurd
profusion. Sir John Malcolm gives us a letter worthy of Sir
Matthew Mite, in which Clive orders "two hundred shirts, the best
and finest that can be got for love or money." A few follies of
this description, grossly exaggerated by report, produced an
unfavourable impression on the public mind. But this was not the
worst. Black stories, of which the greater part were pure
inventions, were circulated touching his conduct in the East. He
had to bear the whole odium, not only of those bad acts to which
he had once or twice stooped, but of all the bad acts of all the
English in India, of bad acts committed when he was absent, nay,
of bad acts which he had manfully opposed and severely punished.
The very abuses against which he had waged an honest, resolute,
and successful war were laid to his account. He was, in fact,
regarded as the personification of all the vices and weaknesses
which the public, with or without reason, ascribed to the English
adventurers in Asia. We have ourselves heard old men, who knew
nothing of his history, but who still retained the prejudices
conceived in their youth, talk of him as an incarnate fiend.
Johnson always held this language. Brown, whom Clive employed to
lay out his pleasure grounds, was amazed to see in the house of
his noble employer a chest which had once been filled with gold
from the treasury of Moorshedabad, and could not understand how
the conscience of the criminal could suffer him to sleep with
such an object so near to his bedchamber. The peasantry of Surrey
looked with mysterious horror on the stately house which was
rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great wicked lord had
ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out the
devil, who would one day carry him away bodily. Among the gaping
clowns who drank in this frightful story was a worthless ugly lad
of the name of Hunt, since widely known as William Huntington,
S.S.; and the superstition which was strangely mingled with the
knavery of that remarkable impostor seems to have derived no
small nutriment from the tales which he heard of the life and
character of Clive.

In the meantime, the impulse which Clive had given to the
administration of Bengal was constantly becoming fainter and
fainter. His policy was to a great extent abandoned; the abuses
which he had suppressed began to revive; and at length the evils
which a bad government had engendered were aggravated by one of
those fearful visitations which the best government cannot avert.
In the summer of 1770, the rains failed; the earth was parched
up; the tanks were empty; the rivers shrank within their beds;
and a famine, such as is known only in countries where every
household depends for support on its own little patch of
cultivation, filled the whole valley of the Ganges with misery
and death. Tender and delicate women, whose veils had never been
lifted before the public gaze, came forth from the inner chambers
in which Eastern jealousy had kept watch over their beauty, threw
themselves on the earth before the passers-by, and, with loud
wailings, implored a handful of rice for their children. The
Hoogley every day rolled down thousands of corpses close to the
porticoes and gardens of the English conquerors. The very streets
of Calcutta were blocked up by the dying and the dead. The lean
and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of
their kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even
to scare away the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains
in the face of day. The extent of the mortality was never
ascertained; but it was popularly reckoned by millions. This
melancholy intelligence added to the excitement which already
prevailed in England on Indian subjects. The proprietors of East
India stock were uneasy about their dividends. All men of common
humanity were touched by the calamities of our unhappy subjects;
and indignation soon began to mingle itself with pity. It was
rumoured that the Company's servants had created the famine by
engrossing all the rice of the country; that they had sold grain
for eight, ten, twelve times the price at which they had bought
it; that one English functionary who, the year before, was not
worth a hundred guineas, had, during that season of misery,
remitted sixty thousand pounds to London. These charges we
believe to have been unfounded. That servants of the Company had
ventured, since Clive's departure, to deal in rice, is probable.
That, if they dealt in rice, they must have gained by the
scarcity, is certain. But there is no reason for thinking that
they either produced or aggravated an evil which physical causes
sufficiently explain. The outcry which was raised against them on
this occasion was, we suspect, as absurd as the imputations
which, in times of dearth at home, were once thrown by statesmen
and judges, and are still thrown by two or three old women, on
the corn factors. It was, however, so loud and so general that it
appears to have imposed even on an intellect raised so high above
vulgar prejudices as that of Adam Smith. What was still more
extraordinary, these unhappy events greatly increased the
unpopularity of Lord Clive. He had been some years in England
when the famine took place. None of his acts had the smallest
tendency to produce such a calamity. If the servants of the
Company had traded in rice, they had done so in direct
contravention of the rule which he had laid down, and, while in
power, had resolutely enforced. But, in the eyes of his
countrymen, he was, as we have said, the Nabob, the Anglo-Indian
character personified; and, while he was building and planting in
Surrey, he was held responsible for all the effects of a dry
season in Bengal.

Parliament had hitherto bestowed very little attention on our
Eastern possessions. Since the death of George the Second, a
rapid succession of weak administrations, each of which was in
turn flattered and betrayed by the Court, had held the semblance
of power. Intrigues in the palace, riots in the capital, and
insurrectionary movements in the American colonies, had left the
advisers of the Crown little leisure to study Indian politics.
When they did interfere, their interference was feeble and
irresolute. Lord Chatham, indeed, during the short period of his
ascendency in the councils of George the Third, had meditated a
bold attack on the Company. But his plans were rendered abortive
by the strange malady which about that time began to overcloud
his splendid genius.

At length, in 1772, it was generally felt that Parliament could
no longer neglect the affairs of India. The Government was
stronger than any which had held power since the breach between
Mr. Pitt and the great Whig connection in 1761. No pressing
question of domestic or European policy required the attention of
public men. There was a short and delusive lull between two
tempests. The excitement produced by the Middlesex election was
over; the discontents of America did not yet threaten civil war;
the financial difficulties of the Company brought on a crisis;
the Ministers were forced to take up the subject; and the whole
storm, which had long been gathering, now broke at once on the
head of Clive.

His situation was indeed singularly unfortunate. He was hated
throughout the country, hated at the India House, hated, above
all, by those wealthy and powerful servants of the Company, whose
rapacity and tyranny he had withstood. He had to bear the double
odium of his bad and of his good actions, of every Indian abuse
and of every Indian reform. The state of the political world was
such that he could count on the support of no powerful
connection. The party to which he had belonged, that of George
Grenville, had been hostile to the Government, and yet had never
cordially united with the other sections of the Opposition, with
the little band which still followed the fortunes of Lord
Chatham, or with the large and respectable body of which Lord
Rockingham was the acknowledged leader. George Grenville was now
dead: his followers were scattered; and Clive, unconnected with
any of the powerful factions which divided the Parliament, could
reckon only on the votes of those members who were returned by
himself.

His enemies, particularly those who were the enemies of his
virtues, were unscrupulous, ferocious, implacable. Their
malevolence aimed at nothing less than the utter ruin of his fame
and fortune. They wished to see him expelled from Parliament, to
see his spurs chopped off, to see his estate confiscated; and it
may be doubted whether even such a result as this would have
quenched their thirst for revenge.

Clive's parliamentary tactics resembled his military tactics.
Deserted, surrounded, outnumbered, and with everything at stake,
he did not even deign to stand on the defensive, but pushed
boldly forward to the attack. At an early stage of the
discussions on Indian affairs he rose, and in a long and
elaborate speech vindicated himself from a large part of the
accusations which had been brought against him. He is said to
have produced a great impression on his audience. Lord Chatham,
who, now the ghost of his former self, loved to haunt the scene
of his glory, was that night under the gallery of the House of
Commons, and declared that he had never heard a finer speech. It
was subsequently printed under Clive's direction, and, when the
fullest allowance has been made for the assistance which he may
have obtained from literary friends, proves him to have
possessed, not merely strong sense and a manly spirit, but
talents both for disquisition and declamation which assiduous
culture might have improved into the highest excellence. He
confined his defence on this occasion to the measures of his last
administration, and succeeded so far that his enemies thenceforth
thought it expedient to direct their attacks chiefly against the
earlier part of his life.

The earlier part of his life unfortunately presented some
assailable points to their hostility. A committee was chosen by
ballot to inquire into the affairs of India; and by this
committee the whole history of that great revolution which threw
down Surajah Dowlah and raised Meer Jaffier was sifted with
malignant care. Clive was subjected to the most unsparing
examination and cross-examination, and afterwards bitterly
complained that he, the Baron of Plassey, had been treated like a
sheep-stealer. The boldness and ingenuousness of his replies
would alone suffice to show how alien from his nature were the
frauds to which, in the course of his Eastern negotiations, he
had sometimes descended. He avowed the arts which he had employed
to deceive Omichund, and resolutely said that he was not ashamed
of them, and that, in the same circumstances, he would again act
in the same manner. He admitted that he had received immense sums
from Meer Jaffier; but he denied that, in doing so, he had
violated any obligation of morality or honour. He laid claim, on
the contrary, and not without some reason, to the praise of
eminent disinterestedness. He described in vivid language the
situation in which his victory had placed him: great princes
dependent on his pleasure; an opulent city afraid of being given
up to plunder; wealthy bankers bidding against each other for his
smiles; vaults piled with gold and jewels thrown open to him
alone. "By God, Mr. Chairman," he exclaimed, "at this moment I
stand astonished at my own moderation."

The inquiry was so extensive that the Houses rose before it had
been completed. It was continued in the following session. When
at length the committee had concluded its labours, enlightened
and impartial men had little difficulty in making up their minds
as to the result. It was clear that Clive had been guilty of some
acts which it is impossible to vindicate without attacking the
authority of all the most sacred laws which regulate the
intercourse of individuals and of states. But it was equally
clear that he had displayed great talents, and even great
virtues; that he had rendered eminent services both to his
country and to the people of India; and that it was in truth not
for his dealings with Meer Jaffier, nor for the fraud which he
had practised on Omichund, but for his determined resistance to
avarice and tyranny, that he was now called in question.

Ordinary criminal justice knows nothing of set-off. The greatest
desert cannot be pleaded in answer to a charge of the slightest
transgression. If a man has sold beer on a Sunday morning, it is
no defence that he has saved the life of a fellow-creature at the
risk of his own. If he has harnessed a Newfoundland dog to his
little child's carriage, it is no defence that he was wounded at
Waterloo. But it is not in this way that we ought to deal with
men who, raised far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far
more than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more than
ordinary measure of indulgence. Such men should be judged by
their contemporaries as they will be judged by posterity. Their
bad actions ought not indeed to be called good; but their good
and bad actions ought to be fairly weighed; and if on the whole
the good preponderate, the sentence ought to be one, not merely
of acquittal, but of approbation. Not a single great ruler in
history can be absolved by a judge who fixes his eye inexorably
on one or two unjustifiable acts. Bruce the deliverer of
Scotland, Maurice the deliverer of Germany, William the deliverer
of Holland, his great descendant the deliverer of England, Murray
the good regent, Cosmo the father of his country, Henry the
Fourth of France, Peter the Great of Russia, how would the best
of them pass such a scrutiny? History takes wider views; and the
best tribunal for great political cases is the tribunal which
anticipates the verdict of history.

Reasonable and moderate men of all parties felt this in Clive's
case. They could not pronounce him blameless; but they were not
disposed to abandon him to that low-minded and rancorous pack who
had run him down and were eager to worry him to death. Lord
North, though not very friendly to him, was not disposed to go to
extremities against him. While the inquiry was still in progress,
Clive, who had some years before been created a Knight of the
Bath, was installed with great pomp in Henry the Seventh's
Chapel. He was soon after appointed Lord Lieutenant of
Shropshire. When he kissed hands, George the Third, who had
always been partial to him, admitted him to a private audience,
talked to him half an hour on Indian politics, and was visibly
affected when the persecuted general spoke of his services and of
the way in which they had been requited.

At length the charges came in a definite form before the House of
Commons. Burgoyne, chairman of the committee, a man of wit,
fashion, and honour, an agreeable dramatic writer, an officer
whose courage was never questioned, and whose skill was at that
time highly esteemed, appeared as the accuser. The members of the
administration took different sides; for in that age all
questions were open questions, except such as were brought
forward by the Government, or such as implied censure on the
Government. Thurlow, the Attorney-General, was among the
assailants. Wedderburne, the Solicitor-General, strongly attached
to Clive, defended his friend with extraordinary force of
argument and language. It is a curious circumstance that, some
years later, Thurlow was the most conspicuous champion of Warren
Hastings, while Wedderburne was among the most unrelenting
persecutors of that great though not faultless statesman. Clive
spoke in his own defence at less length and with less art than in
the preceding year, but with much energy and pathos. He recounted
his great actions and his wrongs; and, after bidding his hearers
remember, that they were about to decide not only on his honour
but on their own, he retired from the House.

The Commons resolved that acquisitions made by the arms of the
State belong to the State alone, and that it is illegal in the
servants of the State to appropriate such acquisitions to
themselves. They resolved that this wholesome rule appeared to
have been systematically violated by the English functionaries in
Bengal. On a subsequent day they went a step further, and
resolved that Clive had, by means of the power which he possessed
as commander of the British forces in India, obtained large sums
from Meer Jaffier. Here the Commons stopped. They had voted the
major and minor of Burgoyne's syllogism; but they shrank from
drawing the logical conclusion. When it was moved that Lord Clive
had abused his powers, and set an evil example to the servants of
the public, the previous question was put and carried. At length,
long after the sun had risen on an animated debate, Wedderburne
moved that Lord Clive had at the same time rendered great and
meritorious services to his country; and this motion passed
without a division.

The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole,
honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment of the
Commons. They had indeed no great temptation to do wrong. They
would have been very bad judges of an accusation brought against
Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive
was not a party question; and the House accordingly acted with
the good sense and good feeling which may always be expected from
an assembly of English gentlemen, not blinded by faction.

The equitable and temperate proceedings of the British Parliament
were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched
government of Lewis the Fifteenth had murdered, directly or
indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had served his country
with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into the
Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to die.
Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by
humiliating attendance in ante-chambers, sank into an obscure
grave. Lally was dragged to the common place of execution with a
gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other hand,
treated their living captain with that discriminating justice
which is seldom shown except to the dead. They laid down sound
general principles; they delicately pointed out where he had
deviated from those principles; and they tempered the gentle
censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always
partial to England, and always eager to expose the abuses of the
Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, at this time, to have
meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his
design to Dr. Moore, when that amusing writer visited him at
Ferney. Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and
pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried
into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have
produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative,
many just and humane sentiments poignantly expressed, many
grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much
scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sublime theo-
philanthropy, stolen from the New Testament, and put into the
mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins.

Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his
honours. He was surrounded by attached friends and relations; and
he had not yet passed the season of vigorous bodily and mental
exertion. But clouds had long been gathering over his mind, and
now settled on it in thick darkness. From early youth he had been
subject to fits of that strange melancholy "which rejoiceth
exceedingly and is glad when it can find the grave." While still
a writer at Madras, he had twice attempted to destroy himself.
Business and prosperity had produced a salutary effect on his
spirits. In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in
England, while wealth and rank had still the charm of novelty, he
had borne up against his constitutional misery. But he had now
nothing to do, and nothing to wish for. His active spirit in an
inactive situation drooped and withered like a plant in an
uncongenial air. The malignity with which his enemies had pursued
him, the indignity with which he had been treated by the
committee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House of
Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a
large portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant,
all concurred to irritate and depress him. In the meantime, his
temper was tried by acute physical suffering. During his long
residence in tropical climates, he had contracted several painful
distempers. In order to obtain ease he called in the help of
opium; and he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous ally. To
the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed through the
gloom. It was said that he would sometimes, after sitting silent
and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the discussion of some
great question, would display in full vigour all the talents of
the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back into his
melancholy repose.

The disputes with America had now become so serious that an
appeal to the sword seemed inevitable; and the Ministers were
desirous to avail themselves of the services of Clive. Had he
still been what he was when he raised the siege of Patna and
annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges,
it is not improbable that the resistance of the colonists would
have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have
been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong
mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the
twenty-second of November, 1774, he died by his own hand. He had
just completed his forty-ninth year.

In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar
saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of
real piety and genius so far forgot the maxims both of religion
and of philosophy as confidently to ascribe the mournful event to
the just vengeance of God, and to the horrors of an evil
conscience. It is with very different feelings that we
contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness
of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases,
and more fatal remedies.

Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to
disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits,
and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not appear to
us to deprive him of his right to an honourable place in the
estimation of posterity.

From his first visit to India dates the renown of the English
arms in the East. Till he appeared, his countrymen were despised
as mere pedlars, while the French were revered as a people formed
for victory and command. His courage and capacity dissolved the
charm. With the defence of Arcot commences that long series of
Oriental triumphs which closes with the fall of Ghizni. Nor must
we forget that he was only twenty-five years old when he approved
himself ripe for military command. This is a rare if not a
singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Conde, and
Charles the Twelfth, won great battles at a still earlier age--
but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of
distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the
victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi and of Narva. Clive, an
inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those
who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his
officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we
recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of
talents for war, was Napoleon Bonaparte.

From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendency
of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution
realised, in the course of a few months, more than an the
gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagination of
Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount
of revenue, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the
dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such
wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the
Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of
Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and
Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the
exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head
of an army not equal in numbers to one half of a Roman legion.

From Clive's third visit to India dates the purity of the
administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed in Calcutta
in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Englishmen were
sent only to get rich, by any means, in the shortest possible
time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gigantic
system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he
manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid
fortune. The same sense of justice which forbids us to conceal or
extenuate the faults of his earlier days compels us to admit that
those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company
and of its servants has been taken away, if in India the yoke of
foreign masters, elsewhere the heaviest of all yokes, has been
found lighter than that of any native dynasty, if to that gang of
public robbers, which formerly spread terror through the whole
plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more
highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity,
disinterestedness, and public spirit, if we now see such men as
Munro, Elphinstone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious
armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their
honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every
greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth, the praise is in no
small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of
conquerors. But it is found in a better list, in the list of
those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of
mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same
rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer
a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory
of Turgot, and with which the latest generations of Hindoos will
contemplate the statue of Lord William Bentinck.


WARREN HASTINGS

(October 1841)

Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings, first Governor-General of
Bengal. Compiled from Original Papers, by the Rev. G.R. GLEIG
M.A. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1841.

We are inclined to think that we shall best meet the wishes of
our readers, if, instead of minutely examining this book, we
attempt to give, in a way necessarily hasty and imperfect, our
own view of the life and character of Mr. Hastings. Our feeling
towards him is not exactly that of the House of Commons which
impeached him in 1787; neither is it that of the House of Commons
which uncovered and stood up to receive him in 1813. He had great
qualities, and he rendered great services to the State. But to
represent him as a man of stainless virtue is to make him
ridiculous; and from regard for his memory, if from no other
feeling, his friends would have done well to lend no countenance
to such adulation. We believe that, if he were now living, he
would have sufficient judgment and sufficient greatness of mind
to wish to be shown as he was. He must have known that there were
dark spots on his fame. He might also have felt with pride that
the splendour of his fame would bear many spots. He would have
wished posterity to have a likeness of him, though an
unfavourable likeness, rather than a daub at once insipid and
unnatural, resembling neither him nor anybody else. "Paint me as
I am," said Oliver Cromwell, while sitting to young Lely. "If you
leave out the scars and wrinkles, I will not pay you a shilling."
Even in such a trifle, the great Protector showed both his good
sense and his magnanimity. He did not wish all that was
characteristic in his countenance to be lost, in the vain attempt
to give him the regular features and smooth blooming cheeks of
the curl-pated minions of James the First. He was content that
his face should go forth marked with all the blemishes which had
been put on it by time, by war, by sleepless nights, by anxiety,
perhaps by remorse; but with valour, policy, authority, and
public care written in all its princely lines. If men truly great
knew their own interest, it is thus that they would wish their
minds to be portrayed.

Warren Hastings sprang from an ancient and illustrious race. It
has been affirmed that his pedigree can be traced back to the
great Danish sea-king, whose sails were long the terror of both
coasts of the British Channel, and who, after many fierce and
doubtful struggles, yielded at last to the valour and genius of
Alfred. But the undoubted splendour of the line of Hastings needs
no illustration from fable. One branch of that line wore, in the
fourteenth century, the coronet of Pembroke. From another branch
sprang the renowned Chamberlain, the faithful adherent of the
White Rose, whose fate has furnished so striking a theme both to
poets and to historians. His family received from the Tudors the
earldom of Huntingdon, which, after long dispossession, was
regained in our time by a series of events scarcely paralleled in
romance.

The lords of the manor of Daylesford, in Worcestershire, claimed
to be considered as the heads of this distinguished family. The
main stock, indeed, prospered less than some of the younger
shoots. But the Daylesford family, though not ennobled, was
wealthy and highly considered, till, about two hundred years ago,
it was overwhelmed by the great ruin of the civil wax. The
Hastings of that time was a zealous cavalier. He raised money on
his lands, sent his plate to the mint at Oxford, joined the royal
army, and, after spending half his property in the cause of King
Charles, was glad to ransom himself by making over most of the
remaining half to Speaker Lenthal. The old seat at Daylesford
still remained in the family; but it could no longer be kept up:
and in the following generation it was sold to a merchant of
London.

Before this transfer took place, the last Hastings of Daylesford
had presented his second son to the rectory of the parish in
which the ancient residence of the family stood. The living was
of little value; and the situation of the poor clergyman, after
the sale of the estate, was deplorable. He was constantly engaged
in lawsuits about his tithes with the new lord of the manor, and
was at length utterly ruined. His eldest son, Howard, a well-
conducted young man, obtained a place in the Customs. The second
son, Pynaston, an idle worthless boy, married before he was
sixteen, lost his wife in two years, and died in the West Indies,
leaving to the care of his unfortunate father a little orphan,
destined to strange and memorable vicissitudes of fortune.

Warren, the son of Pynaston, was born on the sixth of December,
1731. His mother died a few days later, and he was left dependent
on his distressed grandfather. The child was early sent to the
village school, where he learned his letters on the same bench
with the sons of the peasantry; nor did anything in his garb or
face indicate that his life was to take a widely different course
from that of the young rustics with whom he studied and played.
But no cloud could overcast the dawn of so much genius and so
much ambition. The very ploughmen observed, and long remembered,
how kindly little Warren took to his book. The daily sight of the
lands which his ancestors had possessed, and which had passed
into the hands of strangers, filled his young brain with wild
fancies and projects. He loved to hear stories of the wealth and
greatness of his progenitors, of their splendid housekeeping,
their loyalty, and their valour. On one bright summer day, the
boy, then just seven years old, lay on the bank of the rivulet
which flows through the old domain of his house to join the Isis.
There, as threescore and ten years later he told the tale, rose
in his mind a scheme which, through all the turns of his eventful
career, was never abandoned. He would recover the estate which
had belonged to his fathers. He would be Hastings of Daylesford.
This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, grew stronger as his
intellect expanded and as his fortune rose. He pursued his plan
with that calm but indomitable force of will which was the most
striking peculiarity of his character. When, under a tropical
sun, he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, his hopes, amidst all
the cares of war, finance, and legislation, still pointed to
Daylesford. And when his long public life, so singularly
chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at
length closed for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to
die.

When he was eight years old, his uncle Howard determined to take
charge of him, and to give him a liberal education. The boy went
up to London, and was sent to a school at Newington, where he was
well taught but ill fed. He always attributed the smallness of
his stature to the hard and scanty fare of this seminary. At ten
he was removed to Westminster school, then flourishing under the
care of Dr. Nichols. Vinny Bourne, as his pupils affectionately
called him, was one of the masters. Churchill, Colman, Lloyd,
Cumberland, Cowper, were among the students. With Cowper,
Hastings formed a friendship which neither the lapse of time, nor
a wide dissimilarity of opinions and pursuits, could wholly
dissolve. It does not appear that they ever met after they had
grown to manhood. But forty years later, when the voices of many
great orators were crying for vengeance on the oppressor of
India, the shy and secluded poet could image to himself Hastings
the Governor-General only as the Hastings with whom he had rowed
on the Thames and played in the cloister, and refused to believe
that so good-tempered a fellow could have done anything very
wrong. His own life had been spent in praying, musing, and
rhyming among the waterlilies of the Ouse. He had preserved in no
common measure the innocence of childhood. His spirit had indeed
been severely tried, but not by temptations which impelled him to
any gross violation of the rules of social morality. He had never
been attacked by combinations of powerful and deadly enemies. He
had never been compelled to make a choice between innocence and
greatness, between crime and ruin. Firmly as he held in theory
the doctrine of human depravity, his habits were such that he was
unable to conceive how far from the path of right even kind and
noble natures may be hurried by the rage of conflict and the lust
of dominion.

Hastings had another associate at Westminster of whom we shall
have occasion to make frequent mention, Elijah Impey. We know
little about their school days. But, we think, we may safely
venture to guess that, whenever Hastings wished to play any trick
more than usually naughty, he hired Impey with a tart or a ball
to act as fag in the worst part of the prank.

Warren was distinguished among his comrades as an excellent
swimmer, boatman, and scholar. At fourteen he was first in the
examination for the foundation. His name in gilded letters on the
walls of the dormitory still attests his victory over many older
competitors. He stayed two years longer at the school, and was
looking forward to a studentship at Christ Church, when an event
happened which changed the whole course of his life. Howard
Hastings died, bequeathing his nephew to the care of a friend and
distant relation, named Chiswick. This gentleman, though he did
not absolutely refuse the charge, was desirous to rid himself of
it as soon as possible. Dr. Nichols made strong remonstrances
against the cruelty of interrupting the studies of a youth who
seemed likely to be one of the first scholars of the age. He even
offered to bear the expense of sending his favourite pupil to
Oxford. But Mr. Chiswick was inflexible. He thought the years
which had already been wasted on hexameters and pentameters quite
sufficient. He had it in his power to obtain for the lad a
writership in the service of the East India Company. Whether the
young adventurer, when once shipped off, made a fortune, or died
of a liver complaint, he equally ceased to be a burden to anybody.
Warren was accordingly removed from Westminster school, and
placed for a few months at a commercial academy, to study
arithmetic and book-keeping. In January 1750, a few days after
he had completed his seventeenth year, he sailed for Bengal, and
arrived at his destination in the October following.

He was immediately placed at a desk in the Secretary's office at
Calcutta, and laboured there during two years. Fort William was
then purely a commercial settlement. In the south of India the
encroaching policy of Dupleix had transformed the servants of the
English Company, against their will, into diplomatists and
Generals. The war of the succession was raging in the Carnatic;
and the tide had been suddenly turned against the French by the
genius of young Robert Clive. But in Bengal the European
settlers, at peace with the natives and with each other, were
wholly occupied with ledgers and bills of lading.

After two years passed in keeping accounts at Calcutta, Hastings
was sent up the country to Cossimbazar, a town which lies on the
Hoogley, about a mile from Moorshedabad, and which then bore to
Moorshedabad a relation, if we may compare small things with
great, such as the city of London bears to Westminster.
Moorshedabad was the abode of the prince who, by an authority
ostensibly derived from the Mogul, but really independent, ruled
the three great provinces of Bengal, Orissa, and Bahar. At
Moorshedabad were the court, the harem, and the public offices.
Cossimbazar was a port and a place of trade, renowned for the
quantity and excellence of the silks which were sold in its
marts, and constantly receiving and sending forth fleets of
richly laden barges. At this important point, the Company had
established a small factory subordinate to that of Fort William.
Here, during several years, Hastings was employed in making
bargains for stuffs with native brokers. While he was thus
engaged, Surajah Dowlah succeeded to the government, and declared
war against the English. The defenceless settlement of
Cossimbazar, lying close to the tyrant's capital, was instantly
seized. Hastings was sent a prisoner to Moorshedabad, but, in
consequence of the humane intervention of the servants of the
Dutch Company, was treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob
marched on Calcutta; the governor and the commandant fled; the
town and citadel were taken, and most of the English prisoners
perished in the Black Hole.

In these events originated the greatness of Warren Hastings. The
fugitive governor and his companions had taken refuge on the
dreary islet of Fulda, near the mouth of the Hoogley. They were
naturally desirous to obtain full information respecting the
proceedings of the Nabob; and no person seemed so likely to
furnish it as Hastings, who was a prisoner at large in the
immediate neighbourhood of the court. He thus became a diplomatic
agent, and soon established a high character for ability and
resolution. The treason which at a later period was fatal to
Surajah Dowlah was already in progress; and Hastings was admitted
to the deliberations of the conspirators. But the time for
striking had not arrived. It was necessary to postpone the
execution of the design; and Hastings, who was now in extreme
peril, fled to Fulda.

Soon after his arrival at Fulda, the expedition from Madras,
commanded by Clive, appeared in the Hoogley. Warren, young,
intrepid, and excited probably by the example of the Commander of
the Forces, who, having like himself been a mercantile agent of
the Company, had been turned by public calamities into a soldier,
determined to serve in the ranks. During the early operations of
the war he carried a musket. But the quick eye of Clive soon
perceived that the head of the young volunteer would be more
useful than his arm. When, after the battle of Plassey, Meer
Jaffier was proclaimed Nabob of Bengal, Hastings was appointed to
reside at the court of the new prince as agent for the Company.

He remained at Moorshedabad till the year 1761, when he became a
Member of Council, and was consequently forced to reside at
Calcutta. This was during the interval between Clive's first and
second administration, an interval which has left on the fame of
the East India Company a stain not wholly effaced by many years
of just and humane government. Mr. Vansittart, the Governor, was
at the head of a new and anomalous empire. On one side was a band
of English functionaries, daring, intelligent, eager to be rich.
On the other side was a great native population, helpless, timid,
accustomed to crouch under oppression. To keep the stronger race
from preying on the weaker, was an undertaking which tasked to
the utmost the talents and energy of Clive. Vansittart, with fair
intentions, was a feeble and inefficient ruler. The master caste,
as was natural, broke loose from all restraint; and then was seen
what we believe to be the most frightful of all spectacles, the
strength of civilisation without its mercy. To all other
despotism there is a check, imperfect indeed, and liable to gross
abuse, but still sufficient to preserve society from the last
extreme of misery. A time comes when the evils of submission are
obviously greater than those of resistance, when fear itself
begets a sort of courage, when a convulsive burst of popular rage
and despair warns tyrants not to presume too far on the patience
of mankind. But against misgovernment such as then afflicted
Bengal it was impossible to struggle. The superior intelligence
and energy of the dominant class made their power irresistible. A
war of Bengalees against Englishmen was like a war of sheep
against wolves, of men against daemons. The only protection which
the conquered could find was in the moderation, the clemency, the
enlarged policy of the conquerors. That protection, at a later
period, they found. But at first English power came among them
unaccompanied by English morality. There was an interval between
the time at which they became our subjects, and the time at which
we began to reflect that we were bound to discharge towards them
the duties of rulers. During that interval the business of a
servant of the Company was simply to wring out of the natives a
hundred or two hundred thousand pounds as speedily as possible,
that he might return home before his constitution had suffered
from the heat, to marry a peer's daughter, to buy rotten boroughs
in Cornwall, and to give balls in St. James's Square. Of the
conduct of Hastings at this time little is known; but the little
that is known, and the circumstance that little is known, must be
considered as honourable to him. He could not protect the
natives: all that he could do was to abstain from plundering and
oppressing them; and this he appears to have done. It is certain
that at this time he continued poor; and it is equally certain
that by cruelty and dishonesty he might easily have become rich.
It is certain that he was never charged with having borne a share
in the worst abuses which then prevailed; and it is almost
equally certain that, if he had borne a share in those abuses,
the able and bitter enemies who afterwards persecuted him would
not have failed to discover and to proclaim his guilt. The keen,
severe, and even malevolent scrutiny to which his whole public
life was subjected, a scrutiny unparalleled, as we believe, in
the history of mankind, is in one respect advantageous to his
reputation. It brought many lamentable blemishes to light; but
it entitles him to be considered pure from every blemish which
has not been brought to light.

The truth is that the temptations to which so many English
functionaries yielded in the time of Mr. Vansittart were not
temptations addressed to the ruling passions of Warren Hastings.
He was not squeamish in pecuniary transactions; but he was
neither sordid nor rapacious. He was far too enlightened a man to
look on a great empire merely as a buccaneer would look on a
galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it was, his
understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of
baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled
statesman; but still he was a statesman, and not a freebooter.

In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had realised only a very
moderate fortune; and that moderate fortune was soon reduced to
nothing, partly by his praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his
mismanagement. Towards his relations he appears to have acted
very generously. The greater part of his savings he left in
Bengal, hoping probably to obtain the high usury of India. But
high usury and bad security generally go together; and Hastings
lost both interest and principal.

He remained four years in England. Of his life at this time very
little is known. But it has been asserted, and is highly
probable, that liberal studies and the society of men of letters
occupied a great part of his time. It is to be remembered to his
honour that, in days when the languages of the East were regarded
by other servants of the Company merely as the means of
communicating with weavers and moneychangers, his enlarged and
accomplished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new forms of
intellectual enjoyment, and for new views of government and
society. Perhaps, like most persons who have paid much attention
to departments of knowledge which lie out of the common track, he
was inclined to overrate the value of his favourite studies. He
conceived that the cultivation of Persian literature might with
advantage be made a part of the liberal education of an English
gentleman; and he drew up a plan with that view. It is said that
the University of Oxford, in which Oriental learning had never,
since the revival of letters, been wholly neglected, was to be
the seat of the institution which he contemplated. An endowment
was expected from the munificence of the Company: and professors
thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz and Ferdusi were to be
engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson, with the hope,
as it should seem, of interesting in this project a man who
enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and who was particularly
connected with Oxford. The interview appears to have left on
Johnson's mind a most favourable impression of the talents and
attainments of his visitor. Long after, when Hastings was ruling
the immense population of British India, the old
philosopher wrote to him, and referred in the most courtly terms,
though with great dignity, to their short but agreeable
intercourse.

Hastings soon began to look again towards India. He had little to
attach him to England; and his pecuniary embarrassments were
great. He solicited his old masters the Directors for employment,
They acceded to his request, with high compliments both to his
abilities and to his integrity, and appointed him a Member of
Council at Madras. It would be unjust not to mention that, though
forced to borrow money for his outfit, he did not withdraw any
portion of the sum which he had appropriated to the relief of his
distressed relations. In the spring of 1769 he embarked on board
of the Duke of Grafton, and commenced a voyage distinguished by
incidents which might furnish matter for a novel.

Among the passengers in the Duke of Grafton was a German of the
name of Imhoff. He called himself a Baron; but he was in
distressed circumstances, and was going out to Madras as a
portrait-painter, in the hope of picking up some of the pagodas
which were then lightly got and as lightly spent by the English
in India. The Baron was accompanied by his wife, a native, we
have somewhere read, of Archangel. This young woman, who, born
under the Arctic circle, was destined to play the part of a Queen
under the tropic of Cancer, had an agreeable person, a cultivated
mind, and manners in the highest degree engaging. She despised
her husband heartily, and, as the story which we have to tell
sufficiently proves, not without reason. She was interested by
the conversation and flattered by the attentions of Hastings. The
situation was indeed perilous. No place is so propitious to the
formation either of close friendships or of deadly enmities as an
Indiaman. There are very few people who do not find a voyage
which lasts several months insupportably dull. Anything is
welcome which may break that long monotony, a sail, a shark, an
albatross, a man overboard. Most passengers find some resource in
eating twice as many meals as on land. But the great devices for
killing the time are quarrelling and flirting. The facilities for
both these exciting pursuits are great. The inmates of the ship
are thrown together far more than in any country-seat or
boarding-house. None can escape from the rest except by
imprisoning himself in a cell in which he can hardly turn. All
food, all exercise, is taken in company. Ceremony is to a great
extent banished. It is every day in the power of a mischievous
person to inflict innumerable annoyances. It is every day in the
power of an amiable person to confer little services. It not
seldom happens that serious distress and danger call forth, in
genuine beauty and deformity, heroic virtues and abject vices
which, in the ordinary intercourse of good society, might remain
during many years unknown even to intimate associates. Under such
circumstances met Warren Hastings and the Baroness Imhoff, two
persons whose accomplishments would have attracted notice in any
court of Europe. The gentleman had no domestic ties. The lady was
tied to a husband for whom she had no regard, and who had no
regard for his own honour. An attachment sprang up, which was
soon strengthened by events such as could hardly have occurred on
land. Hastings fell ill. The Baroness nursed him with womanly
tenderness, gave him his medicines with her own hand, and even
sat up in his cabin while he slept. Long before the Duke of
Grafton reached Madras, Hastings was in love. But his love was of
a most characteristic description. Like his hatred, like his
ambition, like all his passions, it was strong, but not
impetuous. It was calm, deep, earnest, patient of delay,
unconquerable by time. Imhoff was called into council by his wife
and his wife's lover. It was arranged that the Baroness should
institute a suit for a divorce in the courts of Franconia, that
the Baron should afford every facility to the proceeding, and
that, during the years which might elapse before the sentence
should be pronounced, they should continue to live together. It
was also agreed that Hastings should bestow some very substantial
marks of gratitude on the complaisant husband, and should, when
the marriage was dissolved, make the lady his wife, and adopt the
children whom she had already borne to Imhoff.

At Madras, Hastings found the trade of the Company in a very
disorganised state. His own tastes would have led him rather to
political than to commercial pursuits: but he knew that the
favour of his employers depended chiefly on their dividends, and
that their dividends depended chiefly on the investment. He,
therefore, with great judgment, determined to apply his vigorous
mind for a time to this department of business, which had been
much neglected, since the servants of the Company had ceased to
be clerks, and had become warriors and negotiators.

In a very few months he effected an important reform. The
Directors notified to him their high approbation, and were so
much pleased with his conduct that they determined to place him
at the head of the government at Bengal. Early in 1772
he quitted Fort St. George for his new post. The Imhoffs, who
were still man and wife, accompanied him, and lived at Calcutta
on the same plan which they had already followed during more than
two years.

When Hastings took his seat at the head of the council-board,
Bengal was still governed according to the system which Clive had
devised, a system which was, perhaps, skilfully contrived for the
purpose of facilitating and concealing a great revolution, but
which, when that revolution was complete and irrevocable, could
produce nothing but inconvenience. There were two governments,
the real and the ostensible. The supreme power belonged to the
Company, and was in truth the most despotic power that can be
conceived. The only restraint on the English masters of the
country was that which their own justice and humanity imposed on
them. There was no constitutional check on their will, and
resistance to them was utterly hopeless.

But though thus absolute in reality the English had not yet
assumed the style of sovereignty. They held their territories as
vassals of the throne of Delhi; they raised their revenues as
collectors appointed by the imperial commission; their public
seal was inscribed with the imperial titles; and their mint
struck only the imperial coin.

There was still a nabob of Bengal, who stood to the English
rulers of his country in the same relation in which Augustulus
stood to Odoacer, or the last Merovingians to Charles Martel and
Pepin. He lived at Moorshedabad, surrounded by princely
magnificence. He was approached with outward marks of reverence,
and his name was used in public instruments. But in the
government of the country he had less real share than the
youngest writer or cadet in the Company's service.

The English council which represented the Company at Calcutta was
constituted on a very different plan from that which has since
been adopted. At present the Governor is, as to all executive
measures, absolute. He can declare war, conclude peace, appoint
public functionaries or remove them, in opposition to the
unanimous sense of those who sit with him in council. They are,
indeed, entitled to know all that is done, to discuss all that is
done, to advise, to remonstrate, to send protests to England. But
it is with the Governor that the supreme power resides, and on
him that the whole responsibility rests. This system, which was
introduced by Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas in spite of the strenuous
opposition of Mr. Burke, we conceive to be on the whole the best
that was ever devised for the government of a country where no
materials can be found for a representative constitution. In the
time of Hastings the Governor had only one vote in council, and,
in case of an equal division, a casting vote. It therefore
happened not unfrequently that he was overruled on the gravest
questions and it was possible that he might be wholly excluded,
for years together, from the real direction of public affairs.

The English functionaries at Fort William had as yet paid little
or no attention to the internal government of Bengal. The only
branch of politics about which they much busied themselves was
negotiation with the native princes. The police, the
administration of justice, the details of the collection of
revenue, were almost entirely neglected. We may remark that the
phraseology of the Company's servants still bears the traces of
this state of things. To this day they always use the word
"political," as synonymous with "diplomatic." We could name a
gentleman still living, who was described by the highest
authority as an invaluable public servant, eminently fit to be at
the head of the internal administration of a whole presidency,
but unfortunately quite ignorant of all political business.

The internal government of Bengal the English rulers delegated to
a great native minister, who was stationed at Moorshedabad. All
military affairs, and, with the exception of what pertains to
mere ceremonial, all foreign affairs, were withdrawn from his
control; but the other departments of the administration were
entirely confided to him. His own stipend amounted to near a
hundred thousand pounds sterling a year. The personal allowance
of the nabob, amounting to more than three hundred thousand
pounds a year, passed through the minister's hands, and was, to a
great extent, at his disposal. The collection of the revenue, the
administration of justice, the maintenance of order, were left to
this high functionary; and for the exercise of his immense power
he was responsible to none but the British masters of the
country.

A situation so important, lucrative, and splendid, was naturally
an object of ambition to the ablest and most powerful natives.
Clive had found it difficult to decide between conflicting
pretensions. Two candidates stood out prominently from the crowd,
each of them the representative of a race and of a religion.

One of these was Mahommed Reza Khan, a Mussulman of Persian
extraction, able, active, religious after the fashion of his
people, and highly esteemed by them. In England he might perhaps
have been regarded as a corrupt and greedy politician. But,
tried by the lower standard of Indian morality, he might be
considered as a man of integrity and honour.

His competitor was a Hindoo Brahmin whose name has by a terrible
and melancholy event, been inseparably associated with that of
Warren Hastings, the Maharajah Nuncomar. This man had played an
important part in all the revolutions which, since the time of
Surajah Dowlah, had taken place in Bengal. To the consideration
which in that country belongs to high and pure caste, he added
the weight which is derived from wealth, talents, and experience.
Of his moral character it is difficult to give a notion to those
who are acquainted with human nature only as it appears in our
island. What the Italian is to the Englishman, what the Hindoo is
to the Italian, what the Bengalee is to other Hindoos, that was
Nuncomar to other Bengalees. The physical organisation of the
Bengalee is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant
vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his
movements languid. During many ages he has been trampled upon by
men of bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence,
veracity, are qualities to which his constitution and his
situation are equally unfavourable. His mind bears a singular
analogy to his body. It is weak even to helplessness for purposes
of manly resistance; but its suppleness and its tact move the
children of sterner climates to admiration not unmingled with
contempt. All those arts which are the natural defence of the
weak are more familiar to this subtle race than to the Ionian of
the time of Juvenal, or to the Jew of the dark ages. What the
horns are to the buffalo, what the paw is to the tiger, what the
sting is to the bee, what beauty, according to the old Greek
song, is to woman, deceit is to the Bengalee. Large promises,
smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial falsehood,
chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive and
defensive, of the people of the Lower Ganges. All those millions
do not furnish one sepoy to the armies of the Company. But as
userers, as money-changers, as sharp legal practitioners, no
class of human beings can bear a comparison with them. With all
his softness, the Bengalee is by no means placable in his
enmities or prone to pity. The pertinacity with which he adheres
to his purposes yields only to the immediate pressure of fear.
Nor does he lack a certain kind of courage which is often wanting
to his masters. To inevitable evils he is sometimes found to
oppose a passive fortitude, such as the Stoics attributed to
their ideal sage. An European warrior who rushes on a battery of
cannon with a loud hurrah, will sometimes shriek under the
surgeon's knife, and fall in an agony of despair at the sentence
of death. But the Bengalee, who would see his country overrun,
his house laid in ashes, his children murdered or dishonoured,
without having the spirit to strike one blow, has yet been known
to endure torture with the firmness of Mucius, and to mount the
scaffold with the steady step and even pulse of Algernon Sydney.

In Nuncomar, the national character was strongly and with
exaggeration personified. The Company's servants had repeatedly
detected him in the most criminal intrigues. On one occasion he
brought a false charge against another Hindoo, and tried to
substantiate it by producing forged documents. On another
occasion it was discovered that, while professing the strongest
attachment to the English, he was engaged in several conspiracies
against them, and in particular that he was the medium of a
correspondence between the court of Delhi and the French
authorities in the Carnatic. For these and similar practices he
had been long detained in confinement. But his talents and
influence had not only procured his liberation, but had obtained
for him a certain degree of consideration even among the British
rulers of his country.

Clive was extremely unwilling to place a Mussulman at the head of
the administration of Bengal. On the other hand, he could not
bring himself to confer immense power on a man to whom every sort
of villainy had repeatedly been brought home. Therefore, though
the nabob, over whom Nuncomar had by intrigue acquired great
influence, begged that the artful Hindoo might be intrusted with
the government, Clive, after some hesitation, decided honestly
and wisely in favour of Mahommed Reza Khan. When Hastings became
Governor, Mahommed Reza Khan had held power seven years. An
infant son of Meer Jaffier was now nabob; and the guardianship of
the young prince's person had been confided to the minister.

Nuncomar, stimulated at once by cupidity and malice, had been
constantly attempting to hurt the reputation of his successful
rival. This was not difficult. The revenues of Bengal, under the
administration established by Clive, did not yield such a surplus
as had been anticipated by the Company; for, at that time, the
most absurd notions were entertained in England respecting the
wealth of India. Palaces of porphyry, hung with the richest
brocade, heaps of pearls and diamonds, vaults from which pagodas
and gold mohurs were measured out by the bushel, filled the
imagination even of men of business. Nobody seemed to be aware of
what nevertheless was most undoubtedly the truth, that India was
a poorer country than countries which in Europe are reckoned
poor, than Ireland, for example, or than Portugal. It was
confidently believed by Lords of the Treasury and members for the
city that Bengal would not only defray its own charges, but would
afford an increased dividend to the proprietors of India stock,
and large relief to the English finances. These absurd
expectations were disappointed; and the Directors, naturally
enough, chose to attribute the disappointment rather to the
mismanagement of Mahommed Reza Khan than to their own ignorance
of the country intrusted to their care. They were confirmed in
their error by the agents of Nuncomar; for Nuncomar had agents
even in Leadenhall Street. Soon after Hastings reached Calcutta,
he received a letter addressed by the Court of Directors, not to
the Council generally, but to himself in particular. He was
directed to remove Mahommed Reza Khan, to arrest him together
with all his family and all his partisans, and to institute a
strict inquiry into the whole administration of the province. It
was added that the Governor would do well to avail himself of the
assistance of Nuncomar in the investigation. The vices of
Nuncomar were acknowledged. But even from his vices, it was said,
much advantage might at such a conjuncture be derived; and,
though he could not safely be trusted, it might still be proper
to encourage him by hopes of reward.

The Governor bore no goodwill to Nuncomar. Many years before,
they had known each other at Moorshedabad; and then a quarrel
had arisen between them which all the authority of their
superiors could hardly compose. Widely as they differed in most
points, they resembled each other in this, that both were men of
unforgiving natures. To Mahommed Reza Khan, on the other hand,
Hastings had no feelings of hostility. Nevertheless he proceeded
to execute the instructions of the Company with an alacrity which
he never showed, except when instructions were in perfect
conformity with his own views.  He had, wisely as we think,
determined to get rid of the system of double government in
Bengal. The orders of the Directors furnished him with the means
of effecting his purpose, and dispensed him from the necessity of
discussing the matter with his Council. He took his measures with
his usual vigour and dexterity. At midnight, the palace of
Mahommed Reza Khan at Moorshedabad was surrounded by a battalion
of sepoys. The Minister was roused from his slumbers and informed
that he was a prisoner. With the Mussulman gravity, he bent his
head and submitted himself to the will of God. He fell not alone.
A chief named Schitab Roy had been intrusted with the government
of Bahar. His valour and his attachment to the English had more
than once been signally proved. On that memorable day on which
the people of Patna saw from their walls the whole army of the
Mogul scattered by the little band of Captain Knox, the voice of
the British conquerors assigned the palm of gallantry to the
brave Asiatic. "I never," said Knox, when he introduced Schitab
Roy, covered with blood and dust, to the English functionaries
assembled in the factory, "I never saw a native fight so before."
Schitab Roy was involved in the ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan, was
removed from office, and was placed under arrest. The members of
the Council received no intimation of these measures till the
prisoners were on their road to Calcutta.

The inquiry into the conduct of the minister was postponed on
different pretences. He was detained in an easy confinement
during many months. In the meantime, the great revolution which
Hastings had planned was carried into effect. The office of
minister was abolished. The internal administration was
transferred to the servants of the Company. A system, a very
imperfect system, it is true, of civil and criminal justice,
under English superintendence, was established. The nabob was no
longer to have even an ostensible share in the government; but he
was still to receive a considerable annual allowance, and to be
surrounded with the state of sovereignty. As he was an infant, it
was necessary to provide guardians for his person and property.
His person was intrusted to a lady of his father's harem, known
by the name of the Munny Begum. The office of treasurer of the
household was bestowed on a son of Nuncomar, named Goordas.
Nuncomar's services were wanted; yet he could not safely be
trusted with power; and Hastings thought it a masterstroke of
policy to reward the able and unprincipled parent by promoting
the inoffensive child.

The revolution completed, the double government dissolved, the
Company installed in the full sovereignty of Bengal, Hastings had
no motive to treat the late ministers with rigour. Their trial
had been put off on various pleas till the new organization was
complete. They were then brought before a committee, over which
the Governor presided. Schitab Roy was speedily acquitted with
honour. A formal apology was made to him for the restraint to
which he had been subjected.  All the Eastern marks of respect
were bestowed on him. He was clothed in a robe of state, presented
with jewels and with a richly harnessed elephant, and sent back
to his government at Patna. But his health had suffered from
confinement; his high spirit had been cruelly wounded; and soon
after his liberation he died of a broken heart.

The innocence of Mahommed Reza Khan was not so clearly
established. But the Governor was not disposed to deal harshly.
After a long hearing, in which Nuncomar appeared as the accuser,
and displayed both the art and the inveterate rancour which
distinguished him, Hastings pronounced that the charge had not
been made out, and ordered the fallen minister to be set at
liberty.

Nuncomar had purposed to destroy the Mussulman administration,
and to rise on its ruin. Both his malevolence and his cupidity
had been disappointed. Hastings had made him a tool, had used him
for the purpose of accomplishing the transfer of the government
from Moorshedabad to Calcutta, from native to European hands. The
rival, the enemy, so long envied, so implacably persecuted, had
been dismissed unhurt. The situation so long and ardently desired
had been abolished. It was natural that the Governor should be
from that time an object of the most intense hatred to the
vindictive Brahmin. As yet, however, it was necessary to suppress
such feelings. The time was coming when that long animosity was
to end in a desperate and deadly struggle.

In the meantime, Hastings was compelled to turn his attention to
foreign affairs. The object of his diplomacy was at this time
simply to get money. The finances of his government were in an
embarrassed state, and this embarrassment he was determined to
relieve by some means, fair or foul. The principle which directed
all his dealings with his neighbours is fully expressed by the
old motto of one of the great predatory families of Teviotdale,
"Thou shalt want ere I want." He seems to have laid it down, as a
fundamental proposition which could not be disputed, that, when
he had not as many lacs of rupees as the public service required,
he was to take them from anybody who had. One thing, indeed, is
to be said in excuse for him. The pressure applied to him by his
employers at home, was such as only the highest virtue could have
withstood, such as left him no choice except to commit great
wrongs, or to resign his high post, and with that post all his
hopes of fortune and distinction. The Directors, it is true,
never enjoined or applauded any crime. Far from it. Whoever
examines their letters written at that time, will find there many
just and humane sentiments, many excellent precepts, in short, an
admirable code of political ethics. But every exhortation is
modified or nullified by a demand for money. "Govern leniently,
and send more money; practise strict justice and moderation
towards neighbouring powers, and send more money"--this is, in
truth, the sum of almost all the instructions that Hastings ever
received from home. Now these instructions, being interpreted,
mean simply, "Be the father and the oppressor of the people; be
just and unjust, moderate and rapacious." The Directors dealt
with India, as the Church, in the good old times, dealt with a
heretic. They delivered the victim over to the executioners, with
an earnest request that all possible tenderness might be shown.
We by no means accuse or suspect those who framed these
despatches of hypocrisy. It is probable that, writing fifteen
thousand miles from the place where their orders were to be
carried into effect, they never perceived the gross inconsistency
of which they were guilty. But the inconsistency was at once
manifest to their vicegerent at Calcutta, who, with an empty
treasury, with an unpaid army, with his own salary often in
arrear, with deficient crops, with government tenants daily
running away, was called upon to remit home another half million
without fail. Hastings saw that it was absolutely necessary for
him to disregard either the moral discourses or the pecuniary
requisitions of his employers. Being forced to disobey them in
something, he had to consider what kind of disobedience they
would most readily pardon; and he correctly judged that the
safest course would be to neglect the sermons and to find the
rupees.

A mind so fertile as his, and so little restrained by
conscientious scruples, speedily discovered several modes of
relieving the financial embarrassments of the Government. The
allowance of the Nabob of Bengal was reduced at a stroke from
three hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year to half that sum.
The Company had bound itself to pay near three hundred thousand
pounds a year to the Great Mogul, as a mark of homage for the
provinces which he had intrusted to their care; and they had
ceded to him the districts of Corah and Allahabad. On the plea
that the Mogul was not really independent, but merely a tool in
the hands of others, Hastings determined to retract these
concessions. He accordingly declared that the English would pay
no more tribute, and sent troops to occupy Allahabad and Corah.
The situation of these places was such, that there would be
little advantage and great expense in retaining them.
Hastings, who wanted money and not territory, determined to
sell them. A purchaser was not wanting. The rich province of Oude
had, in the general dissolution of the Mogul Empire, fallen to the
share of the great Mussulman house by which it is still governed.
About twenty years ago, this house, by the permission of the
British Government, assumed the royal title; but in the time
of Warren Hastings such an assumption would have been considered
by the Mahommedans of India as a monstrous impiety. The Prince
of Oude, though he held the power, did not venture to use the
style of sovereignty. To the appellation of Nabob or Viceroy,
he added that of Vizier of the monarchy of Hindostan, just as
in the last century the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg,
though independent of the Emperor, and often in arms against
him, were proud to style themselves his Grand Chamberlain
and Grand Marshal. Sujah Dowlah, then Nabob Vizier, was on
excellent terms with the English. He had a large treasure.
Allahabad and Corah were so situated that they might be of
use to him and could be of none to the Company. The buyer and
seller soon came to an understanding; and the provinces which had
been torn from the Mogul were made over to the Government of Oude
for about half a million sterling.

But there was another matter still more important to be settled
by the Vizier and the Governor. The fate of a brave people was to
be decided. It was decided in a manner which has left a lasting
stain on the fame of Hastings and of England.

The people of Central Asia had always been to the inhabitants of
India what the warriors of the German forests were to the
subjects of the decaying monarchy of Rome. The dark, slender, and
timid Hindoo shrank from a conflict with the strong muscle and
resolute spirit of the fair race which dwelt beyond the passes.
There is reason to believe that, at a period anterior to the dawn
of regular history, the people who spoke the rich and flexible
Sanskrit came from regions lying far beyond the Hyphasis and the
Hystaspes, and imposed their yoke on the children of the soil. It
is certain that, during the last ten centuries, a succession of
invaders descended from the west on Hindostan; nor was the course
of conquest ever turned back towards the setting sun, till that
memorable campaign in which the cross of Saint George was planted
on the walls of Ghizni.

The Emperors of Hindostan themselves came from the other side of
the great mountain ridge; and it had always been their practice
to recruit their army from the hardy and valiant race from which
their own illustrious house sprang. Among the military
adventurers who were allured to the Mogul standards from the
neighbourhood of Cabul and Candahar, were conspicuous several
gallant bands, known by the name of the Rohillas. Their services
had been rewarded with large tracts of land, fiefs of the spear,
if we may use an expression drawn from an analogous state of
things, in that fertile plain through which the Ramgunga flows
from the snowy heights of Kumaon to join the Ganges. In the
general confusion which followed the death of Aurungzebe, the
warlike colony became virtually independent. The Rohillas were
distinguished from the other inhabitants of India by a peculiarly
fair complexion. They were more honourably distinguished by
courage in war, and by skill in the arts of peace. While anarchy
raged from Lahore to Cape Comorin, their little territory enjoyed
the blessings of repose under the guardianship of valour.
Agriculture and commerce flourished among them; nor were they
negligent of rhetoric and poetry. Many persons now living have
heard aged men talk with regret of the golden days when the
Afghan princes ruled in the vale of Rohilcund.

Sujah Dowlah had set his heart on adding this rich district to
his own principality. Right, or show of right, he had absolutely
none. His claim was in no respect better founded than that of
Catherine to Poland, or that of the Bonaparte family to Spain.
The Rohillas held their country by exactly the same title by
which he held his, and had governed their country far better than
his had ever been governed. Nor were they a people whom it was
perfectly safe to attack. Their land was indeed an open plain
destitute of natural defences; but their veins were full of the
high blood of Afghanistan. As soldiers, they had not the
steadiness which is seldom found except in company with strict
discipline; but their impetuous valour had been proved on many
fields of battle. It was said that their chiefs, when united by
common peril, could bring eighty thousand men into the field.
Sujah Dowlah had himself seen them fight, and wisely shrank from
a conflict with them. There was in India one army, and only one,
against which even those proud Caucasian tribes could not stand.
It had been abundantly proved that neither tenfold odds, nor the
martial ardour of the boldest Asiatic nations, could avail ought
against English science and resolution. Was it possible to induce
the Governor of Bengal to let out to hire the irresistible
energies of the imperial people, the skill against which the
ablest chiefs of Hindostan were helpless as infants, the
discipline which had so often triumphed over the frantic
struggles of fanaticism and despair, the unconquerable British
courage which is never so sedate and stubborn as towards the
close of a doubtful and murderous day?

This was what the Nabob Vizier asked, and what Hastings granted.
A bargain was soon struck. Each of the negotiators had what the
other wanted. Hastings was in need of funds to carry on the
government of Bengal, and to send remittances to London; and
Sujah Dowlah had an ample revenue. Sujah Dowlah was bent on
subjugating the Rohillas; and Hastings had at his disposal the
only force by which the Rohillas could be subjugated. It was
agreed that an English army should be lent to the Nabob Vizier,
and that, for the loan, he should pay four hundred thousand
pounds sterling, besides defraying all the charge of the troops
while employed in his service.

"I really cannot see," says Mr. Gleig, "upon what grounds, either
of political or moral justice, this proposition deserves to be
stigmatised as infamous." If we understand the meaning of words,
it is infamous to commit a wicked action for hire, and it is
wicked to engage in war without provocation. In this particular
war, scarcely one aggravating circumstance was wanting. The
object of the Rohilla war was this, to deprive a large
population, who had never done us the least harm, of a good
government, and to place them, against their will, under an
execrably bad one. Nay, even this is not all. England now
descended far below the level even of those petty German princes
who, about the same time, sold us troops to fight the Americans.
The hussar-mongers of Hesse and Anspach had at least the
assurance that the expeditions on which their soldiers were to be
employed would be conducted in conformity with the humane rules
of civilised warfare. Was the Rohilla war likely to be so
conducted? Did the Governor stipulate that it should be so
conducted? He well knew what Indian warfare was. He well knew
that the power which he covenanted to put into Sujah Dowlah's
hands would, in all probability, be atrociously abused; and he
required no guarantee, no promise, that it should not be so
abused. He did not even reserve to himself the right of
withdrawing his aid in case of abuse, however gross. We are
almost ashamed to notice Major Scott's plea, that Hastings was
justified in letting out English troops to slaughter the
Rohillas, because the Rohillas were not of Indian race, but a
colony from a distant country. What were the English themselves?
Was it for them to proclaim a crusade for the expulsion of all
intruders from the countries watered by the Ganges? Did it lie in
their mouths to contend that a foreign settler who establishes an
empire in India is a caput lupinum? What would they have said if
any other power had, on such a ground, attacked Madras or
Calcutta, without the slightest provocation? Such a defence was
wanting to make the infamy of the transaction complete. The
atrocity of the crime, and the hypocrisy of the apology, are
worthy of each other.

One of the three brigades of which the Bengal army consisted was
sent under Colonel Champion to join Sujah Dowlah's forces. The
Rohillas expostulated, entreated, offered a large ransom, but in
Vain. They then resolved to defend themselves to the last. A
bloody battle was fought. "The enemy," says Colonel Champion,
"gave proof of a good share of military knowledge; and it is
impossible to describe a more obstinate firmness of resolution
than they displayed." The dastardly sovereign of Oude fled from
the field. The English were left unsupported; but their fire and
their charge were irresistible. It was not, however, till the
most distinguished chiefs had fallen, fighting bravely at the
head of their troops, that the Rohilla ranks gave way. Then the
Nabob Vizier and his rabble made their appearance, and hastened
to plunder the camp of the valiant enemies whom they had never
dared to look in the face. The soldiers of the Company, trained
in an exact discipline, kept unbroken order, while the tents were
pillaged by these worthless allies. But many voices were heard to
exclaim, "We have had all the fighting, and those rogues are to
have all the profit."

Then the horrors of Indian war were let loose on the fair valleys
and cities of Rohilcund. The whole country was in a blaze. More
than a hundred thousand people fled from their homes to
pestilential jungles, preferring famine, and fever, and the
haunts of tigers, to the tyranny of him, to whom an English and a
Christian government had, for shameful lucre, sold their
substance, and their blood, and the honour of their wives and
daughters. Colonel Champion remonstrated with the Nabob Vizier,
and sent strong representations to Fort William; but the Governor
had made no conditions as to the mode in which the war was to be
carried on. He had troubled himself about nothing, but his forty
lacs; and, though he might disapprove of Sujah Dowlah's wanton
barbarity, he did not think himself entitled to interfere, except
by offering advice. This delicacy excites the admiration of the
biographer. "Mr. Hastings," he says, "could not himself dictate
to the Nabob, nor permit the commander of the Company's troops to
dictate how the war was to be carried on." No, to be sure. Mr.
Hastings had only to put down by main force the brave struggles
of innocent men fighting for their liberty. Their military
resistance crushed his duties ended; and he had then only to fold
his arms and look on, while their villages were burned, their
children butchered, and their women violated. Will Mr. Gleig
seriously maintain this opinion? Is any rule more plain than
this, that whoever voluntarily gives to another irresistible
power over human beings is bound to take order that such power
shall not be barbarously abused? But we beg pardon of our readers
for arguing a point so clear.

We hasten to the end of this sad and disgraceful story. The war
ceased. The finest population in India was subjected to a greedy,
cowardly, cruel tyrant. Commerce and agriculture languished. The
rich province which had tempted the cupidity of Sujah Dowlah
became the most miserable part even of his miserable dominions.
Yet is the injured nation not extinct. At long intervals gleams
of its ancient spirit have flashed forth; and even at this day,
valour, and self-respect, and a chivalrous feeling rare among
Asiatics, and a bitter remembrance of the great crime of England,
distinguish that noble Afghan race. To this day they are regarded
as the best of all sepoys at the cold steel; and it was very
recently remarked, by one who had enjoyed great opportunities of
observation, that the only natives of India to whom the word
"gentleman" can with perfect propriety be applied, are to be
found among the Rohillas.

Whatever we may think of the morality of Hastings, it cannot be
denied that the financial results of his policy did honour to his
talents. In less than two years after he assumed the government,
he had without imposing any additional burdens on the people
subject to his authority, added about four hundred and fifty
thousand pounds to the annual income of the Company, besides
procuring about a million in ready money. He had also relieved
the finances of Bengal from military expenditure, amounting to
near a quarter of a million a year, and had thrown that charge on
the Nabob of Oude. There can be no doubt that this was a result
which, if it had been obtained by honest means, would have
entitled him to the warmest gratitude of his country, and which,
by whatever means obtained, proved that he possessed great
talents for administration.

In the meantime, Parliament had been engaged in long and grave
discussions on Asiatic affairs. The ministry of Lord North, in
the session of 1773, introduced a measure which mode a
considerable change in the constitution of the Indian Government.
This law, known by the name of the Regulating Act, provided that
the presidency of Bengal should exercise a control over the other
possessions of the Company; that the chief of that presidency
should be styled Governor-General; that he should be assisted by
four Councillors; and that a supreme court of judicature,
consisting of a chief justice and three inferior judges, should
be established at Calcutta. This court was made independent of
the Governor-General and Council, and was intrusted with a civil
and criminal jurisdiction of immense and, at the same time, of
undefined extent.

The Governor-General and Councillors were named in the Act, and
were to hold their situations for five years. Hastings was to be
the first Governor-General. One of the four new Councillors, Mr.
Barwell, an experienced servant of the Company, was then in
India. The other three, General Clavering, Mr. Monson, and Mr.
Francis, were sent out from England.

The ablest of the new Councillors was, beyond all doubt, Philip
Francis. His acknowledged compositions prove that he possessed
considerable eloquence and information. Several years passed in
the public offices had formed him to habits of business. His
enemies have never denied that he had a fearless and manly
spirit; and his friends, we are afraid, must acknowledge that his
estimate of himself was extravagantly high, that his temper was
irritable, that his deportment was often rude and petulant, and
that his hatred was of intense bitterness and long duration.

It is scarcely possible to mention this eminent man without
adverting for a moment to the question which his name at once
suggests to every mind. Was he the author of the Letters Of
Junius? Our own firm belief is that he was. The evidence is, we
think, such as would support a verdict in a civil, nay, in a
criminal proceeding. The handwriting of Junius is the very
peculiar handwriting of Francis, slightly disguised. As to the
position, pursuits, and connections of Junius, the following are
the most important facts which can be considered as clearly
proved: first, that he was acquainted with the technical forms of
the Secretary of State's office; secondly, that he was intimately
acquainted with the business of the War Office; thirdly, that he,
during the year 1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and
took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of Lord
Chatham; fourthly, that he bitterly resented the appointment of
Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy Secretary-at-War; fifthly,
that he was bound by some strong tie to the first Lord Holland.
Now, Francis passed some years in the Secretary of State's
office. He was subsequently Chief Clerk of the War Office. He
repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 1770, heard speeches
of Lord Chatham; and some of these speeches were actually printed
from his notes. He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from
resentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It was by Lord
Holland that he was first introduced into the public service.
Now, here are five marks, all of which ought to be found in
Junius. They are all five found in Francis. We do not believe
that more than two of them can be found in any other person
whatever. If this argument does not settle the question, there is
an end of all reasoning on circumstantial evidence.

The internal evidence seems to us to point the same way. The
style of Francis bears a strong resemblance to that of Junius;
nor are we disposed to admit, what is generally taken for
granted, that the acknowledged compositions of Francis are very
decidedly inferior to the anonymous letters. The argument from
inferiority, at all events, is one which may be urged with at
least equal force against every claimant that has ever been
mentioned, with the single exception of Burke; and it would be a
waste of time to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what
conclusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferiority? Every
writer must produce his best work; and the interval between his
best work and his second best work may be very wide indeed.
Nobody will say that the best letters of Junius are more
decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of Francis than
three or four of Corneille's tragedies to the rest, than three or
four of Ben Jonson's comedies to the rest, than the Pilgrim's
Progress to the other works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the
other works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain that Junius, whoever
he may have been, was a most unequal writer. To go no further
than the letters which bear the signature of Junius; the letter
to the king, and the letters to Horne Tooke, have little in
common, except the asperity; and asperity was an ingredient
seldom wanting either in the writings or in the speeches of
Francis.

Indeed one of the strongest reasons for believing that Francis
was Junius is the moral resemblance between the two men. It is
not difficult, from the letters which, under various signatures,
are known to have been written by Junius, and from his dealings
with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct notion of
his character. He was clearly a man not destitute of real
patriotism and magnanimity, a man whose vices were not of a
sordid kind. But he must also have been a man in the highest
degree arrogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and
prone to the error of mistaking his malevolence for public
virtue. "Doest thou well to be angry?" was the question asked in
old time of the Hebrew prophet. And he answered, "I do well."
This was evidently the temper of Junius; and to this cause we
attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces several of his
letters. No man is so merciless as he who, under a strong self-
delusion, confounds his antipathies with his duties. It may be
added that Junius, though allied with the democratic party by
common enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic
politician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity which
perpetually violated all the laws of literary warfare, he
regarded the most defective parts of old institutions with a
respect amounting to pedantry, pleaded the cause of Old Sarum
with fervour, and contemptuously told the capitalists of
Manchester and Leeds that, if they wanted votes, they might buy
land and become freeholders of Lancashire and Yorkshire. All
this, we believe, might stand, with scarcely any change, for a
character of Philip Francis.

It is not strange that the great anonymous writer should have
been willing at that time to leave the country which had been so
powerfully stirred by his eloquence. Everything had gone against
him. That party which he clearly preferred to every other, the
party of George Grenville, had been scattered by the death of its
chief; and Lord Suffolk had led the greater part of it over to
the ministerial benches. The ferment produced by the Middlesex
election had gone down. Every faction must have been alike an
object of aversion to Junius. His opinions on domestic affairs
separated him from the Ministry; his opinions on colonial affairs
from the Opposition. Under such circumstances, he had thrown down
his pen in misanthropical despair. His farewell letter to
Woodfall bears date the nineteenth of January, 1773. In that
letter, he declared that he must be an idiot to write again; that
he had meant well by the cause and the public; that both were
given up; that there were not ten men who would act steadily
together on any question. "But it is all alike," he added, "vile
and contemptible. You have never flinched that I know of; and I
shall always rejoice to hear of your prosperity." These were the
last words of Junius. In a year from that time, Philip Francis
was on his voyage to Bengal.

With the three new Councillors came out the judges of the Supreme
Court. The chief justice was Sir Elijah Impey. He was an old
acquaintance of Hastings; and it is probable that the Governor-
General, if he had searched through all the inns of court, could
not have found an equally serviceable tool. But the members of
Council were by no means in an obsequious mood. Hastings greatly
disliked the new form of government, and had no very high opinion
of his coadjutors.  They had heard of this, and were disposed to
be suspicious and punctilious. When men are in such a frame of
mind, any trifle is sufficient to give occasion for dispute. The
members of Council expected a salute of twenty-one guns from the
batteries of Fort William. Hastings allowed them only seventeen.
They landed in ill-humour. The first civilities were exchanged
with cold reserve. On the morrow commenced that long quarrel
which, after distracting British India, was renewed in England,
and in which all the most eminent statesmen and orators of the
age took active part on one or the other side.

Hastings was supported by Barwell. They had not always been
friends. But the arrival of the new members of Council from
England naturally had the effect of uniting the old servants of
the Company. Clavering, Monson, and Francis formed the majority.
They instantly wrested the government out of the hands of
Hastings, condemned, certainly not without justice, his late
dealings with the Nabob Vizier, recalled the English agent from
Oude, and sent thither a creature of their own, ordered the
brigade which had conquered the unhappy Rohillas to return to the
Company's territories, and instituted a severe inquiry into the
conduct of the war. Next, in spite of the Governor-General's
remonstrances, they proceeded to exercise, in the most indiscreet
manner, their new authority over the subordinate presidencies;
threw all the affairs of Bombay into confusion; and interfered,
with an incredible union of rashness and feebleness, in the
intestine disputes of the Mahratta Government. At the same time,
they fell on the internal administration of Bengal, and attacked
the whole fiscal and judicial system, a system which was
undoubtedly defective, but which it was very improbable that
gentlemen fresh from England would be competent to amend. The
effect of their reforms was that all protection to life and
property was withdrawn, and that gangs of robbers plundered and
slaughtered with impunity in the very suburbs of Calcutta.
Hastings continued to live in the Government-house, and to draw
the salary of Governor-General. He continued even to take the
lead at the council-board in the transaction of ordinary
business; for his opponents could not but feel that he knew much
of which they were ignorant, and  that he decided, both surely
and speedily, many questions which to them would have been
hopelessly puzzling. But the higher powers of government and the
most valuable patronage had been taken from him.

The natives soon found this out. They considered him as a fallen
man; and they acted after their kind. Some of our readers may
have seen, in India, a cloud of crows pecking a sick vulture to
death, no bad type of what happens in that country, as often as
fortune deserts one who has been great and dreaded. In an
instant, all the sycophants who had lately been ready to lie for
him, to forge for him, to pandar for him, to poison for him,
hasten to purchase the favour of his victorious enemies by
accusing him. An Indian government has only to let it be
understood that it wishes a particular man to be ruined; and, in
twenty-four hours, it will be furnished with grave charges,
supported by depositions so full and circumstantial that any
person unaccustomed to Asiatic mendacity would regard them as
decisive. It is well if the signature of the destined victim is
not counterfeited at the foot of some illegal compact, and if
some treasonable paper is not slipped into a hiding-place in his
house. Hastings was now regarded as helpless. The power to make
or mar the fortune of every man in Bengal had passed, as it
seemed, into the hands of the new Councillors. Immediately
charges against the Governor-General began to pour in. They were
eagerly welcomed by the majority, who, to do them justice, were
men of too much honour knowingly to countenance false
accusations, but who were not sufficiently acquainted with the
East to be aware that, in that part of the world, a very little
encouragement from power will call forth, in a week, more
Oateses, and Bedloes, and Dangerfields, than Westminster Hall
sees in a century.

It would have been strange indeed if, at such a juncture,
Nuncomar had remained quiet. That bad man was stimulated at once
by malignity, by avarice, and by ambition. Now was the time to be
avenged on his old enemy, to wreak a grudge of seventeen years,
to establish himself in the favour of the majority of the
Council, to become the greatest native in Bengal. From the time
of the arrival of the new Councillors he had paid the most marked
court to them, and had in consequence been excluded, with all
indignity, from the Government-house. He now put into the hands
of Francis with great ceremony, a paper, containing several
charges of the most serious description. By this document
Hastings was accused of putting offices up to sale, and of
receiving bribes for suffering offenders to escape. In
particular, it was alleged that Mahommed Reza Khan had been
dismissed with impunity, in consideration of a great sum paid to
the Governor-General.

Francis read the paper in Council. A violent altercation
followed. Hastings complained in bitter terms of the way in which
he was treated, spoke with contempt of Nuncomar and of Nuncomar's
accusation, and denied the right of the Council to sit in
judgment on the Governor. At the next meeting of the Board,
another communication from Nuncomar was produced. He requested
that he might be permitted to attend the Council, and that he
might be heard in support of his assertions. Another tempestuous
debate took place. The Governor-General maintained that the
council-room was not a proper place for such an investigation;
that from persons who were heated by daily conflict with him he
could not expect the fairness of judges; and that he could not,
without betraying the dignity of his post, submit to be
confronted with such a man as Nuncomar. The majority, however,
resolved to go into the charges. Hastings rose, declared the
sitting at an end, and left the room, followed by Barwell. The
other members kept their seats, voted themselves a council, put
Clavering in the chair, and ordered Nuncomar to be called in.
Nuncomar not only adhered to the original charges, but, after the
fashion of the East, produced a large supplement. He stated that
Hastings had received a great sum for appointing Rajah Goordas
treasurer of the Nabob's household, and for committing the care
of his Highness's person to the Munny Begum. He put in a letter
purporting to bear the seal of the Munny Begum, for the purpose
of establishing the truth of his story. The seal, whether forged,
as Hastings affirmed, or genuine, as we are rather inclined to
believe, proved nothing. Nuncomar, as everybody knows who knows
India, had only to tell the Munny Begum that such a letter would
give pleasure to the majority of the Council, in order to procure
her attestation. The majority, however, voted that the charge was
made out; that Hastings had corruptly received between thirty and
forty thousand pounds; and that he ought to be compelled to
refund.

The general feeling among the English in Bengal was strongly in
favour of the Governor-General. In talents for business, in
knowledge of the country, in general courtesy of demeanour, he
was decidedly superior to his persecutors. The servants of the
Company were naturally disposed to side with the most
distinguished member of their own body against a clerk from the
War Office, who, profoundly ignorant of the native language, and
of the native character, took on himself to regulate every
department of the administration. Hastings, however, in spite of
the general sympathy of his countrymen, was in a most painful
situation. There was still an appeal to higher authority in
England. If that authority took part with his enemies, nothing
was left to him but to throw up his office. He accordingly placed
his resignation in the hands of his agent in London, Colonel
Macleane. But Macleane was instructed not to produce the
resignation, unless it should be fully ascertained that the
feeling at the India House was adverse to the Governor-General.

The triumph of Nuncomar seemed to be complete. He held a daily
levee, to which his countrymen resorted in crowds, and to which
on one occasion, the majority of the Council condescended to
repair. His house was an office for the purpose of receiving
charges against the Governor-General. It was said that, partly by
threats, and partly by wheedling, the villainous Brahmin had
induced many of the wealthiest men of the province to send in
complaints. But he was playing a perilous game. It was not safe
to drive to despair a man of such resources and of such
determination as Hastings. Nuncomar, with all his acuteness, did
not understand the nature of the institutions under which he
lived. He saw that he had with him the majority of the body which
made treaties, gave places, raised taxes. The separation between
political and judicial functions was a thing of which he had no
conception. It bad probably never occurred to him that there was
in Bengal an authority perfectly independent of the Council, an
authority which could protect one whom the Council wished to
destroy and send to the gibbet one whom the Council wished to
protect. Yet such was the fact. The Supreme Court was, within the
sphere of its own duties, altogether independent of the
Government. Hastings, with his usual sagacity, had seen how much
advantage he might derive from possessing himself of this
stronghold; and he had acted accordingly. The judges, especially
the Chief Justice, were hostile to the majority of the Council.
The time had now come for putting this formidable machinery into
action.

On a sudden, Calcutta was astounded by the news that Nuncomar had
been taken up on a charge of felony, committed and thrown into
the common gaol. The crime imputed to him was that six years
before he had forged a bond. The ostensible prosecutor was a
native. But it was then, and still is, the opinion of everybody,
idiots and biographers excepted, that Hastings was the real mover
in the business.

The rage of the majority rose to the highest point. They
protested against the proceedings of the Supreme Court, and sent
several urgent messages to the judges, demanding that Nuncomar
should be admitted to bail. The Judges returned haughty and
resolute answers. All that the Council could do was to heap
honours and emoluments on the family of Nuncomar; and this they
did. In the meantime the assizes commenced; a true bill was
found; and Nuncomar was brought before Sir Elijah Impey and a
jury composed of Englishmen. A great quantity of contradictory
swearing, and the necessity of having every word of the evidence
interpreted, protracted the trial to a most unusual length. At
last a verdict of guilty was returned, and the Chief Justice
pronounced sentence of death on the prisoner.

That Impey ought to have respited Nuncomar we hold to be
perfectly clear. Whether the whole proceeding was not illegal, is
a question. But it is certain, that whatever may have been,
according to technical rules of construction, the effect of the
statute under which the trial took place, it was most unjust to
hang a Hindoo for forgery. The law which made forgery capital in
England was passed without the smallest reference to the state of
society in India. It was unknown to the natives of India. It had
never been put in execution among them, certainly not for want of
delinquents. It was in the highest degree shocking to all their
notions. They were not accustomed to the distinction which many
circumstances, peculiar to our own state of society, have led us
to make between forgery and other kinds of cheating. The
counterfeiting of a seal was, in their estimation, a common act
of swindling; nor had it ever crossed their minds that it was to
be punished as severely as gang-robbery or assassination. A just
judge would, beyond all doubt, have reserved the case for the
consideration of the sovereign. But Impey would not hear of mercy
or delay.

The excitement among all classes was great. Francis and Francis's
few English adherents described the Governor-General and the
Chief justice as the worst of murderers. Clavering, it was said,
swore that even at the foot of the gallows, Nuncomar should be
rescued. The bulk of the European society, though strongly
attached to the Governor-General, could not but feel compassion
for a man who, with all his crimes, had so long filled so large a
space in their sight, who had been great and powerful before the
British empire in India began to exist, and to whom, in the old
times, governors and members of Council, then mere commercial
factors, had paid court for protection. The feeling of the
Hindoos was infinitely stronger. They were, indeed, not a people
to strike one blow for their countryman. But his sentence filled
them with sorrow and dismay. Tried even by their low standard of
morality, he was a bad man. But bad as he was, he was the head of
their race and religion, a Brahmin of the Brahmins. He had
inherited the purest and highest caste. He had practised with
the greatest punctuality all those ceremonies to which the
superstitious Bengalees ascribe far more importance than to
the correct discharge of the social duties. They felt, therefore,
as a devout Catholic in the dark ages would have felt, at seeing
a prelate of the highest dignity sent to the gallows by a secular
tribunal. According to their old national laws, a Brahmin could
not be put to death for any crime whatever. And the crime for
which Nuncomar was about to die was regarded by them in much
the same light in which the selling of an unsound horse, for a
sound price, is regarded by a Yorkshire jockey.

The Mussulmans alone appear to have seen with exultation the fate
of the powerful Hindoo, who had attempted to rise by means of the
ruin of Mahommed Reza Khan. The Mahommedan historian of those
times takes delight in aggravating the charge. He assures us that
in Nuncomar's house a casket was found containing counterfeits of
the seals of all the richest men of the province. We have never
fallen in with any other authority for this story, which in
itself is by no means improbable.

The day drew near; and Nuncomar prepared himself to die with that
quiet fortitude with which the Bengalee, so effeminately timid in
personal conflict, often encounters calamities for which there is
no remedy. The sheriff, with the humanity which is seldom wanting
in an English gentleman, visited the prisoner on the eve of the
execution, and assured him that no indulgence, consistent with
the law, should be refused to him. Nuncomar expressed his
gratitude with great politeness and unaltered composure. Not a
muscle of his face moved. No a sigh broke from him. He put his
finger to his forehead, and calmly said that fate would have its
way, and that there was no resisting the pleasure of God. He sent
his compliments to Francis, Clavering, and Monson, and charged
them to protect Rajah Goordas, who was about to become the head
of the Brahmins of Bengal. The sheriff withdrew, greatly agitated
by what had passed, and Nuncomar sat composedly down to write
notes and examine accounts.

The next morning, before the sun was in his power, an immense
concourse assembled round the place where the gallows had been
set up. Grief and horror were on every face; yet to the last the
multitude could hardly believe that the English really purposed
to take the life of the great Brahmin. At length the mournful
procession came through the crowd. Nuncomar sat up in his
palanquin, and looked round him with unaltered serenity. He had
just parted from those who were most nearly connected with him.
Their cries and contortions had appalled the European ministers
of justice, but had not produced the smallest effect on the iron
stoicism of the prisoner. The only anxiety which he expressed was
that men of his own priestly caste might be in attendance to take
charge of his corpse. He again desired to be remembered to his
friends in the Council, mounted the scaffold with firmness, and
gave the signal to the executioner. The moment that the drop
fell, a howl of sorrow and despair rose from the innumerable
spectators. Hundreds turned away their faces from the polluting
sight, fled with loud wailings towards the Hoogley, and plunged
into its holy waters, as if to purify themselves from the guilt
of having looked on such a crime. These feelings were not
confined to Calcutta. The whole province was greatly excited; and
the population of Dacca, in particular, gave strong signs of
grief and dismay.

Of Impey's conduct it is impossible to speak too severely. We
have already said that, in our opinion, he acted unjustly in
refusing to respite Nuncomar. No rational man can doubt that he
took this course in order to gratify the Governor-General. If we
had ever had any doubts on that point, they would have been
dispelled by a letter which Mr. Gleig has published. Hastings,
three or four years later, described Impey as the man "to whose
support he was at one time indebted for the safety of his
fortune, honour, and reputation." These strong words can refer
only to the case of Nuncomar; and they must mean that Impey
hanged Nuncomar in order to support Hastings. It is, therefore,
our deliberate opinion that Impey, sitting as a judge, put a man
unjustly to death in order to serve a political purpose.

But we look on the conduct of Hastings in a somewhat different
light. He was struggling for fortune, honour, liberty, all that
makes life valuable. He was beset by rancorous and unprincipled
enemies. From his colleagues he could expect no justice. He
cannot be blamed for wishing to crush his accusers. He was indeed
bound to use only legitimate means for that end. But it was not
strange that he should have thought any means legitimate which
were pronounced legitimate by the sages of the law, by men whose
peculiar duty it was to deal justly between adversaries, and
whose education might be supposed to have peculiarly qualified
them for the discharge of that duty. Nobody demands from a party
the unbending equity of a judge. The reason that judges are
appointed is, that even a good man cannot be trusted to decide a
cause in which he is himself concerned. Not a day passes on which
an honest prosecutor does not ask for what none but a dishonest
tribunal would grant. It is too much to expect that any man, when
his dearest interests are at stake, and his strongest passions
excited, will, as against himself, be more just than the sworn
dispensers of justice. To take an analogous case from the history
of our own island; suppose that Lord Stafford, when in the Tower
on suspicion of being concerned in the Popish plot, had been
apprised that Titus Oates had done something which might, by a
questionable construction, be brought under the head of felony.
Should we severely blame Lord Stafford, in the supposed case, for
causing a prosecution to be instituted, for furnishing funds, for
using all his influence to intercept the mercy of the Crown? We
think not. If a judge, indeed, from favour to the Catholic lords,
were strain the law in order to hang Oates, such a judge would
richly deserve impeachment. But it does not appear to us that the
Catholic lord, by bringing the case before the judge for
decision, would materially overstep the limits of a just self-
defence.

While, therefore, we have not the least doubt that this memorable
execution is to be attributed to Hastings, we doubt whether it
can with justice be reckoned among his crimes. That his conduct
was dictated by a profound policy is evident. He was in a
minority in Council. It was possible that he might long be in a
minority. He knew the native character well. He knew in what
abundance accusations are certain to flow in against the most
innocent inhabitant of India who is under the frown of power.
There was not in the whole black population of Bengal a
placeholder, a place-hunter, a government tenant, who did not
think that he might better himself by sending up a deposition
against the Governor-General. Under these circumstances, the
persecuted statesman resolved to teach the whole crew of accusers
and witnesses, that, though in a minority at the council-board,
he was still to be feared. The lesson which he gave then was
indeed a lesson not to be forgotten. The head of the combination
which had been formed against him, the richest, the most powerful,
the most artful of the Hindoos, distinguished by the favour of
those who then held the government, fenced round by the
superstitious reverence of millions, was hanged in broad day
before many thousands of people. Everything that could make the
warning impressive, dignity in the sufferer, solemnity in the
proceeding, was found in this case. The helpless rage and vain
struggles of the Council made the triumph more signal. From that
moment the conviction of every native was that it was safer to
take the part of Hastings in a minority than that of Francis in
a majority, and that he who was so venturous as to join in running
down the Governor-General might chance, in the phrase of the
Eastern poet, to find a tiger, while beating the jungle for a
deer. The voices of a thousand informers were silenced in an
instant. From that time, whatever difficulties Hastings might
have to encounter, he was never molested by accusations from
natives of India.

It is a remarkable circumstance that one of the letters of
Hastings to Dr. Johnson bears date a very few hours after the
death of Nuncomar. While the whole settlement was in commotion,
while a mighty and ancient priesthood were weeping over the
remains of their chief, the conqueror in that deadly grapple sat
down, with characteristic self-possession to write about the Tour
to the Hebrides, Jones's Persian Grammar, and the history,
traditions, arts, and natural productions of India.

In the meantime, intelligence of the Rohilla war, and of the
first disputes between Hastings and his colleagues, had reached
London. The Directors took part with the majority, and sent out a
letter filled with severe reflections on the conduct of Hastings.
They condemned, in strong but just terms, the iniquity of
undertaking offensive wars merely for the sake of pecuniary
advantage. But they utterly forgot that, if Hastings had by
illicit means obtained pecuniary advantages, he had done so, not
for his own benefit, but in order to meet their demands. To
enjoin honesty, and to insist on having what could not be
honestly got, was then the constant practice of the Company. As
Lady Macbeth says of her husband, they "would not play false, and
yet would wrongly win."

The Regulating Act, by which Hastings had been appointed
Governor-General for five years, empowered the Crown to remove
him on an address from the Company. Lord North was desirous to
procure such an address. The three members of Council who had
been sent out from England were men of his own choice. General
Clavering, in particular, was supported by a large parliamentary
connection, such as no Cabinet could be inclined to disoblige.
The wish of the minister was to displace Hastings, and to put
Clavering at the head of the Government. In the Court of
Directors parties were very nearly balanced. Eleven voted against
Hastings; ten for him. The Court of Proprietors was then
convened. The great sale-room presented a singular appearance.
Letters had been sent by the Secretary of the Treasury, exhorting
all the supporters of Government who held India stock to be in
attendance. Lord Sandwich marshalled the friends of the
administration with his usual dexterity and alertness. Fifty
peers and privy councillors, seldom seen so far eastward, we
counted in the crowd. The debate lasted till midnight. The
opponents of Hastings had a small superiority on the division;
but a ballot was demanded; and the result was that the Governor-
General triumphed by a majority of above a hundred votes over the
combined efforts of the Directors and the Cabinet. The ministers
were greatly exasperated by this defeat. Even Lord North lost his
temper, no ordinary occurrence with him, and threatened to
convoke Parliament before Christmas, and to bring in a bill for
depriving the Company of all political power, and for restricting
it to its old business of trading in silks and teas.

Colonel Macleane, who through all this conflict had zealously
supported the cause of Hastings, now thought that his employer
was in imminent danger of being turned out branded with
parliamentary censure, perhaps prosecuted. The opinion of the
Crown lawyers had already been taken respecting some parts of the
Governor-General's conduct. It seemed to be high time to think of
securing an honourable retreat. Under these circumstances,
Macleane thought himself justified in producing the resignation
with which he had been intrusted. The instrument was not in very
accurate form; but the Directors were too eager to be scrupulous.
They accepted the resignation, fixed on Mr. Wheler, one of their
own body to succeed Hastings, and sent out orders that Genera
Clavering, as senior member of Council, should exercise the
functions of Governor-General till Mr. Wheler should arrive.

But, while these things were passing in England, a great change
had taken place in Bengal. Monson was no more. Only four members
of the Government were left. Clavering and Francis were on one
side, Barwell and the Governor-General on the other; and the
Governor-General had the casting vote. Hastings, who had been
during two years destitute of all power and patronage, became at
once absolute. He instantly proceeded to retaliate on his
adversaries. Their measures were reversed: their creatures were
displaced. A new valuation of the lands of Bengal, for the
purposes of taxation, was ordered: and it was provided that the
whole inquiry should be conducted by the Governor-General, and
that all the letters relating to it should run in his name. He
began, at the same time, to revolve vast plans of conquest and
dominion, plans which he lived to see realised, though not by
himself. His project was to form subsidiary alliances with the
native princes, particularly with those of Oude and Berar, and
thus to make Britain the paramount power in India. While he was
meditating these great designs, arrived the intelligence that he
had ceased to be Governor-General, that his resignation had been
accepted, that Wheler was coming out immediately, and that, till
Wheler arrived, the chair was to be filled by Clavering.

Had Hastings still been in a minority, he would probably have
retired without a struggle; but he was now the real master of
British India, and he was not disposed to quit his high place. He
asserted that he had never given any instructions which could
warrant the steps taken at home. What his instructions had been,
he owned he had forgotten. If he had kept a copy of them he had
mislaid it. But he was certain that he had repeatedly declared to
the Directors that he would not resign. He could not see how the
court possessed of that declaration from himself, could receive
his resignation from the doubtful hands of an agent. If the
resignation were invalid, all the proceedings which were founded
on that resignation were null, and Hastings was still Governor-
General.

He afterwards affirmed that, though his agents had not acted in
conformity with his instructions, he would nevertheless have held
himself bound by their acts, if Clavering had not attempted to
seize the supreme power by violence. Whether this assertion were
or were not true, it cannot be doubted that the imprudence of
Clavering gave Hastings an advantage. The General sent for the
keys of the fort and of the treasury, took possession of the
records, and held a council at which Francis attended. Hastings
took the chair in another apartment, and Barwell sat with him.
Each of the two parties had a plausible show of right. There was
no authority entitled to their obedience within fifteen thousand
miles. It seemed that there remained no way of settling the
dispute except an appeal to arms; and from such an appeal
Hastings, confident of his influence over his countrymen in
India, was not inclined to shrink. He directed the officers of
the garrison at Fort William and of all the neighbouring stations
to obey no orders but his. At the same time, with admirable
judgment, he offered to submit the case to the Supreme Court, and
to abide by its decision. By making this proposition he risked
nothing; yet it was a proposition which his opponents could
hardly reject. Nobody could be treated as a criminal for obeying
what the judges should solemnly pronounce to be the lawful
government. The boldest man would shrink from taking arms in
defence of what the judges should pronounce to be usurpation.
Clavering and Francis, after some delay, unwillingly consented to
abide by the award of the court. The court pronounced that the
resignation was invalid, and that therefore Hastings was still
Governor-General under the Regulating Act; and the defeated
members of the Council, finding that the sense of the whole
settlement was against them, acquiesced in the decision.

About this time arrived the news that, after a suit which had
lasted several years, the Franconian courts had decreed a divorce
between Imhoff and his wife. The Baron left Calcutta, carrying
with him the means of buying an estate in Saxony. The lady became
Mrs. Hastings. The event was celebrated by great festivities; and
all the most conspicuous persons at Calcutta, without distinction
of parties, were invited to the Government-house. Clavering, as
the Mahommedan chronicler tells the story, was sick in mind and
body, and excused himself from joining the splendid assembly. But
Hastings, whom, as it should seem, success in ambition and in
love had put into high good-humour, would take no denial. He went
himself to the General's house, and at length brought his
vanquished rival in triumph to the gay circle which surrounded
the bride. The exertion was too much for a frame broken by
mortification as well as by disease. Clavering died a few days
later.

Wheler, who came out expecting to be Governor-General, and was
forced to content himself with a seat at the council-board,
generally voted with Francis. But the Governor-General, with
Barwell's help and his own casting vote, was still the master.
Some change took place at this time in the feeling both of the
Court of Directors and of the Ministers of the Crown. All designs
against Hastings were dropped; and, when his original term of
five years expired, he was quietly reappointed. The truth is,
that the fearful dangers to which the public interests in every
quarter were now exposed, made both Lord North and the Company
unwilling to part with a Governor whose talents, experience, and
resolution, enmity itself was compelled to acknowledge.

The crisis was indeed formidable. That great and victorious
empire, on the throne of which George the Third had taken his
seat eighteen years before, with brighter hopes than had attended
the accession of any of the long line of English sovereigns, had,
by the most senseless misgovernment, been brought to the verge of
ruin. In America millions of Englishmen were at war with the
country from which their blood, their language, their religion,
and their institutions were derived, and to which, but a short
time before, they had been as strongly attached as the
inhabitants of Norfolk and Leicestershire. The great powers of
Europe, humbled to the dust by the vigour and genius which had
guided the councils of George the Second, now rejoiced in the
prospect of a signal revenge. The time was approaching when our
island, while struggling to keep down the United States of
America, and pressed with a still nearer danger by the too just
discontents of Ireland, was to be assailed by France, Spain, and
Holland, and to be threatened by the armed neutrality of the
Baltic; when even our maritime supremacy was to be in jeopardy;
when hostile fleets were to command the Straits of Calpe and the
Mexican Sea; when the British flag was to be scarcely able to
protect the British Channel. Great as were the faults of
Hastings, it was happy for our country that at that conjuncture,
the most terrible through which she has ever passed, he was the
ruler of her Indian dominions.

An attack by sea on Bengal was little to be apprehended. The
danger was that the European enemies of England might form an
alliance with some native power, might furnish that power with
troops, arms, and ammunition, and might thus assail our
possessions on the side of the land. It was chiefly from the
Mahrattas that Hastings anticipated danger. The original seat of
that singular people was the wild range of hills which runs along
the western coast of India. In the reign of Aurungzebe the
inhabitants of those regions, led by the great Sevajee, began to
descend on the possessions of their wealthier and less warlike
neighbours. The energy, ferocity, and cunning of the Mahrattas,
soon made them the most conspicuous among the new powers which
were generated by the corruption of the decaying monarchy. At
first they were only robbers. They soon rose to the dignity of
conquerors. Half the provinces of the empire were turned into
Mahratta principalities, Freebooters, sprung from low castes, and
accustomed to menial employments, became mighty Rajahs. The
Bonslas, at the head of a band of plunderers, occupied the vast
region of Berar. The Guicowar, which is, being interpreted, the
Herdsman, founded that dynasty which still reigns in Guzerat. The
houses of Scindia and Holkar waxed great in Malwa. One
adventurous captain made his nest on the impregnable rock of
Gooti. Another became the lord of the thousand villages which are
scattered among the green rice-fields of Tanjore.

That was the time throughout India of double government. The form
and the power were everywhere separated. The Mussulman nabobs who
had become sovereign princes, the Vizier in Oude, and the Nizam
at Hyderabad, still called themselves the viceroys of the House
of Tamerlane. In the same manner the Mahratta states, though
really independent of each other, pretended to be members of one
empire. They all acknowledged, by words and ceremonies, the
supremacy of the heir of Sevajee, a roi faineant who chewed bang
and toyed with dancing girls in a state prison at Sattara, and of
his Peshwa or mayor of the palace, a great hereditary magistrate,
who kept a court with kingly state at Poonah, and whose authority
was obeyed in the spacious provinces of Aurungabad and Bejapoor.

Some months before wax was declared in Europe the Government of
Bengal was alarmed by the news that a French adventurer, who
passed for a man of quality, had arrived at Poonah. It was said
that he had been received there with great distinction, that he
had delivered to the Peshwa letters and presents from Louis the
Sixteenth, and that a treaty, hostile to England, had been
concluded between France and the Mahrattas.

Hastings immediately resolved to strike the first blow. The title
of the Peshwa was not undisputed. A portion of the Mahratta
nation was favourable to a pretender. The Governor General
determined to espouse this pretender's interest, to move an army
across the peninsula of India, and to form a close alliance with
the chief of the house of Bonsla, who ruled Berar, and who, in
power and dignity, was inferior to none of the Mahratta princes.

The army had marched, and the negotiations with Berar were in
progress, when a letter from the English consul at Cairo brought
the news that war had been proclaimed both in London and Paris.
All the measures which the crisis required were adopted by
Hastings without a moment's delay. The French factories in Bengal
were seized. Orders were sent to Madras that Pondicherry should
instantly be occupied. Near Calcutta works were thrown up which
were thought to render the approach of a hostile force
impossible. A maritime establishment was formed for the defence
of the river. Nine new battalions of sepoys were raised, and a
corps of native artillery was formed out of the hardy Lascars of
the Bay of Bengal. Having made these arrangements, the Governor-
General, with calm confidence, pronounced his presidency secure
from all attack, unless the Mahrattas should march against it in
conjunction with the French.

The expedition which Hastings had sent westward was not so
speedily or completely successful as most of his undertakings.
The commanding officer procrastinated. The authorities at Bombay
blundered. But the Governor-General persevered. A new commander
repaired the errors of his predecessor. Several brilliant actions
spread the military renown of the English through regions where
no European flag had ever been seen. It is probable that, if a
new and more formidable danger had not compelled Hastings to
change his whole policy, his plans respecting the Mahratta empire
would have been carried into complete effect.

The authorities in England had wisely sent out to Bengal, as
commander of the forces and member of the Council, one of the
most distinguished soldiers of that time. Sir Eyre Coote had,
many years before, been conspicuous among the founders of the
British empire in the East. At the council of war which preceded
the battle of Plassey, he earnestly recommended, in opposition to
the majority, that daring course which, after some hesitation,
was adopted, and which was crowned with such splendid success. He
subsequently commanded in the south of India against the brave
and unfortunate Lally, gained the decisive battle of Wandewash
over the French and their native allies, took Pondicherry, and
made the English power supreme in the Carnatic. Since those great
exploits near twenty years had elapsed. Coote had no longer the
bodily activity which he had shown in earlier days; nor was the
vigour of his mind altogether unimpaired. He was capricious and
fretful, and required much coaxing to keep him in good humour. It
must, we fear, be added that the love of money had grown upon
him, and that he thought more about his allowances, and less
about his duties, than might have been expected from so eminent a
member of so noble a profession. Still he was perhaps the ablest
officer that was then to be found in the British army. Among the
native soldiers his name was great and his influence unrivalled.
Nor is he yet forgotten by them. Now and then a white-bearded old
sepoy may still be found who loves to talk of Porto Novo and
Pollilore. It is but a short time since one of those aged men
came to present a memorial to an English officer, who holds one
of the highest employments in India. A print of Coote hung in the
room. The veteran recognised at once that face and figure which
he had not seen for more than half a century, and, forgetting his
salaam to the living, halted, drew himself up lifted his hand,
and with solemn reverence paid his military obeisance to the
dead.

Coote, though he did not, like Barwell, vote constantly with the
Governor-General, was by no means inclined to join in systematic
opposition, and on most questions concurred with Hastings, who
did his best, by assiduous courtship, and by readily granting the
most exorbitant allowances, to gratify the strongest passions of
the old soldier.

It seemed likely at this time that a general reconciliation would
put an end to the quarrels which had, during some years, weakened
and disgraced the Government of Bengal. The dangers of the empire
might well induce men of patriotic feeling--and of patriotic
feeling neither Hastings nor Francis was destitute--to forget
private enmities, and to co-operate heartily for the general
good. Coote had never been concerned in faction. Wheler was
thoroughly tired of it. Barwell had made an ample fortune, and,
though he had promised that he would not leave Calcutta while his
help was needed in Council, was most desirous to return to
England, and exerted himself to promote an arrangement which
would set him at liberty.

A compact was made, by which Francis agreed to desist from
opposition, and Hastings engaged that the friends of Francis
should be admitted to a fair share of the honours and emoluments
of the service. During a few months after this treaty there was
apparent harmony at the council-board.

Harmony, indeed, was never more necessary: for at this moment
internal calamities, more formidable than war itself menaced
Bengal. The authors of the Regulating Act Of 1773 had established
two independent powers, the one judicial, and the other
political; and, with a carelessness scandalously common in
English legislation, had omitted to define the limits of either.
The judges took advantage of the indistinctness, and attempted to
draw to themselves supreme authority, not only within Calcutta.
but through the whole of the great territory subject to the
Presidency of Fort William. There are few Englishmen who will not
admit that the English law, in spite of modern improvements, is
neither so cheap nor so speedy as might be wished. Still, it is a
system which has grown up among us. In some points it has been
fashioned to suit our feelings; in others, it has gradually
fashioned our feelings to suit itself. Even to its worst evils we
are accustomed; and therefore, though we may complain of them,
they do not strike us with the horror and dismay which would be
produced by a new grievance of smaller severity. In India the
case is widely different. English law, transplanted to that
country, has all the vices from which we suffer here; it has them
all in a far higher degree; and it has other vices, compared
with which the worst vices from which we suffer are trifles.
Dilatory here, it is far more dilatory in a land where the help
of an interpreter is needed by every judge and by every advocate.
Costly here, it is far more costly in a land into which the legal
practitioners must be imported from an immense distance. All
English labour in India, from the labour of the Governor-General
and the Commander-in-Chief, down to that of a groom or a
watchmaker, must be paid for at a higher rate than at home. No
man will be banished, and banished to the torrid zone, for
nothing. The rule holds good with respect to the legal
profession. No English barrister will work, fifteen thousand
miles from all his friends, with the thermometer at ninety-six in
the shade, for the emoluments which will content him in chambers
that overlook the Thames. Accordingly, the fees at Calcutta are
about three times as great as the fees of Westminster Hall; and
this, though the people of India are, beyond all comparison,
poorer than the people of England. Yet the delay and the expense,
grievous as they are, form the smallest part of the evil which
English law, imported without modifications into India, could not
fail to produce. The strongest feelings of our nature, honour,
religion, female modesty, rose up against the innovation. Arrest
on mesne process was the first step in most civil proceedings;
and to a native of rank arrest was not merely a restraint, but a
foul personal indignity. Oaths were required in every stage of
every suit; and the feeling of a quaker about an oath is hardly
stronger than that of a respectable native. That the apartments
of a woman of quality should be entered by strange men, or that
her face should be seen by them, are, in the East, intolerable
outrages, outrages which are more dreaded than death, and which
can be expiated only by the shedding of blood. To these outrages
the most distinguished families of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa were
now exposed. Imagine what the state of our own country would be,
if a jurisprudence were on a sudden introduced among us, which
should be to us what our jurisprudence was to our Asiatic
subjects. Imagine what the state of our country would be, if it
were enacted that any man, by merely swearing that a debt was due
to him, should acquire a right to insult the persons of men of
the most honourable and sacred callings and of women of the most
shrinking delicacy, to horsewhip a general officer, to put a
bishop in the stocks, to treat ladies in the way which called
forth the blow of Wat Tyler. Something like this was the effect
of the attempt which the Supreme Court made to extend its
jurisdiction over the whole of the Company's territory.

A reign of terror began, of terror heightened by mystery for even
that which was endured was less horrible than that which was
anticipated. No man knew what was next to be expected from this
strange tribunal. It came from beyond the black water, as the
people of India, with mysterious horror, call the sea. It
consisted of judges not one of whom was familiar with the usages
of the millions over whom they claimed boundless authority. Its
records were kept in unknown characters; its sentences were
pronounced in unknown sounds. It had already collected round
itself an army of the worst part the native population,
informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents
of chicane, and above all, a banditti of bailiffs followers,
compared with whom the retainers of the worst English sponging-
houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and
tender-hearted. Many natives, highly considered among their
countrymen, were seized, hurried up to Calcutta, flung into the
common gaol, not for any crime even imputed, not for any debt
that had been proved, but merely as a precaution till their cause
should come to trial There were instances in which men of the
most venerable dignity, persecuted without a cause by
extortioners, died of rage and shame in the gripe of the vile
alguazils of Impey. The harems of noble Mahommedans, sanctuaries
respected in the East by governments which respected nothing else,
were burst open by gangs of bailiffs. The Mussulmans, braver and
less accustomed to submission than the Hindoos, sometimes stood
on their defence; and there were instances in which they shed their
blood in the doorway, while defending, sword in hand, the sacred
apartments of their women. Nay, it seemed as if even the
faint-hearted Bengalee, who had crouched at the feet of Surajah
Dowlah, who had been mute during the administration of Vansittart,
would at length find courage in despair. No Mahratta invasion had
ever spread through the province such dismay as this inroad of
English lawyers. All the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic
and European, appeared as a blessing when compared with the justice
of the Supreme Court.

Every class of the population, English and native, with the
exception of the ravenous pettifoggers who fattened on the misery
and terror of an immense community, cried out loudly against this
fearful oppression. But the judges were immovable. If a bailiff
was resisted, they ordered the soldiers to be called out. If a
servant of the Company, in conformity with the orders of the
Government, withstood the miserable catchpoles who, with Impey's
writs in their hands, exceeded the insolence and rapacity of
gang-robbers, he was flung into prison for a contempt. The lapse
of sixty years, the virtue and wisdom of many eminent magistrates
who have during that time administered justice in the Supreme
Court, have not effaced from the minds of the people of Bengal
the recollection of those evil days.

The members of the Government were, on this subject, united as
one man. Hastings had courted the judges; he had found them
useful instruments; but he was not disposed to make them his own
masters, or the masters of India. His mind was large; his
knowledge of the native character most accurate. He saw that the
system pursued by the Supreme Court was degrading to the
Government and ruinous to the people; and he resolved to oppose
it manfully. The consequence was, that the friendship, if that be
the proper word for such a connection, which had existed between
him and Impey, was for a time completely dissolved. The
Government placed itself firmly between the tyrannical tribunal
and the people. The Chief Justice proceeded to the wildest
excesses. The Governor-General and all the members of Council
were served with writs, calling on them to appear before the
King's justices, and to answer for their public acts. This was
too much. Hastings, with just scorn, refused to obey the call,
set at liberty the persons wrongfully detained by the court, and
took measures for resisting the outrageous proceedings of the
sheriff's officers, if necessary, by the sword. But he had in
view another device, which might prevent the necessity of an
appeal to arms. He was seldom at a loss for an expedient; and he
knew Impey well. The expedient, in this case, was a very simple
one, neither more nor less than a bribe. Impey was, by Act of
Parliament, a judge, independent of the Government of Bengal, and
entitled to a salary of eight thousand a year. Hastings proposed
to make him also a judge in the Company's service, removable at
the pleasure of the Government of Bengal; and to give him, in
that capacity, about eight thousand a year more. It was
understood that, in consideration of this new salary, Impey would
desist from urging the high pretensions of his court. If he did
urge these pretensions, the Government could, at a moment's
notice, eject him from the new place which had been created for
him. The bargain was struck; Bengal was saved; an appeal to force
was averted; and the Chief Justice was rich, quiet and infamous.

Of Impey's conduct it is unnecessary to speak. It was of a piece
with almost every part of his conduct that comes under the notice
of history. No other such judge has dishonoured the English
ermine, since Jeffreys drank himself to death in the Tower. But
we cannot agree with those who have blamed Hastings for this
transaction. The case stood thus. The negligent manner in which
the Regulating Act had been framed put it in the power of the
Chief Justice to throw a great country into the most dreadful
confusion. He was determined to use his power to the utmost,
unless he was paid to be still; and Hastings consented to pay
him. The necessity was to be deplored. It is also to be deplored
that pirates should be able to exact ransom, by threatening to
make their captives walk the plank. But to ransom a captive from
pirates has always been held a humane and Christian act; and it
would be absurd to charge the payer of the ransom with corrupting
the virtue of the corsair. This, we seriously think, is a not
unfair illustration of the relative position of Impey, Hastings,
and the people of India. Whether it was right in Impey to demand
or to accept a price for powers which, if they really belonged to
him, he could not abdicate, which, if they did not belong to him,
he ought never to have usurped, and which in neither case he
could honestly sell, is one question. It is quite another
question whether Hastings was not right to give any sum, however
large, to any man, however worthless, rather than either
surrender millions of human being to pillage, or rescue them by
civil war.

Francis strongly opposed this arrangement. It may, indeed be
suspected that personal aversion to Impey was as strong motive
with Francis as regard for the welfare of the province. To a mind
burning with resentment, it might seem better to leave Bengal to
the oppressors than to redeem it by enriching them. It is not
improbable, on the other hand, that Hastings may have been the
more willing to resort to an expedient agreeable to the Chief
Justice, because that high functionary had already been so
serviceable, and might, when existing dissensions were composed,
be serviceable again.

But it was not on this point alone that Francis was now opposed
to Hastings. The peace between them proved to be only a short and
hollow truce, during which their mutual aversion was constantly
becoming stronger. At length an explosion took place. Hastings
publicly charged Francis with having deceived him, and with
having induced Barwell to quit the service by insincere promises.
Then came a dispute, such as frequently arises even between
honourable men, when they may make important agreements by mere
verbal communication. An impartial historian will probably be of
opinion that they had misunderstood each other: but their minds
were so much embittered that they imputed to each other nothing
less than deliberate villainy. "I do not," said Hastings, in a
minute recorded on the Consultations of the Government, "I do not
trust to Mr. Francis's promises of candour, convinced that he is
incapable of it. I judge of his public conduct by his private,
which I have found to be void of truth and honour." After the
Council had risen, Francis put a challenge into the Governor-
General's hand. It was instantly accepted. They met, and fired.
Francis was shot through the body. He was carried to a
neighbouring house, where it appeared that the wound, though
severe, was not mortal. Hastings inquired repeatedly after his
enemy's health, and proposed to call on him; but Francis coldly
declined the visit. He had a proper sense, he said, of the
Governor-General's politeness, but could not consent to any
private interview. They could meet only at the council-board.

In a very short time it was made signally manifest to how great a
danger the Governor-General had, on this occasion, exposed his
country. A crisis arrived with which he, and he alone, was
competent to deal. It is not too much to say that if he had been
taken from the head of affairs, the years 1780 and 1781 would have
been as fatal to our power in Asia as to our power in America.

The Mahrattas had been the chief objects of apprehension to
Hastings. The measures which he had adopted for the purpose of
breaking their power, had at first been frustrated by the errors
of those whom he was compelled to employ; but his perseverance and
ability seemed likely to be crowned with success, when a far more
formidable danger showed itself in a distant quarter.

About thirty years before this time, a Mahommedan soldier had
begun to distinguish himself in the wars of Southern India. His
education had been neglected; his extraction was humble. His
father had been a petty officer of revenue; his grandfather a
wandering dervise. But though thus meanly descended, though
ignorant even of the alphabet, the adventurer had no sooner been
placed at the head of a body of troops than he approved himself a
man born for conquest and command. Among the crowd of chiefs who
were struggling for a share of India, none could compare with him
in the qualities of the captain and the statesman. He became a
general; he became a sovereign. Out of the fragments of old
principalities, which had gone to pieces in the general wreck he
formed for himself a great, compact, and vigorous empire. That
empire he ruled with the ability, severity, and vigilance of
Lewis the Eleventh. Licentious in his pleasures, implacable in
his revenge, he had yet enlargement of mind enough to perceive
how much the prosperity of subjects adds to the strength of
governments. He was an oppressor; but he had at least the merit
of protecting his people against all oppression except his own.
He was now in extreme old age; but his intellect was as clear, and
his spirit as high, as in the prime of manhood. Such was the
great Hyder Ali, the founder of the Mahommedan kingdom of Mysore,
and the most formidable enemy with whom the English conquerors of
India have ever had to contend.

Had Hastings been governor of Madras, Hyder would have been
either made a friend, or vigorously encountered as an enemy.
Unhappily the English authorities in the south provoked their
powerful neighbour's hostility, without being prepared to repel
it. On a sudden, an army of ninety thousand men, far superior in
discipline and efficiency to any other native force that could be
found in India, came pouring through those wild passes which,
worn by mountain torrents, and dark with jungle, lead down
from the table-land of Mysore to the plains of the Carnatic.
This great army was accompanied by a hundred pieces of cannon;
and its movements were guided by many French officers, trained
in the best military schools of Europe.

Hyder was everywhere triumphant. The sepoys in many British
garrisons flung down their arms. Some forts were surrendered by
treachery, and some by despair. In a few days the whole open
country north of the Coleroon had submitted. The English
inhabitants of Madras could already see by night, from the top of
Mount St. Thomas, the eastern sky reddened by a vast semicircle
of blazing villages. The white villas, to which our countrymen
retire after the daily labours of government and of trade, when
the cool evening breeze springs up from the bay, were now left
without inhabitants; for bands of the fierce horsemen of Mysore
had already been seen prowling among the tulip-trees, and near
the gay verandas. Even the town was not thought secure, and the
British merchants and public functionaries made haste to crowd
themselves behind the cannon of Fort St. George.

There were the means, indeed, of assembling an army which might
have defended the presidency, and even driven the invader back to
his mountains. Sir Hector Munro was at the head of one
considerable force; Baillie was advancing with another. United,
they might have presented a formidable front even to such an
enemy as Hyder. But the English commanders, neglecting those
fundamental rules of the military art of which the propriety is
obvious even to men who had never received a military education,
deferred their junction, and were separately attacked. Baillie's
detachment was destroyed. Munro was forced to abandon his
baggage, to fling his guns into the tanks, and to save himself by
a retreat which might be called a flight. In three weeks from the
commencement of the war, the British empire in Southern India had
been brought to the verge of ruin. Only a few fortified places
remained to us. The glory of our arms had departed. It was known
that a great French expedition might soon be expected on the
coast of Coromandel. England, beset by enemies on every side, was
in no condition to protect such remote dependencies.

Then it was that the fertile genius and serene courage of
Hastings achieved their most signal triumph. A swift ship, flying
before the southwest monsoon, brought the evil tidings in few
days to Calcutta. In twenty-four hours the Governor-General had
framed a complete plan of policy adapted to the altered state of
affairs. The struggle with Hyder was a struggle for life and death.
All minor objects must be sacrificed to the preservation of the
Carnatic. The disputes with the Mahrattas must be accommodated.
A large military force and a supply of money must be instantly
sent to Madras. But even these measures would be insufficient,
unless the war, hitherto so grossly mismanaged, were placed
under the direction of a vigorous mind. It was no time for
trifling. Hastings determined to resort to an extreme exercise
of power, to suspend the incapable governor of Fort St. George,
to send Sir Eyre Coote to oppose Hyder, and to intrust that
distinguished general with the whole administration of the war.

In spite of the sullen opposition of Francis, who had now
recovered from his wound, and had returned to the Council, the
Governor-General's wise and firm policy was approved by the
majority of the Board. The reinforcements were sent off with
great expedition, and reached Madras before the French armament
arrived in the Indian seas. Coote, broken by age and disease, was
no longer the Coote of Wandewash; but he was still a resolute and
skilful commander. The progress of Hyder was arrested; and in a
few months the great victory of Porto Novo retrieved the honour
of the English arms.

In the meantime Francis had returned to England, and Hastings was
now left perfectly unfettered. Wheler had gradually been relaxing
in his opposition, and, after the departure of his vehement and
implacable colleague, cooperated heartily with the Governor-
General, whose influence over the British in India, always great,
had, by the vigour and success of his recent measures, been
considerably increased.

But, though the difficulties arising from factions within the
Council were at an end, another class of difficulties had become
more pressing than ever. The financial embarrassment was extreme.
Hastings had to find the means, not only of carrying on the
government of Bengal, but of maintaining a most costly war
against both Indian and European enemies in the Carnatic, and of
making remittances to England. A few years before this time he
had obtained relief by plundering the Mogul and enslaving the
Rohillas; nor were the resources of his fruitful mind by any
means exhausted.

His first design was on Benares, a city which in wealth,
population, dignity, and sanctity, was among the foremost of
Asia. It was commonly believed that half a million of human
beings was crowded into that labyrinth of lofty alleys, rich with
shrines, and minarets, and balconies, and carved oriels, to which
the sacred apes clung by hundreds. The traveller could scarcely
make his way through the press of holy mendicants and not less
holy bulls. The broad and stately flights of steps which
descended from these swarming haunts to the bathing-places along
the Ganges were worn every day by the footsteps of an innumerable
multitude of worshippers. The schools and temples drew crowds of
pious Hindoos from every province where the Brahminical faith was
known. Hundreds of devotees came thither every month to die: for
it was believed that a peculiarly happy fate awaited the man who
should pass from the sacred city into the sacred river. Nor was
superstition the only motive which allured strangers to that
great metropolis. Commerce had as many pilgrims as religion. All
along the shores of the venerable stream lay great fleets of
vessels laden with rich merchandise. From the looms of Benares
went forth the most delicate silks that adorned the balls of St.
James's and of the Petit Trianon; and in the bazars, the muslins
of Bengal and the sabres of Oude were mingled with the jewels of
Golconda and the shawls of Cashmere. This rich capital, and the
surrounding tract, had long been under the immediate rule of a
Hindoo prince, who rendered homage to the Mogul emperors. During
the great anarchy of India, the lords of Benares became
independent of the Court of Delhi, but were compelled to submit
to the authority of the Nabob of Oude. Oppressed by this
formidable neighbour, they invoked the protection of the English.
The English protection was given; and at length the Nabob Vizier,
by a solemn treaty, ceded all his rights over Benares to the
Company. From that time the Rajah was the vassal of the
Government of Bengal, acknowledged its supremacy, and engaged to
send an annual tribute to Fort William. This tribute Cheyte Sing,
the reigning prince, had paid with strict punctuality.

About the precise nature of the legal relation between the
Company and the Rajah of Benares, there has been much warm and
acute controversy. On the one side, it has been maintained that
Cheyte Sing was merely a great subject on whom the superior power
had a right to call for aid in the necessities of the empire. On
the other side, it has been contended that he was an independent
prince, that the only claim which the Company had upon him was
for a fixed tribute, and that, while the fixed tribute was
regularly paid, as it assuredly was, the English had no more
right to exact any further contribution from him than to demand
subsidies from Holland or Denmark. Nothing is easier than to find
precedents and analogies in favour of either view.

Our own impression is that neither view is correct. It was too
much the habit of English politicians to take it for granted that
there was in India a known and definite constitution by which
questions of this kind were to be decided. The truth is that,
during the interval which elapsed between the fall of the house
of Tamerlane and the establishment of the British ascendency,
there was no such constitution. The old order of things had
passed away; the new order of things was not yet formed. All was
transition, confusion, obscurity. Everybody kept his head as he
best might, and scrambled for whatever he could get. There have
been similar seasons in Europe. The time of the dissolution of
the Carlovingian empire is an instance. Who would think of
seriously discussing the question, what extent of pecuniary aid
and of obedience Hugh Capet had constitutional right to demand
from the Duke of Brittany or the Duke of Normandy? The words
"constitutional right" had, in that state of society, no meaning.
If Hugh Capet laid hands on all the possessions of the Duke of
Normandy, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would not be
illegal, in the sense in which the ordinances of Charles the Tenth
were illegal. If, on the other hand, the Duke of Normandy made
war on Hugh Capet, this might be unjust and immoral; but it would
not be illegal, in the sense in which the expedition of Prince
Louis Bonaparte was illegal.

Very similar to this was the state of India sixty years ago. Of
the existing governments not a single one could lay claim to
legitimacy, or could plead any other title than recent
occupation. There was scarcely a province in which the real
sovereignty and the nominal sovereignty were not disjoined.
Titles and forms were still retained which implied that the heir
of Tamerlane was an absolute ruler, and that the Nabobs of the
provinces were his lieutenants. In reality, he was a captive. The
Nabobs were in some places independent princes. In other places,
as in Bengal and the Carnatic, they had, like their master,
become mere phantoms, and the Company was supreme. Among the
Mahrattas, again, the heir of Sevajee still kept the title of
Rajah; but he was a prisoner, and his prime minister, the Peshwa,
had become the hereditary chief of the state. The Peshwa, in his
turn, was fast sinking into the same degraded situation into
which he had reduced the Rajah. It was, we believe, impossible to
find, from the Himalayas to Mysore, a single government which was
once a government de facto and a government de jure, which
possessed the physical means of making itself feared by its
neighbours and subjects, and which had at the same time the
authority derived from law and long prescription.

Hastings clearly discerned, what was hidden from most of his
contemporaries, that such a state of things gave immense
advantages to a ruler of great talents and few scruples. In every
international question that could arise, he had his option
between the de facto ground and the de jure ground; and the
probability was that one of those grounds would sustain any claim
that it might be convenient for him to make, and enable him to
resist any claim made by others. In every controversy,
accordingly, he resorted to the plea which suited his immediate
purpose, without troubling himself in the least about
consistency; and thus he scarcely ever failed to find what, to
persons of short memories and scanty information, seemed to be a
justification for what he wanted to do. Sometimes the Nabob of
Bengal is a shadow, sometimes a monarch. Sometimes the Vizier is
a mere deputy, sometimes an independent potentate. If it is
expedient for the Company to show some legal title to the
revenues of Bengal, the grant under the seal of the Mogul is
brought forward as an instrument of the highest authority. When
the Mogul asks for the rents which were reserved to him by that
very grant, he is told that he is a mere pageant, that the
English power rests on a very different foundation from a charter
given by him, that he is welcome to play at royalty as long as he
likes, but that he must expect no tribute from the real masters
of India.

It is true that it was in the power of others, as well as of
Hastings, to practise this legerdemain; but in the controversies
of governments, sophistry is of little use unless it be backed by
power. There is a principle which Hastings was fond of asserting
in the strongest terms, and on which he acted with undeviating
steadiness. It is a principle which, we must own, though it may
be grossly abused, can hardly be disputed in the present state of
public law. It is this, that where an ambiguous question arises
between two governments, there is, if they cannot agree, no
appeal except to force, and that the opinion of the stronger must
prevail. Almost every question was ambiguous in India. The
English Government was the strongest in India. The consequences
are obvious. The English Government might do exactly what it
chose.

The English Government now chose to wring money out of Cheyte
Sing. It had formerly been convenient to treat him as a sovereign
prince; it was now convenient to treat him as a subject.
Dexterity inferior to that of Hastings could easily find, in the
general chaos of laws and customs, arguments for either course.
Hastings wanted a great supply. It was known that Cheyte Sing had
a large revenue, and it was suspected that he had accumulated a
treasure. Nor was he a favourite at Calcutta. He had, when the
Governor-General was in great difficulties, courted the favour of
Francis and Clavering. Hastings, who, less perhaps from evil
passions than from policy, seldom left an injury unpunished, was
not sorry that the fate of Cheyte Sing should teach neighbouring
princes the same lesson which the fate of Nuncomar had already
impressed on the inhabitants of Bengal.

In 1778, on the first breaking out of the war with France, Cheyte
Sing was called upon to pay, in addition to his fixed tribute, an
extraordinary contribution of fifty thousand pounds. In 1779, an
equal sum was exacted. In 1780, the demand was renewed. Cheyte
Sing, in the hope of obtaining some indulgence, secretly offered
the Governor-General a bribe of twenty thousand pounds. Hastings
took the money, and his enemies have maintained that he took it
intending to keep it. He certainly concealed the transaction, for
a time, both from the Council in Bengal and from the Directors at
home; nor did he ever give any satisfactory reason for the
concealment. Public spirit, or the fear of detection, at last
determined him to withstand the temptation. He paid over the
bribe to the Company's treasury, and insisted that the Rajah
should instantly comply with the demands of the English
Government. The Rajah, after the fashion of his countrymen,
shuffled, solicited, and pleaded poverty. The grasp of Hastings
was not to be so eluded. He added to the requisition another ten
thousand pounds as a fine for delay, and sent troops to exact the
money.

The money was paid. But this was not enough. The late events in
the south of India had increased the financial embarrassments of
the Company. Hastings was determined to plunder Cheyte Sing, and,
for that end, to fasten a quarrel on him. Accordingly, the Rajah
was now required to keep a body of cavalry for the service of the
British Government. He objected and evaded. This was exactly what
the Governor-General wanted. He had now a pretext for treating
the wealthiest of his vassals as a criminal. "I resolved,"--these
were the words of Hastings himself,--"to draw from his guilt the
means of relief of the Company's distresses, to make him pay
largely for his pardon, or to exact a severe vengeance for past
delinquency." The plan was simply this, to demand
larger and larger contributions till the Rajah should be driven
to remonstrate, then to call his remonstrance a crime, and to
punish him by confiscating all his possessions.

Cheyte Sing was in the greatest dismay. He offered two hundred
thousand pounds to propitiate the British Government. But
Hastings replied that nothing less than half a million would be
accepted. Nay, he began to think of selling Benares to Oude, as
he had formerly sold Allahabad and Rohilcund. The matter was one
which could not be well managed at a distance; and Hastings
resolved to visit Benares.

Cheyte Sing received his liege lord with every mark of reverence,
came near sixty miles, with his guards, to meet and escort the
illustrious visitor, and expressed his deep concern at the
displeasure of the English. He even took off his turban, and laid
it in the lap of Hastings, a gesture which in India marks the
most profound submission and devotion. Hastings behaved with cold
and repulsive severity. Having arrived at Benares, he sent to the
Rajah a paper containing the demands of the Government of Bengal.
The Rajah, in reply, attempted to clear himself from the
accusations brought against him. Hastings, who wanted money and
not excuses, was not to be put off by the ordinary artifices of
Eastern negotiation. He instantly ordered the Rajah to be
arrested and placed under the custody of two companies of sepoys.

In taking these strong measures, Hastings scarcely showed his
usual judgment. It is possible that, having had little
opportunity of personally observing any part of the population of
India, except the Bengalees, he was not fully aware of the
difference between their character and that of the tribes which
inhabit the upper provinces. He was now in a land far more
favourable to the vigour of the human frame than the Delta of the
Ganges; in a land fruitful of soldiers, who have been found
worthy to follow English battalions to the charge and into the
breach. The Rajah was popular among his subjects. His
administration had been mild; and the prosperity of the district
which he governed presented a striking contrast to the depressed
state of Bahar under our rule, and a still more striking contrast
to the misery of the provinces which were cursed by the tyranny
of the Nabob Vizier. The national and religious prejudices with
which the English were regarded throughout India were peculiarly
intense in the metropolis of the Brahminical superstition. It can
therefore scarcely he doubted that the Governor-General, before
he outraged the dignity of Cheyte Sing by an arrest, ought to
have assembled a force capable of bearing down all opposition.
This had not been done. The handful of sepoys who attended
Hastings would probably have been sufficient to overawe
Moorshedabad, or the Black Town of Calcutta. But they were
unequal to a conflict with the hardy rabble of Benares. The
streets surrounding the palace were filled by an immense
multitude, of whom a large proportion, as is usual in Upper
India, wore arms. The tumult became a fight, and the fight a
massacre. The English officers defended themselves with desperate
courage against overwhelming numbers, and fell, as became them,
sword in hand. The sepoys were butchered. The gates were forced.
The captive prince, neglected by his gaolers, during the
confusion, discovered an outlet which opened on the precipitous
bank of the Ganges, let himself down to the water by a string
made of the turbans of his attendants, found a boat, and escaped
to the opposite shore.

If Hastings had, by indiscreet violence, brought himself into a
difficult and perilous situation, it is only just to acknowledge
that he extricated himself with even more than his usual ability
and presence of mind. He had only fifty men with him. The
building in which he had taken up his residence was on every side
blockaded by the insurgents, But his fortitude remained unshaken.
The Rajah from the other side of the river sent apologies and
liberal offers. They were not even answered. Some subtle and
enterprising men were found who undertook to pass through the
throng of enemies, and to convey the intelligence of the late
events to the English cantonments. It is the fashion of the
natives of India to wear large earrings of gold. When they
travel, the rings are laid aside, lest the precious metal should
tempt some gang of robbers; and, in place of the ring, a quill or
a roll of paper is inserted in the orifice to prevent it from
closing. Hastings placed in the cars of his messengers letters
rolled up in the smallest compass. Some of these letters were
addressed to the commanders of English troops. One was written to
assure his wife of his safety. One was to the envoy whom he had
sent to negotiate with the Mahrattas. Instructions for the
negotiation were needed; and the Governor-General framed them in
that situation of extreme danger, with as much composure as if he
had been writing in his palace at Calcutta.

Things, however, were not yet at the worst. An English officer of
more spirit than judgment, eager to distinguish himself, made a
premature attack on the insurgents beyond the river. His troops
were entangled in narrow streets, and assailed by a furious
population. He fell, with many of his men; and the survivors were
forced to retire.

This event produced the effect which has never failed to follow
every check, however slight, sustained in India by the English
arms. For hundreds of miles round, the whole country was in
commotion. The entire population of the district of Benares took
arms. The fields were abandoned by the husbandmen, who thronged
to defend their prince. The infection spread to Oude. The
oppressed people of that province rose up against the Nabob
Vizier, refused to pay their imposts, and put the revenue
officers to flight. Even Bahar was ripe for revolt. The hopes of
Cheyte Sing began to rise. Instead of imploring mercy in the
humble style of a vassal, he began to talk the language of a
conqueror, and threatened, it was said, to sweep the white
usurpers out of the land. But the English troops were now
assembling fast. The officers, and even the private men, regarded
the Governor-General with enthusiastic attachment, and flew to
his aid with an alacrity which, as he boasted, had never been
shown on any other occasion. Major Popham, a brave and skilful
soldier, who had highly distinguished himself in the Mahratta
war, and in whom the Governor-General reposed the greatest
confidence, took the command. The tumultuary army of the Rajah
was put to rout. His fastnesses were stormed. In a few hours,
above thirty thousand men left his standard, and returned to
their ordinary avocations. The unhappy prince fled from his
country for ever. His fair domain was added to the British
dominions. One of his relations indeed was appointed rajah; but
the Rajah of Benares was henceforth to be, like the Nabob of
Bengal, a mere pensioner.

By this revolution, an addition of two hundred thousand pounds a
year was made to the revenues of the Company. But the immediate
relief was not as great as had been expected. The treasure laid
up by Cheyte Sing had been popularly estimated at a million
sterling. It turned out to be about a fourth part of that sum;
and, such as it was, it was seized by the army, and divided as
prize-money.

Disappointed in his expectations from Benares, Hastings was more
violent than he would otherwise have been, in his dealings with
Oude. Sujah Dowlah had long been dead. His son and successor,
Asaph-ul-Dowlah, was one of the weakest and most vicious even of
Eastern princes. His life was divided between torpid repose and
the most odious forms of sensuality. In his court there was
boundless waste, throughout his dominions wretchedness and
disorder. He had been, under the skilful management of the
English Government, gradually sinking from the rank of an
independent prince to that of a vassal of the Company. It was
only by the help of a British brigade that he could be secure
from the aggressions of neighbours who despised his weakness, and
from the vengeance of subjects who detested his tyranny. A
brigade was furnished, and he engaged to defray the charge of
paying and maintaining it. From that time his independence was at
an end. Hastings was not a man to lose the advantage which he had
thus gained. The Nabob soon began to complain of the burden which
he had undertaken to bear. His revenues, he said, were falling
off; his servants were unpaid; he could no longer support the
expense of the arrangement which he had sanctioned. Hastings
would not listen to these representations. The Vizier, he said,
had invited the Government of Bengal to send him troops, and had
promised to pay for them. The troops had been sent. How long the
troops were to remain in Oude was a matter not settled by the
treaty. It remained, therefore, to be settled between the
contracting parties. But the contracting parties differed. Who
then must decide? The stronger.

Hastings also argued that, if the English force was withdrawn,
Oude would certainly become a prey to anarchy, and would probably
be overrun by a Mahratta army. That the finances of Oude were
embarrassed he admitted, But he contended, not without reason,
that the embarrassment was to be attributed to the incapacity and
vices of Asaph-ul-Dowlah himself, and that if less were spent on
the troops, the only effect would be that more would be
squandered on worthless favourites.

Hastings, had intended, after settling the affairs of Benares, to
visit Lucknow, and there to confer with Asaph-ul-Dowlah. But the
obsequious courtesy of the Nabob Vizier prevented this visit.
With a small train he hastened to meet the Governor-General. An
interview took place in the fortress which, from the crest of the
precipitous rock of Chunar, looks down on the waters of the
Ganges.

At first sight it might appear impossible that the negotiation
should come to an amicable close. Hastings wanted an
extraordinary supply of money. Asaph-ul-Dowlah wanted to obtain a
remission of what he already owed. Such a difference seemed to
admit of no compromise. There was, however, one course
satisfactory to both sides, one course by which it wan possible
to relieve the finances both of Oude and of Bengal; and that
course was adopted. It was simply this, that the Governor-General
and the Nabob Vizier should join to rob a third party; and the
third party whom they determined to rob was the parent of one of
the robbers.

The mother of the late Nabob and his wife, who was the mother of
the present Nabob, were known as the Begums or Princesses of
Oude. They had possessed great influence over Sujah Dowlah, and
had, at his death, been left in possession of a splendid
dotation. The domains of which they received the rents and
administered the government were of wide extent. The treasure
hoarded by the late Nabob, a treasure which was popularly
estimated at near three millions sterling, was in their hands.
They continued to occupy his favourite palace at Fyzabad, the
Beautiful Dwelling; while Asaph-ul-Dowlah held his court in the
stately Lucknow, which he had built for himself on the shores of
the Goomti, and had adorned with noble mosques and colleges.

Asaph-ul-Dowlah had already extorted considerable sums from his
mother. She had at length appealed to the English; and the
English had interfered. A solemn compact had been made, by which
she consented to give her son some pecuniary assistance, and he
in his turn promised never to commit any further invasion of her
rights. This compact was formally guaranteed by the Government of
Bengal. But times had changed; money was wanted; and the power
which had given the guarantee was not ashamed to instigate the
spoiler to excesses such that even he shrank from them.

It was necessary to find some pretext for a confiscation
inconsistent, not merely with plighted faith, not merely with the
ordinary rules of humanity and justice, but also with that great
law of filial piety which, even in the wildest tribes of savages,
even in those more degraded communities which wither under the
influence of a corrupt half-civilisation, retains a certain
authority over the human mind. A pretext was the last thing that
Hastings was likely to want. The insurrection at Benares had
produced disturbances in Oude. These disturbances it was
convenient to impute to the Princesses. Evidence for the
imputation there was scarcely any; unless reports wandering from
one mouth to another, and gaining something by every
transmission, may be called evidence. The accused were furnished
with no charge; they were permitted to make no defence for the
Governor-General wisely considered that, if he tried them, he
might not be able to find a ground for plundering them. It was
agreed between him and the Nabob Vizier that the noble ladies
should, by a sweeping act of confiscation, be stripped of their
domains and treasures for the benefit of the Company, and that
the sums thus obtained should be accepted by the Government of
Bengal in satisfaction of its claims on the Government of Oude.

While Asaph-ul-Dowlah was at Chunar, he was completely subjugated
by the clear and commanding intellect of the English statesman.
But, when they had separated, the Vizier began to reflect with
uneasiness on the engagements into which he had entered. His
mother and grandmother protested and implored. His heart, deeply
corrupted by absolute power and licentious pleasures, yet not
naturally unfeeling, failed him in this crisis. Even the English
resident at Lucknow, though hitherto devoted to Hastings, shrank
from extreme measures. But the Governor-General was inexorable.
He wrote to the resident in terms of the greatest severity, and
declared that, if the spoliation which had been agreed upon were
not instantly carried into effect, he would himself go to
Lucknow, and do that from which feebler minds recoil with dismay.
The resident, thus menaced, waited on his Highness, and insisted
that the treaty of Chunar should be carried into full and
immediate effect. Asaph-ul-Dowlah yielded making at the same time
a solemn protestation that he yielded to compulsion. The lands
were resumed; but the treasure was not so easily obtained. It was
necessary to use violence. A body of the Company's troops marched
to Fyzabad, and forced the gates of the palace. The Princesses
were confined to their own apartments. But still they refused to
submit. Some more stringent mode of coercion was to be found. A
mode was found of which, even at this distance of time, we cannot
speak without shame and sorrow.

There were at Fyzabad two ancient men, belonging to that unhappy
class which a practice, of immemorial antiquity in the East, has
excluded from the pleasures of love and from the hope of
posterity. It has always been held in Asiatic courts that beings
thus estranged from sympathy with their kind are those whom
princes may most safely trust. Sujah Dowlah had been of this
opinion. He had given his entire confidence to the two eunuchs;
and after his death they remained at the head of the household of
his widow.

These men were, by the orders of the British Government, seized,
imprisoned, ironed, starved almost to death, in order to extort
money from the Princesses. After they had been two months in
confinement, their health gave way. They implored permission to
take a little exercise in the garden of their prison. The officer
who was in charge of them stated that, if they were allowed this
indulgence, there was not the smallest chance of their escaping,
and that their irons really added nothing to the security of the
custody in which they were kept. He did not understand the plan
of his superiors. Their object in these inflictions was not
security but torture; and all mitigation was refused. Yet this
was not the worst. It was resolved by an English government that
these two infirm old men should be delivered to the tormentors.
For that purpose they were removed to Lucknow. What horrors their
dungeon there witnessed can only be guessed. But there remains on
the records of Parliament, this letter, written by a British
resident to a British soldier:

"Sir, the Nabob having determined to inflict corporal punishment
upon the prisoners under your guard, this is to desire that his
officers, when they shall come, may have free access to the
prisoners, and be permitted to do with them as they shall see
proper."

While these barbarities were perpetrated at Lucknow, the
Princesses were still under duress at Fyzabad. Food was allowed
to enter their apartments only in such scanty quantities that
their female attendants were in danger of perishing with hunger.
Month after month this cruelty continued, till at length, after
twelve hundred thousand pounds had been wrung out of the
Princesses, Hastings began to think that he had really got to the
bottom of their coffers, arid that no rigour could extort more.
Then at length the wretched men who were detained at Lucknow
regained their liberty. When their irons were knocked off, and
the doors of their prison opened, their quivering lips, the tears
which ran down their cheeks, and the thanksgivings which they
poured forth to the common Father of Mussulmans and Christians,
melted even the stout hearts of the English warriors who stood
by.

But we must not forget to do justice to Sir Elijah Impey's
conduct on this occasion. It was not indeed easy for him to
intrude himself into a business so entirely alien from all his
official duties. But there was something inexpressibly alluring,
we must suppose, in the peculiar rankness of the infamy which was
then to be got at Lucknow. He hurried thither as fast as relays
of palanquin-bearers could carry him. A crowd of people came
before him with affidavits against the Begums, ready drawn in
their hands. Those affidavits he did not read. Some of them,
indeed, he could not read; for they were in the dialects of
Northern India, and no interpreter was employed. He administered
the oath to the deponents with all possible expedition, and asked
not a single question, not even whether they had perused the
statements to which they swore. This work performed, he got
again into his palanquin, and posted back to Calcutta, to be
in time for the opening of term. The cause was one which, by
his own confession, lay altogether out of his jurisdiction.
Under the charter of justice, he had no more right to inquire
into crimes committed by Asiatics in Oude than the Lord
President of the Court of Session of Scotland to hold an
assize at Exeter. He had no right to try the Begums, nor did he
pretend to try them. With what object, then, did he undertake so
long a journey? Evidently in order that he might give, in an
irregular manner, that sanction which in a regular manner he
could not give, to the crimes of those who had recently hired
him; and in order that a confused mass of testimony which he did
not sift, which he did not even read, might acquire an authority
not properly belonging to it, from the signature of the highest
judicial functionary in India.

The time was approaching, however, when he was to be stripped of
that robe which has never, since the Revolution, been disgraced
so foully as by him. The state of India had for some time
occupied much of the attention of the British Parliament. Towards
the close of the American war, two committees of the Commons sat
on Eastern affairs. In one Edmund Burke took the lead. The other
was under the presidency of the able and versatile Henry Dundas,
then Lord Advocate of Scotland. Great as are the changes which,
during the last sixty years, have taken place in our Asiatic
dominions, the reports which those committees laid on the table
of the House will still be found most interesting and
instructive.

There was as yet no connection between the Company and either of
the great parties in the State. The ministers had no motive to
defend Indian abuses. On the contrary, it was for their interest
to show, if possible, that the government and patronage of our
Oriental empire might, with advantage, be transferred to
themselves, The votes, therefore, which, in consequence of the
reports made by the two committees, were passed by the Commons,
breathed the spirit of stern and indignant justice. The severest
epithets were applied to several of the measures of Hastings,
especially to the Rohilla war; and it was resolved, on the
motion of Mr. Dundas, that the Company ought to recall a
Governor-General who had brought such calamities on the Indian
people, and such dishonour on the British name. An act was passed
for limiting the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. The bargain
which Hastings had made with the Chief Justice was condemned in
the strongest terms; and an address was presented to the King,
praying that Impey might be summoned home to answer for his
misdeeds.

Impey was recalled by a letter from the Secretary of State. But
the proprietors of India Stock resolutely refused to dismiss
Hastings from their service, and passed a resolution affirming,
what was undeniably true, that they were intrusted by law with
the right of naming and removing their Governor-General, and that
they were not bound to obey the directions of a single branch of
the legislature with respect to such nomination or removal.

Thus supported by his employers, Hastings remained at the head of
the Government of Bengal till the spring of 1785. His
administration, so eventful and stormy, closed in almost perfect
quiet. In the Council there was no regular opposition to his
measures. Peace was restored to India. The Mahratta war had
ceased. Hyder was no more. A treaty had been concluded with his
son, Tippoo; and the Carnatic had been evacuated by the armies of
Mysore. Since the termination of the American war, England had no
European enemy or rival in the Eastern seas.

On a general review of the long administration of Hastings, it is
impossible to deny that, against the great crimes by which it is
blemished, we have to set off great public services. England had
passed through a perilous crisis. She still, indeed, maintained
her place in the foremost rank of European powers; and the manner
in which she had defended herself against fearful odds had
inspired surrounding nations with a high opinion both of her
spirit and of her strength. Nevertheless, in every part of the
world, except one, she had been a loser. Not only had she been
compelled to acknowledge the independence of thirteen colonies
peopled by her children, and to conciliate the Irish by giving up
the right of legislating for them; but, in the Mediterranean, in
the Gulf of Mexico, on the coast of Africa, on the continent of
America, she had been compelled to cede the fruits of her
victories in former wars. Spain regained Minorca and Florida;
France regained Senegal, Goree, and several West Indian Islands.
The only quarter of the world in which Britain had lost nothing
was the quarter in which her interests had been committed to the
care of Hastings. In spite of the utmost exertions both of
European and Asiatic enemies, the power of our country in the
East had been greatly augmented. Benares was subjected, the Nabob
Vizier reduced to vassalage. That our influence had been thus
extented, nay, that Fort William and Fort St. George had not been
occupied by hostile armies, was owing, if we may trust the
general voice of the English in India, to the skill and
resolution of Hastings.

His internal administration, with all its blemishes, gives him a
title to be considered as one of the most remarkable men in our
history. He dissolved the double government. He transferred the
direction of affairs to English hands. Out of a frightful
anarchy, he educed at least a rude and imperfect order. The whole
organisation by which justice was dispensed, revenue collected,
peace maintained throughout a territory not inferior in
population to the dominions of Lewis the Sixteenth or the Emperor
Joseph, was formed and superintended by him. He boasted that
every public office, without exception, which existed when he
left Bengal, was his creation. It is quite true that this system,
after all the improvements suggested by the experience of sixty
years, still needs improvement, and that it was at first far more
defective than it now is. But whoever seriously considers what it
is to construct from the beginning the whole of a machine so vast
and complex as a government, will allow that what Hastings
effected deserves high admiration. To compare the most celebrated
European ministers to him seems to us as unjust as it would be to
compare the best baker in London with Robinson Crusoe, who,
before he could bake a single loaf, had to make his plough and
his harrow, his fences and his scarecrows, his sickle and his
flail, his mill and his oven.

The just fame of Hastings rises still higher, when we reflect
that he was not bred a statesman; that he was sent from school to
a counting-house; and that he was employed during the prime of
his manhood as a commercial agent, far from all intellectual
society.

Nor must we forget that all, or almost all, to whom, when placed
at the head of affairs, he could apply for assistance, were
persons who owed as little as himself, or less than himself, to
education. A minister in Europe finds himself, on the first day
on which he commences his functions, surrounded by experienced
public servants, the depositaries of official traditions.
Hastings had no such help. His own reflection, his own energy,
were to supply the place of all Downing Street and Somerset
House. Having had no facilities for learning, he was forced to
teach. He had first to form himself, and then to form his
instruments; and this not in a single department, but in all the
departments of the administration.

It must be added that, while engaged in this most arduous task,
he was constantly trammelled by orders from home, and frequently
borne down by a majority in Council. The preservation of an
Empire from a formidable combination of foreign enemies, the
construction of a government in all its parts, were accomplished
by him, while every ship brought out bales of censure from his
employers, and while the records of every consultation were
filled with acrimonious minutes by his colleagues. We believe
that there never was a public man whose temper was so severely
tried; not Marlborough, when thwarted by the Dutch Deputies; not
Wellington, when he had to deal at once with the Portuguese
Regency, the Spanish juntas, and Mr. Percival. But the temper of
Hastings was equal to almost any trial. It was not sweet; but it
was calm. Quick and vigorous as his intellect was, the patience
with which he endured the most cruel vexations, till a remedy
could be found, resembled the patience of stupidity. He seems to
have been capable of resentment, bitter and long enduring; yet
his resentment so seldom hurried him into any blunder, that it
may be doubted whether what appeared to be revenge was anything
but policy.

The effect of this singular equanimity was that he always had the
full command of all the resources of one of the most fertile
minds that ever existed. Accordingly no complication of perils
and embarrassments could perplex him. For every difficulty he had
a contrivance ready; and, whatever may be thought of the justice
and humanity of some of his contrivances, it is certain that they
seldom failed to serve the purpose for which they were designed.

Together with this extraordinary talent for devising expedients,
Hastings possessed, in a very high degree, another talent
scarcely less necessary to a man in his situation; we mean the
talent for conducting political controversy. It is as necessary
to an English statesman in the East that he should be able to
write, as it is to a minister in this country that he should be
able to speak. It is chiefly by the oratory of a public man here
that the nation judges of his powers. It is from the letters and
reports of a public man in India that the dispensers of patronage
form their estimate of him. In each case, the talent which
receives peculiar encouragement is developed, perhaps at the
expense of the other powers. In this country, we sometimes hear
men speak above their abilities. It is not very unusual to find
gentlemen in the Indian service who write above their abilities.
The English politician is a little too much of a debater; the
Indian politician a little too much of an essayist.

Of the numerous servants of the Company who have distinguished
themselves as framers of minutes and despatches, Hastings stands
at the head. He was indeed the person who gave to the official
writing of the Indian governments the character which it still
retains. He was matched against no common antagonist. But even
Francis was forced to acknowledge, with sullen and resentful
candour, that there was no contending against the pen of
Hastings. And, in truth, the Governor-General's power of making
out a case, of perplexing what it was inconvenient that people
should understand, and of setting in the clearest point of view
whatever would bear the light, was incomparable. His style must
be praised with some reservation. It was in general forcible,
pure, and polished; but it was sometimes, though not often,
turgid, and, on one or two occasions, even bombastic. Perhaps the
fondness of Hastings for Persian literature may have tended to
corrupt his taste.

And, since we have referred to his literary tastes, it would be
most unjust not to praise the judicious encouragement which, as a
ruler, he gave to liberal studies and curious researches. His
patronage was extended, with prudent generosity, to voyages,
travels, experiments, publications. He did little, it is true,
towards introducing into India the learning of the West. To make
the young natives of Bengal familiar with Milton and Adam Smith,
to substitute the geography, astronomy, and surgery of Europe for
the dotages of the Brahminical superstition, or for the imperfect
science of ancient Greece transfused through Arabian expositions,
this was a scheme reserved to crown the beneficent administration
of a far more virtuous ruler. Still it is impossible to refuse
high commendation to a man who, taken from a ledger to govern an
empire, overwhelmed by public business, surrounded by people as
busy as himself and separated by thousands of leagues from almost
all literary society, gave, both by his example and by his
munificence, a great impulse to learning. In Persian and Arabic
literature he was deeply skilled. With the Sanscrit he was not
himself acquainted; but those who first brought that language to
the knowledge of European students owed much to his
encouragement. It was under his protection that the Asiatic
Society commenced its honourable career. That distinguished body
selected him to be its first president; but, with excellent taste
and feeling, he declined the honour in favour of Sir William
Jones. But the chief advantage which the students of Oriental
letters derived from his patronage remains to be mentioned. The
Pundits of Bengal had always looked with great jealousy on the
attempts of foreigners to pry into those mysteries which were
locked up in the sacred dialect. The Brahminical religion had
been persecuted by the Mahommedans. What the Hindoos knew of the
spirit of the Portuguese Government might warrant them in
apprehending persecution from Christians. That apprehension, the
wisdom and moderation of Hastings removed. He was the first
foreign ruler who succeeded in gaining the confidence of the
hereditary priests of India, and who induced them to lay open to
English scholars the secrets of the old Brahminical theology and
jurisprudence.

It is indeed impossible to deny that, in the great art of
inspiring large masses of human beings with confidence and
attachment, no ruler ever surpassed Hastings. If he had made
himself popular with the English by giving up the Bengalees to
extortion and oppression, or if, on the other hand, he had
conciliated the Bengalees and alienated the English, there would
have been no cause for wonder. What is peculiar to him is that,
being the chief of a small band of strangers, who exercised
boundless power over a great indigenous population, he made
himself beloved both by the subject many and by the dominant few.
The affection felt for him by the civil service was singularly
ardent and constant. Through all his disasters and perils, his
brethren stood by him with steadfast loyalty. The army, at the
same time, loved him as armies have seldom loved any but the
greatest chiefs who have led them to victory. Even in his
disputes with distinguished military men, he could always count
on the support of the military profession. While such was his
empire over the hearts of his countrymen, he enjoyed among the
natives a popularity, such as other governors have perhaps better
merited, but such as no other governor has been able to attain.
He spoke their vernacular dialects with facility and precision.
He was intimately acquainted with their feelings and usages. On
one or two occasions, for great ends, he deliberately acted in
defiance of their opinion; but on such occasions he gained more
in their respect than he lost in their love, In general, he
carefully avoided all that could shock their national or
religious prejudices. His administration was indeed in many
respects faulty; but the Bengalee standard of good government was
not high. Under the Nabobs, the hurricane of Mahratta cavalry had
passed annually over the rich alluvial plain. But even the
Mahratta shrank from a conflict with the mighty children of the
sea; and the immense rich harvests of the Lower Ganges were
safely gathered in under the protection of the English sword. The
first English conquerors had been more rapacious and merciless
even than the Mahrattas--but that generation had passed away.
Defective as was the police, heavy as were the public burdens, it
is probable that the oldest man in Bengal could not recollect a
season of equal security and prosperity. For the first time
within living memory, the province was placed under a government
strong enough to prevent others from robbing, and not inclined to
play the robber itself. These things inspired goodwill. At the
same time, the constant success of Hastings and the manner in
which he extricated himself from every difficulty made him an
object of superstitious admiration; and the more than regal
splendour which he sometimes displayed dazzled a people who have
much in common with children. Even now, after the lapse of more
than fifty years, the natives of India still talk of him as the
greatest of the English; and nurses sing children to sleep with
a jingling ballad about the fleet horses and richly caparisoned
elephants of Sahib Warren Hostein.

The gravest offence of which Hastings was guilty did not affect
his popularity with the people of Bengal; for those offences were
committed against neighbouring states. Those offences, as our
readers must have perceived, we are not disposed to vindicate;
yet, in order that the censure may be justly apportioned to the
transgression, it is fit that the motive of the criminal should
be taken into consideration. The motive which prompted the worst
acts of Hastings was misdirected and ill-regulated public spirit.
The rules of justice, the sentiments of humanity, the plighted
faith of treaties, were in his view as nothing, when opposed to
the immediate interest of the State. This is no justification,
according to the principles either of morality, or of what we
believe to be identical with morality, namely, far-sighted
policy. Nevertheless the common sense of mankind, which in
questions of this sort seldom goes far wrong, will always
recognise a distinction between crimes which originate in an
inordinate zeal for the commonwealth, and crimes which originate
in selfish cupidity. To the benefit of this distinction Hastings
is fairly entitled. There is, we conceive, no reason to suspect
that the Rohilla war, the revolution of Benares, or the
spoliation of the Princesses of Oude, added a rupee to his
fortune. We will not affirm that, in all pecuniary dealings, he
showed that punctilious integrity, that dread of the faintest
appearance of evil, which is now the glory of the Indian civil
service. But when the school in which he had been trained, and
the temptations to which he was exposed are considered, we are
more inclined to praise him for his general uprightness with
respect to money, than rigidly to blame him for a few
transactions which would now be called indelicate and irregular,
but which even now would hardly be designated as corrupt. A
rapacious man he certainly was not. Had he been so, he would
infallibly have returned to his country the richest subject in
Europe. We speak within compass, when we say that, without
applying any extraordinary pressure, he might easily have
obtained from the zemindars of the Company's provinces and from
neighbouring princes, in the course of thirteen years, more than
three millions sterling, and might have outshone the splendour of
Carlton House and of the Palais Royal. He brought home a fortune
such as a Governor-General, fond of state, and careless of
thrift, might easily, during so long a tenure of office, save out
of his legal salary. Mrs. Hastings, we are afraid, was less
scrupulous. It was generally believed that she accepted presents
with great alacrity, and that she thus formed, without the
connivance of her husband, a private hoard amounting to several
lacs of rupees. We are the more inclined to give credit to this
story, because Mr. Gleig, who cannot but have heard it, does not,
as far as we have observed, notice or contradict it.

The influence of Mrs. Hastings over her husband was indeed such
that she might easily have obtained much larger sums than she was
ever accused of receiving. At length her health began to give
way; and the Governor-General, much against his will, was
compelled to send her to England. He seems to have loved her with
that love which is peculiar to men of strong minds, to men whose
affection is not easily won or widely diffused. The talk of
Calcutta ran for some time on the luxurious manner in which he
fitted up the round-house of an Indiaman for her accommodation,
on the profusion of sandal-wood and carved ivory which adorned
her cabin, and on the thousands of rupees which had been expended
in order to procure for her the society of an agreeable female
companion during the voyage. We may remark here that the letters
of Hastings to his wife are exceedingly characteristic. They are
tender, and full of indications of esteem and confidence; but, at
the same time, a little more ceremonious than is usual in so
intimate a relation. The solemn courtesy with which he
compliments "his elegant Marian" reminds us now and then of the
dignified air with which Sir Charles Grandison bowed over Miss
Byron's hand in the cedar parlour.

After some months, Hastings prepared to follow his wife to
England. When it was announced that he was about to quit his
office, the feeling of the society which he had so long governed
manifested itself by many signs. Addresses poured in from
Europeans and Asiatics, from civil functionaries, soldiers, and
traders. On the day on which he delivered up the keys of office,
a crowd of friends and admirers formed a lane to the quay where
he embarked. Several barges escorted him far down the river; and
some attached friends refused to quit him till the low coast of
Bengal was fading from the view, and till the pilot was leaving
the ship.

Of his voyage little is known, except that he amused himself with
books and with his pen; and that, among the compositions by which
he beguiled the tediousness of that long leisure, was a pleasing
imitation of Horace's Otium Divos rogat. This little poem was
inscribed to Mr. Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth, a man of
whose integrity, humanity, and honour, it is impossible to speak
too highly, but who, like some other excellent members of the
civil service, extended to the conduct of his friend Hastings an
indulgence of which his own conduct never stood in need.

The voyage was, for those times, very speedy. Hastings was little
more than four months on the sea. In June 1785, he landed at
Plymouth, posted to London, appeared at Court, paid his respects
in Leadenhall Street, and then retired with his wife to
Cheltenham.

He was greatly pleased with his reception. The King treated him
with marked distinction. The Queen, who had already incurred much
censure on account of the favour which, in spite of the ordinary
severity of her virtue, she had shown to the "elegant Marian,"
was not less gracious to Hastings. The Directors received him in
a solemn sitting; and their chairman read to him a vote of thanks
which they had passed without one dissentient voice. "I find
myself," said Hastings, in a letter written about a quarter of a
year after his arrival in England, "I find myself everywhere, and
universally, treated with evidences, apparent even to my own
observation, that I possess the good opinion of my country."

The confident and exulting tone of his correspondence about this
time is the more remarkable, because he had already received
ample notice of the attack which was in preparation. Within a
week after he landed at Plymouth, Burke gave notice in the House
of Commons of a motion seriously affecting a gentleman lately
returned from India. The Session, however, was then so far
advanced, that it was impossible to enter on so extensive and
important a subject.

Hastings, it is clear, was not sensible of the danger of his
position. Indeed that sagacity, that judgment, that readiness in
devising expedients, which had distinguished him in the East,
seemed now to have forsaken him; not that his abilities were at
all impaired; not that he was not still the same man who had
triumphed over Francis and Nuncomar, who had made the Chief
justice and the Nabob Vizier his tools, who had deposed Cheyte
Sing, and repelled Hyder Ali. But an oak, as Mr. Grattan finely
said, should not be transplanted at fifty. A man who having left
England when a boy, returns to it after thirty or forty years
passed in India, will find, be his talents what they may, that he
has much both to learn and to unlearn before he can take a place
among English statesmen. The working of a representative system,
the war of parties, the arts of debate, the influence of the
press, are startling novelties to him. Surrounded on every side
by new machines and new tactics, he is as much bewildered as
Hannibal would have been at Waterloo, or Themistocles at
Trafalgar. His very acuteness deludes him. His very vigour causes
him to stumble. The more correct his maxims, when applied to the
state of society to which he is accustomed, the more certain they
are to lead him astray. This was strikingly the case with
Hastings. In India he had a bad hand; but he was master of the
game, and he won every stake. In England he held excellent cards,
if he had known how to play them; and it was chiefly by his own
errors that he was brought to the verge of ruin.

Of all his errors the most serious was perhaps the choice of a
champion. Clive, in similar circumstances, had made a singularly
happy selection. He put himself into the hands of Wedderburn,
afterwards Lord Loughborough, one of the few great advocates who
have also been great in the House of Commons. To the defence of
Clive, therefore, nothing was wanting, neither learning nor
knowledge of the world, neither forensic acuteness nor that
eloquence which charms political assemblies. Hastings intrusted
his interests to a very different person, a Major in the Bengal
army, named Scott. This gentleman had been sent over from India
some time before as the agent of the Governor-General. It was
rumoured that his services were rewarded with Oriental
munificence; and we believe that he received much more than
Hastings could conveniently spare. The Major obtained a seat in
Parliament, and was there regarded as the organ of his employer.
It was evidently impossible that a gentleman so situated could
speak with the authority which belongs to an independent
position. Nor had the agent of Hastings the talents necessary for
obtaining the ear of an assembly which, accustomed to listen to
great orators, had naturally become fastidious. He was always on
his legs; he was very tedious; and he had only one topic, the
merits and wrongs of Hastings. Everybody who knows the House of
Commons will easily guess what followed. The Major was soon
considered as the greatest bore of his time. His exertions were
not confined to Parliament. There was hardly a day on which the
newspapers did not contain some puff upon Hastings, signed
Asiaticus or Bengalensis, but known to be written by the
indefatigable Scott; and hardly a month in which some bulky
pamphlet on the same subject, and from the same pen, did not pass
to the trunkmakers and the pastry-cooks. As to this gentleman's
capacity for conducting a delicate question through Parliament,
our readers will want no evidence beyond that which they will
find in letters preserved in these volumes. We will give a single
specimen of his temper and judgment. He designated the greatest
man then living as "that reptile Mr. Burke."

In spite, however, of this unfortunate choice, the general aspect
of affairs was favourable to Hastings. The King was on his side.
The Company and its servants were zealous in his cause. Among
public men he had many ardent friends. Such were Lord Mansfield,
who had outlived the vigour of his body, but not that of his
mind; and Lord Lansdowne, who, though unconnected with any party,
retained the importance which belongs to great talents and
knowledge. The ministers were generally believed to be favourable
to the late Governor-General. They owed their power to the
clamour which had been raised against Mr. Fox's East India Bill.
The authors of that bill, when accused of invading vested rights,
and of setting up powers unknown to the constitution, had
defended themselves by pointing to the crimes of Hastings, and by
arguing that abuses so extraordinary justified extraordinary
measures. Those who, by opposing that bill, had raised themselves
to the head of affairs, would naturally be inclined to extenuate
the evils which had been made the plea for administering so
violent a remedy; and such, in fact, was their general
disposition. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow, in particular, whose
great place and force of intellect gave him a weight in the
Government inferior only to that of Mr. Pitt, espoused the cause
of Hastings with indecorous violence. Mr. Pitt, though he had
censured many parts of the Indian system, had studiously
abstained from saying a word against the late chief of the Indian
Government. To Major Scott, indeed, the young minister had in
private extolled Hastings as a great, a wonderful man, who had
the highest claims on the Government. There was only one
objection to granting all that so eminent a servant of the public
could ask. The resolution of censure still remained on the
journals of the House of Commons. That resolution was, indeed,
unjust; but, till it was rescinded, could the minister advise the
King to bestow any mark of approbation on the person censured? If
Major Scott is to be trusted, Mr. Pitt declared that this was the
only reason which prevented the advisers of the Crown from
conferring a peerage on the late Governor-General. Mr. Dundas was
the only important member of the administration who was deeply
committed to a different view of the subject. He had moved the
resolution which created the difficulty; but even from him little
was to be apprehended. Since he had presided over the committee
on Eastern affairs, great changes had taken place. He was
surrounded by new allies; he had fixed his hopes on new objects;
and whatever may have been his good qualities,--and he had many,--
flattery itself never reckoned rigid consistency in the number.

From the Ministry, therefore, Hastings had every reason to expect
support; and the Ministry was very powerful. The Opposition was
loud and vehement against him. But the Opposition, though
formidable from the wealth and influence of some of its members,
and from the admirable talents and eloquence of others, was
outnumbered in Parliament, and odious throughout the country.
Nor, as far as we can judge, was the Opposition generally
desirous to engage in so serious an undertaking as the
impeachment of an Indian Governor. Such an impeachment must last
for years. It must impose on the chiefs of the party an immense
load of labour. Yet it could scarcely, in any manner, affect the
event of the great political game. The followers of the coalition
were therefore more inclined to revile Hastings than to prosecute
him. They lost no opportunity of coupling his name with the names
of the most hateful tyrants of whom history makes mention. The
wits of Brooks's aimed their keenest sarcasms both at his public
and at his domestic life. Some fine diamonds which he had
presented, as it was rumoured, to the royal family, and a certain
richly-carved ivory bed which the Queen had done him the honour
to accept from him, were favourite subjects of ridicule. One
lively poet proposed, that the great acts of the fair Marian's
present husband should be immortalised by the pencil of his
predecessor; and that Imhoff should be employed to embellish the
House of Commons with paintings of the bleeding Rohillas, of
Nuncomar swinging, of Cheyte Sing letting himself down to the
Ganges. Another, in an exquisitely humorous parody of Virgil's
third eclogue, propounded the question, what that mineral could
be of which the rays had power to make the most austere of
princesses the friend of a wanton. A third described, with gay
malevolence, the gorgeous appearance of Mrs. Hastings at St.
James's, the galaxy of jewels, torn from Indian Begums, which
adorned her head-dress, her necklace gleaming with future votes,
and the depending questions that shone upon her ears. Satirical
attacks of this description, and perhaps a motion for a vote of
censure, would have satisfied the great body of the Opposition.
But there were two men whose indignation was not to be so
appeased, Philip Francis and Edmund Burke.

Francis had recently entered the House of Commons, and had
already established a character there for industry and ability.
He laboured indeed under one most unfortunate defect, want of
fluency. But he occasionally expressed himself with a dignity and
energy worthy of the greatest orators, Before he had been many
days in Parliament, he incurred the bitter dislike of Pitt, who
constantly treated him with as much asperity as the laws of
debate would allow. Neither lapse of years nor change of scene
had mitigated the enmities which Francis had brought back from
the East. After his usual fashion, he mistook his malevolence for
virtue, nursed it, as preachers tell us that we ought to nurse
our good dispositions, and paraded it, on all occasions, with
Pharisaical ostentation.

The zeal of Burke was still fiercer; but it was far purer. Men
unable to understand the elevation of his mind, have tried to
find out some discreditable motive for the vehemence and
pertinacity which he showed on this occasion. But they have
altogether failed. The idle story that he had some private
slight to revenge has long been given up, even by the advocates
of Hastings. Mr. Gleig supposes that Burke was actuated by party
spirit, that he retained a bitter remembrance of the fall of the
coalition, that he attributed that fall to the exertions of the
East India interest, and that he considered Hastings as the head
and the representative of that interest. This explanation seems
to be sufficiently refuted by a reference to dates. The hostility
of Burke to Hastings commenced long before the coalition; and
lasted long after Burke had become a strenuous supporter of those
by whom the coalition had been defeated. It began when Burke and
Fox, closely allied together, were attacking the influence of the
Crown, and calling for peace with the American republic. It
continued till Burke, alienated from Fox, and loaded with the
favours of the Crown, died, preaching a crusade against the
French republic. We surely cannot attribute to the events of 1784
an enmity which began in 1781, and which retained undiminished
force long after persons far more deeply implicated than Hastings
in the events of 1784 had been cordially forgiven. And why should
we look for any other explanation of Burke's conduct than that
which we find on the surface? The plain truth is that Hastings
had committed some great crimes, and that the thought of those
crimes made the blood of Burke boil in his veins. For Burke was a
man in whom compassion for suffering, and hatred of injustice and
tyranny, were as strong as in Las Casas or Clarkson. And although
in him, as in Las Casas and in Clarkson, these noble feelings
were alloyed with the infirmity which belongs to human nature, he
is, like them, entitled to this great praise, that he devoted
years of intense labour to the service of a people with whom he
had neither blood nor language, neither religion nor manners in
common, and from whom no requital, no thanks, no applause could
be expected.

His knowledge of India was such as few, even of those Europeans
who have passed many years in that country have attained, and
such as certainly was never attained by any public man who had
not quitted Europe. He had studied the history, the laws, and the
usages of the East with an industry, such as is seldom found
united to so much genius and so much sensibility. Others have
perhaps been equally laborious, and have collected an equal mass
of materials. But the manner in which Burke brought his higher
powers of intellect to work on statements of facts, and on tables
of figures, was peculiar to himself. In every part of those huge
bales of Indian information which repelled almost all other
readers, his mind, at once philosophical and poetical, found
something to instruct or to delight. His reason analysed and
digested those vast and shapeless masses; his imagination
animated and coloured them. Out of darkness, and dulness, and
confusion, he formed a multitude of ingenious theories and vivid
pictures. He had, in the highest degree, that noble faculty
whereby man is able to live in the past and in the future, in the
distant and in the unreal. India and its inhabitants were not to
him, as to most Englishmen, mere names and abstractions, but a
real country and a real people. The burning sun, the strange
vegetation of the palm and the cocoa-tree, the rice-field, the
tank, the huge trees, older than the Mogul empire, under which
the village crowds assemble, the thatched roof of the peasant's
hut, the rich tracery of the mosque where the imaum prays with
his face to Mecca, the drums, and banners, and gaudy idols, the
devotee swinging in the air, the graceful maiden, with the
pitcher on her head, descending the steps to the riverside, the
black faces, the long beards, the yellow streaks of sect, the
turbans and the flowing robes, the spears and the silver maces,
the elephants with their canopies of state, the gorgeous
palanquin of the prince, and the close litter of the noble lady,
all these things were to him as the objects amidst which his own
life had been passed, as the objects which lay on the road
between Beaconsfield and St. James's Street. All India was
present to the eye of his mind, from the hall where suitors laid
gold and perfumes at the feet of sovereigns to the wild moor
where the gipsy camp was pitched, from the bazar, humming like a
bee-hive with the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle
where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of iron rings to scare
away the hyaenas. He had just as lively an idea of the
insurrection at Benares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of
the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution of Dr. Dodd.
Oppression in Bengal was to him the same thing as oppression in
the streets of London.

He saw that Hastings had been guilty of some most unjustifiable
acts. All that followed was natural and necessary in a mind like
Burke's. His imagination and his passions, once excited, hurried
him beyond the bounds of justice and good sense. His reason,
powerful as it was, became the slave of feelings which it should
have controlled. His indignation, virtuous in its origin,
acquired too much of the character of personal aversion. He could
see no mitigating circumstance, no redeeming merit. His temper,
which, though generous and affectionate, had always been
irritable, had now been made almost savage by bodily infirmities
and mental vexations, Conscious of great powers and great
virtues, he found himself, in age and poverty, a mark for the
hatred of a perfidious Court and a deluded people. In Parliament
his eloquence was out of date. A young generation, which knew him
not, had filled the House. Whenever he rose to speak, his voice
was drowned by the unseemly interruption of lads who were in
their cradles when his orations on the Stamp Act called forth the
applause of the great Earl of Chatham. These things had produced
on his proud and sensitive spirit an effect at which we cannot
wonder. He could no longer discuss any question with calmness, or
make allowance for honest differences of opinion. Those who think
that he was more violent and acrimonious in debates about India
than on other occasions, are ill-informed respecting the last
years of his life. In the discussions on the Commercial Treaty
with the Court of Versailles, on the Regency, on the French
Revolution, he showed even more virulence than in conducting the
impeachment. Indeed it may be remarked that the very persons who
called him a mischievous maniac, for condemning in burning words
the Rohilla war and the spoliation of the Begums, exalted him
into a prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater
vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the
Bastile and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he
appears to have been neither a maniac in the former case, nor a
prophet in the latter, but in both cases a great and good man,
led into extravagance by a sensibility which domineered over all
his faculties.

It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis, or
the nobler indignation of Burke, would have led their party to
adopt extreme measures against Hastings, if his own conduct had
been judicious. He should have felt that, great as his public
services had been, he was not faultless, and should have been
content to make his escape, without aspiring to the honours of a
triumph. He and his agent took a different view. They were
impatient for the rewards which, as they conceived, it were
deferred only till Burke's attack should be over. They
accordingly resolved to force on a decisive action with an enemy
for whom, if they had been wise, they would have made a bridge of
gold. On the first day of the session of 1786, Major Scott
reminded Burke of the notice given in the preceding year, and
asked whether it was seriously intended to bring any charge
against the late Governor-General. This challenge left no course
open to the Opposition, except to come forward as accusers, or to
acknowledge themselves calumniators. The administration of
Hastings had not been so blameless, nor was the great party of
Fox and North so feeble, that it could be prudent to venture on
so bold a defiance. The leaders of the Opposition instantly
returned the only answer which they could with honour return; and
the whole party was irrevocably pledged to a prosecution.

Burke began his operations by applying for Papers. Some of the
documents for which he asked were refused by, the ministers, who,
in the debate, held language such as strongly confirmed the
prevailing opinion, that they intended to support Hastings. In
April, the charges were laid on the table. They had been drawn by
Burke with great ability, though in a form too much resembling
that of a pamphlet. Hastings was furnished with a copy of the
accusation; and it was intimated to him that he might, if he
thought fit, be heard in his own defence at the bar of the
Commons.

Here again Hastings was pursued by the same fatality which had
attended him ever since the day when he set foot on English
ground. It seemed to be decreed that this man, so politic and so
successful in the East, should commit nothing but blunders in
Europe. Any judicious adviser would have told him that the best
thing which he could do would be to make an eloquent, forcible,
and affecting oration at the bar of the House; but that, if he
could not trust himself to speak, and found it necessary to read,
he ought to be as concise as possible. Audiences accustomed to
extemporaneous debating of the highest excellence are always
impatient of long written compositions. Hastings, however, sat
down as he would have done at the Government-house in Bengal, and
prepared a paper of immense length. That paper, if recorded on
the consultations of an Indian administration, would have been
justly praised as a very able minute. But it was now out of
place. It fell flat, as the best written defence must have fallen
flat, on an assembly accustomed to the animated and strenuous
conflicts of Pitt and Fox. The members, as soon as their
curiosity about the face and demeanour of so eminent a stranger
was satisfied, walked away to dinner, and left Hastings to tell
his story till midnight to the clerks and the Serjeant-at-Arms.

All preliminary steps having been duly taken, Burke, in the
beginning of June, brought forward the charge relating to the
Rohilla war. He acted discreetly in placing this accusation in
the van; for Dundas had formerly moved, and the House had
adopted, a resolution condemning, in the most severe terms,
the policy followed by Hastings with regard to Rohilcund, Dundas
had little, or rather nothing, to say in defence of his own
consistency; but he put a bold face on the matter, and opposed
the motion. Among other things, he declared that, though he still
thought the Rohilla war unjustifiable, he considered the services
which Hastings had subsequently rendered to the State as
sufficient to atone even for so great an offence Pitt did not
speak, but voted with Dundas; and Hastings was absolved by a
hundred and nineteen votes against sixty-seven.

Hastings was now confident of victory. It seemed, indeed, that he
had reason to be so. The Rohilla war was, of all his measures,
that which his accusers might with greatest advantage assail. It
had been condemned by the Court of Directors. It had been
condemned by the House of Commons. It had been condemned by Mr.
Dundas, who had since become the chief minister of the Crown for
Indian affairs. Yet Burke, having chosen this strong ground, had
been completely defeated on it. That, having failed here, he
should succeed on any point, was generally thought impossible. It
was rumoured at the clubs and coffee-houses that one or perhaps
two more charges would be brought forward, that if, on those
charges, the sense of the House of Commons should be against
impeachment, the Opposition would let the matter drop, that
Hastings would be immediately raised to the peerage, decorated
with the star of the Bath, sworn of the Privy Council, and
invited to lend the assistance of his talents and experience to
the India Board. Lord Thurlow, indeed, some months before, had
spoken with contempt of the scruples which prevented Pitt from
calling Hastings to the House of Lords; and had even said that,
if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was afraid of the Commons,
there was nothing to prevent the Keeper of the Great Seal from
taking the royal pleasure about a patent of peerage. The very
title was chosen. Hastings was to be Lord Daylesford. For,
through all changes of scene and changes of fortune, remained
unchanged his attachment to the spot which had witnessed the
greatness and the fall of his family, and which had borne so
great a part in the first dreams of his young ambition.

But in a very few days these fair prospects were overcast. On the
thirteenth of June, Mr. Fox brought forward, with great ability
and eloquence, the charge respecting the treatment of Cheyte
Sing. Francis followed on the same side. The friends of Hastings
were in high spirits when Pitt rose. With his usual abundance and
felicity of language, the Minister gave his opinion on the case.
He maintained that the Governor-General was justified in calling
on the Rajah of Benares for pecuniary assistance, and in imposing
a fine when that assistance was contumaciously withheld. He also
thought that the conduct of the Governor-General during the
insurrection had been distinguished by ability and presence of
mind. He censured, with great bitterness, the conduct of Francis,
both in India and in Parliament, as most dishonest and malignant.
The necessary inference from Pitt's arguments seemed to be that
Hastings ought to be honourably acquitted; and both the friends
and the opponents of the Minister expected from him a declaration
to that effect. To the astonishment of all parties, he concluded
by saying that, though he thought it right in Hastings to fine
Cheyte Sing for contumacy, yet the amount of the fine was too
great for the occasion. On this ground, and on this ground alone,
did Mr. Pitt, applauding every other part of the conduct of
Hastings with regard to Benares, declare that he should vote in
favour of Mr. Fox's motion.

The House was thunderstruck; and it well might be so. For the
wrong done to Cheyte Sing, even had it been as flagitious as Fox
and Francis contended, was a trifle when compared with the
horrors which had been inflicted on Rohilcund. But if Mr. Pitt's
view of the case of Cheyte Sing were correct, there was no ground
for an impeachment, or even for a vote of censure. If the offence
of Hastings was really no more than this, that, having a right to
impose a mulct, the amount of which mulct was not defined, but
was left to be settled by his discretion, he had, not for his own
advantage, but for that of the State, demanded too much, was
this an offence which required a criminal proceeding of the
highest solemnity, a criminal proceeding, to which during sixty
years, no public functionary had been subjected? We can see, we
think, in what way a man of sense and integrity might have been
induced to take any course respecting Hastings, except the course
which Mr. Pitt took. Such a man might have thought a great
example necessary, for the preventing of injustice, and for the
vindicating of the national honour, and might, on that ground,
have voted for impeachment both on the Rohilla charge, and on the
Benares charge. Such a man might have thought that the offences
of Hastings had been atoned for by great services, and might, on
that ground, have voted against the impeachment, on both charges.
With great diffidence, we give it as our opinion that the most
correct course would, on the whole, have been to impeach on the
Rohilla charge, and to acquit on the Benares charge. Had the
Benares charge appeared to us in the same light in which it
appeared to Mr. Pitt, we should, without hesitation, have voted
for acquittal on that charge. The one course which it is
inconceivable that any man of a tenth part of Mr. Pitt's
abilities can have honestly taken was the course which he took.
He acquitted Hastings on the Rohilla charge. He softened down the
Benares charge till it became no charge at all; and then he
pronounced that it contained matter for impeachment.

Nor must it be forgotten that the principal reason assigned by
the ministry for not impeaching Hastings on account of the
Rohilla war was this, that the delinquencies of the early part of
his administration had been atoned for by the excellence of the
later part. Was it not most extraordinary that men who had held
this language could afterwards vote that the later part of his
administration furnished matter for no less than twenty articles
of impeachment? They first represented the conduct of Hastings in
1780 and 1781 as so highly meritorious that, like works of
supererogation in the Catholic theology, it ought to be
efficacious for the cancelling of former offences; and they then
prosecuted him for his conduct in 1780 and 1781.

The general astonishment was the greater, because, only twenty-
four hours before, the members on whom the minister could depend
had received the usual notes from the Treasury, begging them to
be in their places and to vote against Mr. Fox's motion. It was
asserted by Mr. Hastings, that, early on the morning of the very
day on which the debate took place, Dundas called on Pitt, woke
him, and was, closeted with him many hours. The result of this
conference was a determination to give up the late Governor-
General to the vengeance of the Opposition. It was impossible
even for the most powerful minister to carry all his followers
with him in so strange a course. Several persons high in office,
the Attorney-General, Mr. Grenville, and Lord Mulgrave, divided
against Mr. Pitt. But the devoted adherents who stood by the head
of the Government without asking questions, were sufficiently
numerous to turn the scale. A hundred and nineteen members voted
for Mr. Fox's motion; seventy-nine against it. Dundas silently
followed Pitt.

That good and great man, the late William Wilberforce, often
related the events of this remarkable night. He described the
amazement of the House, and the bitter reflections which were
muttered against the Prime Minister by some of the habitual
supporters of Government. Pitt himself appeared to feel that his
conduct required some explanation. He left the treasury bench,
sat for some time next to Mr. Wilberforce, and very earnestly
declared that he had found it impossible, as a man of conscience,
to stand any longer by Hastings. The business, he said, was too
bad. Mr. Wilberforce, we are bound to add, fully believed that
his friend was sincere, and that the suspicions to which this
mysterious affair gave rise were altogether unfounded.

Those suspicions, indeed, were such as it is painful to mention.
The friends of Hastings, most of whom, it is to be observed,
generally supported the administration, affirmed that the motive
of Pitt and Dundas was jealousy. Hastings was personally a
favourite with the King. He was the idol of the East India
Company and of its servants. If he were absolved by the Commons,
seated among the Lords, admitted to the Board of Control, closely
allied with the strong-minded and imperious Thurlow, was it not
almost certain that he would soon draw to himself the entire
management of Eastern affairs?

Was it not possible that he might become a formidable rival in
the Cabinet? It had probably got abroad that very singular
communications had taken place between Thurlow and Major Scott,
and that, if the First Lord of the Treasury was afraid to
recommend Hastings for a peerage, the Chancellor was ready to
take the responsibility of that step on himself. Of all
ministers, Pitt was the least likely to submit with patience to
such an encroachment on his functions. If the Commons impeached
Hastings, all danger was at an end. The proceeding, however it
might terminate, would probably last some years. In the meantime,
the accused person would be excluded from honours and public
employments, and could scarcely venture even to pay his duty at
Court. Such were the motives attributed by a great part of the
public to the young minister, whose ruling passion was generally
believed to be avarice of power.

The prorogation soon interrupted the discussions respecting
Hastings. In the following year, those discussions were resumed.
The charge touching the spoliation of the Begums was brought
forward by Sheridan, in a speech which was so imperfectly
reported that it may be said to be wholly lost, but which was
without doubt, the most elaborately brilliant of all the
productions of his ingenious mind. The impression which it
produced was such as has never been equalled. He sat down, not
merely amidst cheering, but amidst the loud clapping of hands,
in which the Lords below the bar and the strangers in the
gallery joined. The excitement of the House was such that no
other speaker could obtain a hearing; and the debate was
adjourned. The ferment spread fast through the town. Within
four and twenty hours, Sheridan was offered a thousand pounds for
the copyright of the speech, if he would himself correct it for
the press. The impression made by this remarkable display of
eloquence on severe and experienced critics, whose discernment
may be supposed to have been quickened by emulation, was deep and
permanent. Mr. Windham, twenty years later, said that the speech
deserved all its fame, and was, in spite of some faults of taste,
such as were seldom wanting either in the literary or in the
parliamentary performances of Sheridan, the finest that had been
delivered within the memory of man. Mr. Fox, about the same time,
being asked by the late Lord Holland what was the best speech
ever made in the House of Commons, assigned the first place,
without hesitation, to the great oration of Sheridan on the Oude
charge.

When the debate was resumed, the tide ran so strongly against the
accused that his friends were coughed and scraped down. Pitt
declared himself for Sheridan's motion; and the question was
carried by a hundred and seventy-five votes against sixty-eight.

The Opposition, flushed with victory and strongly supported by
the public sympathy, proceeded to bring forward a succession of
charges relating chiefly to pecuniary transactions. The friends
of Hastings were discouraged, and, having now no hope of being
able to avert an impeachment, were not very strenuous in their
exertions. At length the House, having agreed to twenty articles
of charge, directed Burke to go before the Lords, and to impeach
the late Governor-General of High Crimes and Misdemeanours.
Hastings was at the same time arrested by the Serjeant-at-Arms,
and carried to the bar of the Peers.

The session was now within ten days of its close. It was,
therefore, impossible that any progress could be made in the
trial till the next year. Hastings was admitted to bail; and
further proceedings were postponed till the Houses should re-
assemble.

When Parliament met in the following winter, the Commons
proceeded to elect a Committee for managing the impeachment. Burke
stood at the head; and with him were associated most of the
leading members of the Opposition. But when the name of Francis
was read a fierce contention arose. It was said that Francis and
Hastings were notoriously on bad terms, that they had been at
feud during many years, that on one occasion their mutual
aversion had impelled them to seek each other's lives, and that
it would be improper and indelicate to select a private enemy to
be a public accuser. It was urged on the other side with great
force, particularly by Mr. Windham, that impartiality, though the
first duty of a judge, had never been reckoned among the
qualities of an advocate; that in the ordinary administration of
criminal justice among the English, the aggrieved party, the very
last person who ought to be admitted into the jury-box, is the
prosecutor; that what was wanted in a manager was, not that he
should be free from bias, but that he should be able, well
informed, energetic, and active. The ability and information of
Francis were admitted; and the very animosity with which he was
reproached, whether a virtue or a vice, was at least a pledge for
his energy and activity. It seems difficult to refute these
arguments. But the inveterate hatred borne by Francis to Hastings
had excited general disgust. The House decided that Francis
should not be a manager. Pitt voted with the majority, Dundas
with the minority.

In the meantime, the preparations for the trial had proceeded
rapidly; and on the thirteenth of February, 1788, the sittings of
the Court commenced. There have been spectacles more dazzling to
the eye, more gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more
attractive to grown-up children, than that which was then
exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a
spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a
reflecting, and imaginative mind. All the various kinds of
interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the
present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one
hour. All the talents and all the accomplishments which are
developed by liberty and civilisation were now displayed, with
every advantage that could be derived both from cooperation and
from contrast Every step in the proceedings carried the mind
either backward, through many troubled centuries, to the days
when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or far away,
over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living under
strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange
characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was
to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the
Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over
the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the
princely house of Oude.

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of
William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at
the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed
the just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the
hall where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and
melted a victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall
where Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the
placid courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military
nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with
grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers,
robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under
Garter King-at-Arms. The judges in their vestments of state
attended to give advice on points of law. Near a hundred and
seventy lords, three-fourths of the Upper House as the Upper
House then was, walked in solemn order from their usual place of
assembling to the tribunal. The junior Baron present led the way,
George Eliott, Lord Heathfield, recently ennobled for his
memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets and armies of
France and Spain. The long procession was closed by the Duke of
Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great dignitaries, and
by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all came the Prince
of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble bearing. The
grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long galleries were
crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited the fears or
the emulation of an orator. There were gathered together, from
all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and prosperous empire,
grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, the
representatives of every science and of every art. There were
seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the
house of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and
Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other
country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of
her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing
all the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman
Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of
Sicily against Verres, and when, before a senate which still
retained some show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the
oppressor of Africa. There were seen, side by side, the greatest
painter and the greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had
allured Reynolds from that easel which has preserved to us the
thoughtful foreheads of so many writers and statesmen, and the
sweet smiles of to many noble matrons. It had induced Parr to
suspend his labours in that dark and profound mine from which he
had extracted a vast treasure of erudition, a treasure too often
buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious and
inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid.

There appeared the voluptuous charms of her to whom the heir of
the throne had in secret plighted his faith. There too was she,
the beautiful mother of a beautiful race, the Saint Cecilia,
whose delicate features, lighted up by love and music, art has
rescued from the common decay. There were the members of that
brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and exchanged
repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. Montague. And
there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than those of Fox
himself, had carried the Westminster election against palace and
treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.

The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar,
and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that
great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country,
had made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and
pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne
himself, that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and
that hatred itself could deny him no title to glory, except
virtue. He looked like a great man, and not like a bad man. A
person small and emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage
which, while it indicated deference to the Court, indicated also
habitual self-possession and self-respect, a high and
intellectual forehead, a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of
inflexible decision, a face pale and worn, but serene, on which
was written, as legibly as under the picture in the council-
chamber at Calcutta, Mens aequa in arduis; such was the aspect
with which the great proconsul presented himself to his judges.

His counsel accompanied him, men all of whom were afterwards
raised by their talents and learning to the highest posts in
their profession, the bold and strong-minded Law, afterwards
Chief Justice of the King's Bench; the more humane and eloquent
Dallas, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; and Plomer,
who, near twenty years later, successfully conducted in the same
high court the defence of Lord Melville, and subsequently became
Vice-chancellor and Master of the Rolls.

But neither the culprit nor his advocates attracted so much
notice as the accusers. In the midst of the blaze of red drapery,
a space had been fitted up with green benches and tables for the
Commons. The managers, with Burke at their head, appeared in full
dress. The collectors of gossip did not fail to remark that even
Fox, generally so regardless of his appearance, had paid to the
illustrious tribunal the compliment of wearing a bag and sword.
Pitt had refused to be one of the conductors of the impeachment;
and his commanding, copious, and sonorous eloquence was wanting
to that great muster of various talents. Age and blindness had
unfitted Lord North for the duties of a public prosecutor; and
his friends were left without the help of his excellent sense,
his tact and his urbanity. But in spite of the absence of these
two distinguished members of the Lower House, the box in which
the managers stood contained an array of speakers such as perhaps
had not appeared together since the great age of Athenian
eloquence. There were Fox and Sheridan, the English Demosthenes
and the English Hyperides. There was Burke, ignorant, indeed, or
negligent of the art of adapting his reasonings and his style to
the capacity and taste of his hearers, but in amplitude of
comprehension and richness of imagination superior to every
orator, ancient or modern. There, with eyes reverentially fixed
on Burke, appeared the finest gentleman of the age, his form
developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with
intelligence and spirit, the ingenious, the chivalrous, the high-
souled Windham. Nor, though surrounded by such men, did the
youngest manager pass unnoticed. At an age when most of those who
distinguish themselves in life are still contending for prizes
and fellowships at college, he had won for himself a conspicuous
place in Parliament. No advantage of fortune or connection was
wanting that could set off to the height his splendid talents and
his unblemished honour. At twenty-three he had been thought
worthy to be ranked with the veteran statesmen who appeared as
the delegates of the British Commons, at the bar of the British
nobility. All who stood at that bar, save him alone, are gone,
culprit, advocates, accusers. To the generation which is now in
the vigour of life, he is the sole representative of a great age
which has passed away. But those who, within the last ten years,
have listened with delight, till the morning sun shone on the
tapestries of the House of Lords, to the lofty and animated
eloquence of Charles Earl Grey, are able to form some estimate of
the powers of a race of men among whom he was not the foremost.
The charges and the answers of Hastings were first read. The
ceremony occupied two whole days, and was rendered less tedious
than it would otherwise have been by the silver voice and just
emphasis of Cowper, the clerk of the court, a near relation of
the amiable poet. On the third day Burke rose. Four sittings were
occupied by his opening speech, which was intended to be a
general introduction to all the charges. With an exuberance of
thought and a splendour of diction which more than satisfied the
highly raised expectation of the audience, he described the
character and institutions of the natives of India, recounted the
circumstances in which the Asiatic empire of Britain had
originated, and set forth the constitution of the Company and of
the English Presidencies. Having thus attempted to communicate to
his hearers an idea of Eastern society, as vivid as that which
existed in his own mind, he proceeded to arraign the
administration of Hastings as systematically conducted in
defiance of morality and public law. The energy and pathos of the
great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from the
stem and hostile Chancellor, and, for a moment, seemed to pierce
even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the
galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by
the solemnity of the occasion, and perhaps not unwilling to
display their taste and sensibility, were in a state of
uncontrollable emotion. Handkerchiefs were pulled out; smelling
bottles were handed round; hysterical sobs and screams were
heard: and Mrs. Sheridan was carried out in a fit. At length the
orator concluded. Raising his voice till the old arches of Irish
oak resounded, "Therefore," said be, "hath it with all confidence
been ordered, by the Commons of Great Britain, that I impeach
Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanours. I impeach him
in the name of the Commons' House of Parliament, whose trust he
has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of the English nation,
whose ancient honour he has sullied. I impeach him in the name of
the people of India, whose rights he has trodden under foot, and
whose country he has turned into a desert. Lastly, in the name of
human nature itself, in the name of both sexes, in the name of
every age, in the name of every rank, I impeach the common enemy
and oppressor of all!"

When the deep murmur of various emotions had subsided, Mr. Fox
rose to address the Lords respecting the course of proceeding to
be followed. The wish of the accusers was that the Court would
bring to a close the investigation of the first charge before the
second was opened. The wish of Hastings and of his counsel was
that the managers should open all the charges, and produce all
the evidence for the prosecution, before the defence began. The
Lords retired to their own House to consider the question. The
Chancellor took the side of Hastings. Lord Loughborough, who was
now in opposition, supported the demand of the managers. The
division showed which way the inclination of the tribunal leaned.
A majority of near three to one decided in favour of the course
for which Hastings contended.

When the Court sat again, Mr. Fox, assisted by Mr. Grey, opened
the charge respecting Cheyte Sing, and several days were spent in
reading papers and hearing witnesses. The next article was that
relating to the Princesses of Oude. The conduct of this part of
the case was intrusted to Sheridan. The curiosity of the public
to hear him was unbounded. His sparkling and highly finished
declamation lasted two days; but the Hall was crowded to
suffocation during the whole time. It was said that fifty guineas
had been paid for a single ticket. Sheridan, when he concluded,
contrived, with a knowledge of stage effect which his father
might have envied, to sink back, as if exhausted, into the arms
of Burke, who hugged him with the energy of generous admiration.

June was now far advanced. The session could not last much
longer; and the progress which had been made in the impeachment
was not very satisfactory. There were twenty charges. On two only
of these had even the case for the prosecution been heard; and it
was now a year since Hastings had been admitted to bail.

The interest taken by the public in the trial was great when the
Court began to sit, and rose to the height when Sheridan spoke on
the charge relating to the Begums. From that time the excitement
went down fast. The spectacle had lost the attraction of novelty.
The great displays of rhetoric were over. What was behind was not
of a nature to entice men of letters from their books in the
morning, or to tempt ladies who had left the masquerade at two to
be out of bed before eight There remained examinations and cross-
examinations. There remained statements of accounts. There
remained the reading of papers, filled with words unintelligible
to English ears, with lacs and crores, zemindars and aumils,
sunnuds and perwarmahs, jaghires and nuzzurs. There remained
bickerings, not always carried on with the best taste or the best
temper, between the managers of the impeachment and the counsel
for the defence, particularly between Mr. Burke and Mr. Law.
There remained the endless marches and counter-marches of the
Peers between their House and the Hall: for as often as a point
of law was to be discussed, their Lordships retired to discuss it
apart; and the consequence was, as a Peer wittily said, that the
judges walked and the trial stood still.

It is to be added that, in the spring of 1788, when the trial
commenced, no important question, either of domestic or foreign
policy, occupied the public mind. The proceeding in Westminster
Hall, therefore, naturally attracted most of the attention of
Parliament and of the country. It was the one great event of that
season. But in the following year the King's illness, the debates
on the Regency, the expectation of a change of ministry,
completely diverted public attention from Indian affairs; and
within a fortnight after George the Third had returned thanks in
St. Paul's for his recovery, the States General of France met at
Versailles. In the midst of the agitation produced by these
events, the impeachment was for a time almost forgotten.

The trial in the Hall went on languidly. In the session of 1788,
when the proceedings had the interest of novelty, and when the
Peers had little other business before them, only thirty-five
days were given to the impeachment. In 1789, the Regency Bill
occupied the Upper House till the session was far advanced. When
the King recovered the circuits were beginning. The judges left
town; the Lords waited for the return of the oracles of
jurisprudence; and the consequence was that during the whole year
only seventeen days were given to the case of Hastings. It was
clear that the matter would be protracted to a length
unprecedented in the annals of criminal law.

In truth, it is impossible to deny that impeachment, though it is
a fine ceremony, and though it may have been useful in the
seventeenth century, is not a proceeding from which much good can
now be expected. Whatever confidence may be placed in the
decision of the Peers on an appeal arising out of ordinary
litigation, it is certain that no man has the least confidence in
their impartiality, when a great public functionary, charged with
a great state crime, is brought to their bar. They are all
politicians. There is hardly one among them whose vote on an
impeachment may not be confidently predicted before a witness has
been examined; and, even if it were possible to rely on their
justice, they would still be quite unfit to try such a cause as
that of Hastings. They sit only during half the year. They have
to transact much legislative and much judicial business. The law-
lords, whose advice is required to guide the unlearned majority,
are employed daily in administering justice elsewhere. It is
impossible, therefore, that during a busy session, the Upper
House should give more than a few days to an impeachment. To
expect that their Lordships would give up partridge-shooting, in
order to bring the greatest delinquent to speedy justice, or to
relieve accused innocence by speedy acquittal, would be
unreasonable indeed. A well-constituted tribunal, sitting
regularly six days in the week, and nine hours in the day, would
have brought the trial of Hastings to a close in less than three
months. The Lords had not finished their work in seven years.

The result ceased to be matter of doubt, from the time when the
Lords resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence
which are received in the inferior courts of the realm. Those
rules, it is well known, exclude much information which would be
quite sufficient to determine the conduct of any reasonable man,
in the most important transactions of private life. These rules,
at every assizes, save scores of culprits whom judges, jury, and
spectators, firmly believe to be guilty. But when those rules
were rigidly applied to offences committed many years before, at
the distance of many thousands of miles, conviction was, of
course, out of the question. We do not blame the accused and his
counsel for availing themselves of every legal advantage in order
to obtain an acquittal. But it is clear that an acquittal so
obtained cannot be pleaded in bar of the judgment of history.

Several attempts were made by the friends of Hastings to put a
stop to the trial. In 1789 they proposed a vote of censure upon
Burke, for some violent language which he had used respecting the
death of Nuncomar and the connection between Hastings and Impey.
Burke was then unpopular in the last degree both with the House
and with the country. The asperity and indecency of some
expressions which he had used during the debates on the Regency
had annoyed even his warmest friends. The vote of censure was
carried; and those who had moved it hoped that the managers would
resign in disgust. Burke was deeply hurt. But his zeal for what
he considered as the cause of justice and mercy triumphed over
his personal feelings. He received the censure of the House with
dignity and meekness, and declared that no personal mortification
or humiliation should induce him to flinch from the sacred duty
which he had undertaken.

In the following year the Parliament was dissolved; and the
friends of Hastings entertained a hope that the new House of
Commons might not be disposed to go on with the impeachment. They
began by maintaining that the whole proceeding was terminated by
the dissolution. Defeated on this point, they made a direct
motion that the impeachment should be dropped; but they were
defeated by the combined forces of the Government and the
Opposition. It was, however, resolved that, for the sake of
expedition, many of the articles should be withdrawn. In truth,
had not some such measure been adopted, the trial would have
lasted till the defendant was in his grave.

At length, in the spring of 1795, the decision was pronounced,
near eight years after Hastings had been brought by the Sergeant-
at-Arms of the Commons to the bar of the Lords. On the last day
of this great procedure the public curiosity, long suspended,
seemed to be revived. Anxiety about the judgment there could
be none; for it had been fully ascertained that there was a
great majority for the defendant. Nevertheless many wished
to see the pageant, and the Hall was as much crowded as on the
first day. But those who, having been present on the first day,
now bore a part in the proceedings of the last, were few; and
most of those few were altered men.

As Hastings himself said, the arraignment had taken place before
one generation, and the judgment was pronounced by another. The
spectator could not look at the woolsack, or at the red benches
of the Peers, or at the green benches of the Commons, without
seeing something that reminded him of the instability of all
human things, of the instability of power and fame and life, of
the more lamentable instability of friendship. The great seal was
borne before Lord Loughborough, who, when the trial commenced,
was a fierce opponent of Mr. Pitt's Government, and who was now a
member of that Government, while Thurlow, who presided in the
court when it first sat, estranged from all his old allies, sat
scowling among the junior barons. Of about a hundred and sixty
nobles who walked in the procession on the first day, sixty had
been laid in their family vaults. Still more affecting must have
been the sight of the managers' box. What had become of that fair
fellowship, so closely bound together by public and private ties,
so resplendent with every talent and accomplishment? It had been
scattered by calamities more bitter than the bitterness of death.
The great chiefs were still living, and still in the full vigour
of their genius. But their friendship was at an end. It had been
violently and publicly dissolved, with tears and stormy
reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other, were now
compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment,
they met as strangers whom public business had brought together,
and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke
had in his vortex whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by
Sheridan and Grey.

Only twenty-nine Peers voted. Of these only six found Hastings
guilty on the charges relating to Cheyte Sing and to the Begums.
On other charges, the majority in his favour was still greater.
On some he was unanimously absolved. He was then called to the
bar, was informed from the woolsack that the Lords had acquitted
him, and was solemnly discharged. He bowed respectfully and
retired.

We have said that the decision had been fully expected. It was
also generally approved. At the commencement of the trial there
had been a strong and indeed unreasonable feeling against
Hastings. At the close of the trial there was a feeling equally
strong and equally unreasonable in his favour. One cause of the
change was, no doubt, what is commonly called the fickleness of
the multitude, but what seems to us to be merely the general law
of human nature. Both in individuals and in masses violent
excitement is always followed by remission, and often by
reaction. We are all inclined to depreciate whatever we have
overpraised, and, on the other hand, to show undue indulgence
where we have shown undue rigour. It was thus in the case of
Hastings. The length of his trial, moreover, made him an object
of compassion. It was thought, and not without reason, that, even
if he was guilty, he was still an ill-used man, and that an
impeachment of eight years was more than a sufficient punishment.
It was also felt that, though, in the ordinary course of criminal
law, a defendant is not allowed to set off his good actions
against his crimes, a great political cause should be tried on
different principles, and that a man who had governed an empire
during thirteen years might have done some very reprehensible
things, and yet might be on the whole deserving of rewards and
honours rather than of fine and imprisonment. The press, an
instrument neglected by the prosecutors, was used by Hastings and
his friends with great effect. Every ship, too, that arrived from
Madras or Bengal, brought a cuddy full of his admirers. Every
gentleman from India spoke of the late Governor-General as having
deserved better, and having been treated worse, than any man
living. The effect of this testimony unanimously given by all
persons who knew the East, was naturally very great. Retired
members of the Indian services, civil and military, were settled
in all corners of the kingdom. Each of them was, of course, in
his own little circle, regarded as an oracle on an Indian
question; and they were, with scarcely one exception, the zealous
advocates of Hastings. It is to be added, that the numerous
addresses to the late Governor-General, which his friends in
Bengal obtained from the natives and transmitted to England, made
a considerable impression. To these addresses we attach little or
no importance. That Hastings was beloved by the people whom he
governed is true; but the eulogies of pundits, zemindars,
Mahommedan doctors, do not prove it to be true. For an English
collector or judge would have found it easy to induce any native
who could write to sign a panegyric on the most odious ruler that
ever was in India. It was said that at Benares, the very place at
which the acts set forth in the first article of impeachment had
been committed, the natives had erected a temple to Hastings; and
this story excited a strong sensation in England. Burke's
observations on the apotheosis were admirable. He saw no reason
for astonishment, he said, in the incident which had been
represented as so striking. He knew something of the mythology of
the Brahmins. He knew that as they worshipped some gods from
love, so they worshipped others from fear. He knew that they
erected shrines, not only to the benignant deities of light and
plenty, but also to the fiends who preside over smallpox and
murder; nor did he at all dispute the claim of Mr. Hastings to be
admitted into such a Pantheon. This reply has always struck us as
one of the finest that ever was made in Parliament. It is a grave
and forcible argument, decorated by the most brilliant wit and
fancy.

Hastings was, however, safe. But in everything except character,
he would have been far better off if, when first impeached, he
had at once pleaded guilty, and paid a fine of fifty thousand
pounds. He was a ruined man. The legal expenses of his defence
had been enormous. The expenses which did not appear in his
attorney's bill were perhaps larger still. Great sums had been
paid to Major Scott. Great sums had been laid out in bribing
newspapers, rewarding pamphleteers, and circulating tracts.
Burke, so early as 1790, declared in the House of Commons that
twenty thousand pounds had been employed in corrupting the press.
It is certain that no controversial weapon, from the gravest
reasoning to the coarsest ribaldry, was left unemployed. Logan
defended the accused Governor with great ability in prose. For
the lovers of verse, the speeches of the managers were burlesqued
in Simpkin's letters. It is, we are afraid, indisputable that
Hastings stooped so low as to court the aid of that malignant and
filthy baboon John Williams, who called himself Anthony Pasquin.
It was necessary to subsidise such allies largely. The private
boards of Mrs. Hastings had disappeared. It is said that the
banker to whom they had been intrusted had failed. Still if
Hastings had practised strict economy, he would, after all his
losses, have had a moderate competence; but in the management of
his private affairs he was imprudent. The dearest wish of his
heart had always been to regain Daylesford. At length, in the
very year in which his trial commenced, the wish was
accomplished; and the domain, alienated more than seventy years
before, returned to the descendant of its old lords. But the
manor-house was a ruin; and the grounds round it had, during many
years, been utterly neglected. Hastings proceeded to build, to
plant, to form a sheet of water, to excavate a grotto; and,
before he was dismissed from the bar of the House of Lords, he
had expended more than forty thousand pounds in adorning his
seat.

The general feeling both of the Directors and of the proprietors
of the East India Company was that he had great claims on them,
that his services to them had been eminent, and that his
misfortunes had been the effect of his zeal for their interest.
His friends in Leadenhall Street proposed to reimburse him the
costs of his trial, and to settle on him an annuity of five
thousand pounds a year. But the consent of the Board of Control
was necessary; and at the head of the Board of Control was Mr.
Dundas, who had himself been a party to the impeachment, who had,
on, that account, been reviled with great bitterness by the
adherents of Hastings, and who, therefore, was not in a very
complying mood. He refused to consent to what the Directors
suggested. The Directors remonstrated. A long controversy
followed. Hastings, in the meantime, was reduced to such distress
that he could hardly pay his weekly bills. At length a compromise
was made. An annuity for life of four thousand pounds was settled
on Hastings; and in order to enable him to meet pressing demands,
he was to receive ten years' annuity in advance. The Company was
also permitted to lend him fifty thousand pounds, to be repaid by
instalments without interest. This relief, though given in the
most absurd manner, was sufficient to enable the retired Governor
to live in comfort, and even in luxury, if he had been a skilful
manager. But he was careless and profuse, and was more than once
under the necessity of applying to the Company for assistance,
which was liberally given.

He had security and affluence, but not the power and dignity
which, when he landed from India, he had reason to expect. He had
then looked forward to a coronet, a red riband, a seat at the
Council Board, an office at Whitehall. He was then only fifty-
two, and might hope for many years of bodily and mental vigour.
The case was widely different when he left the bar of the Lords.
He was now too old a man to turn his mind to a new class of
studies and duties. He had no chance of receiving any mark of
royal favour while Mr. Pitt remained in power; and, when Mr. Pitt
retired, Hastings was approaching his seventieth year.

Once, and only once, after his acquittal, he interfered in
politics; and that interference was not much to his honour. In
1804 he exerted himself strenuously to prevent Mr. Addington,
against whom Fox and Pitt had combined, from resigning the
Treasury. It is difficult to believe that a man, so able and
energetic as Hastings, can have thought that, when Bonaparte was
at Boulogne with a great army, the defence of our island could
safely be intrusted to a ministry which did not contain a single
person whom flattery could describe as a great statesman. It is
also certain that, on the important question which had raised Mr.
Addington to power, and on which he differed from both Fox and
Pitt, Hastings, as might have been expected, agreed with Fox and
Pitt, and was decidedly opposed to Addington. Religious
intolerance has never been the vice of the Indian service, and
certainly was not the vice of Hastings. But Mr. Addington had
treated him with marked favour. Fox had been a principal manager
of the impeachment. To Pitt it was owing that there had been an
impeachment; and Hastings, we fear, was on this occasion guided
by personal considerations, rather than by a regard to the public
interest.

The last twenty-four years of his life were chiefly passed at
Daylesford. He amused himself with embellishing his grounds,
riding fine Arab horses, fattening prize-cattle, and trying to
rear Indian animals and vegetables in England. He sent for seeds
of a very fine custard-apple, from the garden of what had
once been his own villa, among the green hedgerows of Allipore.
He tried also to naturalise in Worcestershire the delicious
leechee, almost the only fruit of Bengal which deserves to be
regretted even amidst the plenty of Covent Garden. The Mogul
emperors, in the time of their greatness, had in vain attempted
to introduce into Hindostan the goat of the table-land of Thibet,
whose down supplies the looms of Cashmere with the materials of
the finest shawls. Hastings tried, with no better fortune, to
rear a breed at Daylesford; nor does he seem to have succeeded
better with the cattle of Bootan, whose tails are in high esteem
as the best fans for brushing away the mosquitoes.

Literature divided his attention with his conservatories and his
menagerie. He had always loved books, and they were now necessary
to him. Though not a poet, in any high sense of the word, he
wrote neat and polished lines with great facility, and was fond
of exercising this talent. Indeed, if we must speak out, he seems
to have been more of a Trissotin than was to be expected from the
powers of his mind, and from the great part which he had played
in life. We are assured in these Memoirs that the first thing
which he did in the morning was to write a copy of verses. Men
the family and guests assembled, the poem made its appearance as
regularly as the eggs and rolls; and Mr. Gleig requires us to
believe that, if from any accident Hastings came to the
breakfast-table without one of his charming performances in his
hand, the omission was felt by all as a grievous disappointment.
Tastes differ widely. For ourselves, we must say that, however
good the breakfasts at Daylesford may have been,--and we are
assured that the tea was of the most aromatic flavour, and that
neither tongue nor venison-pasty was wanting,--we should have
thought the reckoning high if we had been forced to earn our
repast by listening every day to a new madrigal or sonnet
composed by our host. We are glad, however, that Mr. Gleig has
preserved this little feature of character, though we think it by
no means a beauty. It is good to be often reminded of the
inconsistency of human nature, and to learn to look without
wonder or disgust on the weaknesses which are found in the
strongest minds. Dionysius in old times, Frederic in the last
century, with capacity and vigour equal to the conduct of the
greatest affairs, united all the little vanities and affectations
of provincial bluestockings. These great examples may console the
admirers of Hastings for the affliction of seeing him reduced to
the level of the Hayleys and Sewards.

When Hastings had passed many years in retirement, and had long
outlived the common age of men, he again became for a short time
an object of general attention. In 1813 the charter of the East
India Company was renewed; and much discussion about Indian
affairs took place in Parliament. It was determined to examine
witnesses at the bar of the Commons; and Hastings was ordered to
attend. He had appeared at that bar once before. It was when he
read his answer to the charges which Burke had laid on the table.
Since that time twenty-seven years had elapsed; public feeling
had undergone a complete change; the nation had now forgotten his
faults, and remembered only his services. The reappearance, too,
of a man who had been among the most distinguished of a
generation that had passed away, who now belonged to history, and
who seemed to have risen from the dead, could not but produce a
solemn and pathetic effect. The Commons received him with
acclamations, ordered a chair to be set for him, and, when he
retired, rose and uncovered. There were, indeed, a few who did
not sympathise with the general feeling. One or two of the
managers of the impeachment were present. They sate in the same
seats which they had occupied when they had been thanked for the
services which they had rendered in Westminster Hall: for, by the
courtesy of the House, a member who has been thanked in his place
is considered as having a right always to occupy that place.
These gentlemen were not disposed to admit that they had employed
several of the best years of their lives in persecuting an
innocent man. They accordingly kept their seats, and pulled their
hats over their brows; but the exceptions only made the
prevailing enthusiasm more remarkable. The Lords received the old
man with similar tokens of respect. The University of Oxford
conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Laws; and, in the
Sheldonian Theatre, the undergraduates welcomed him with
tumultuous cheering.

These marks of public esteem were soon followed by marks of royal
favour. Hastings was sworn of the Privy Council, and was admitted
to a long private audience of the Prince Regent, who treated him
very graciously. When the Emperor of Russia and the King of
Prussia visited England, Hastings appeared in their train both at
Oxford and in the Guildhall of London, and, though surrounded by
a crowd of princes and great warriors, was everywhere received
with marks of respect and admiration. He was presented by the
Prince Regent both to Alexander and to Frederic William; and his
Royal Highness went so far as to declare in public that honours
far higher than a seat in the Privy Council were due, and would
soon be paid, to the man who had saved the British dominions in
Asia.  Hastings now confidently expected a peerage; but, from some
unexplained cause, he was again disappointed.

He lived about four years longer, in the enjoyment of good
spirits, of faculties not impaired to any painful or degrading
extent, and of health such as is rarely enjoyed by those who
attain such an age. At length, on the twenty-second of August,
1818, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, he met death with the
same tranquil and decorous fortitude which he had opposed to all
the trials of his various and eventful life.

With all his faults,--and they were neither few nor small--only
one cemetery was worthy to contain his remains. In that temple of
silence and reconciliation where the enmities of twenty
generations lie buried, in the Great Abbey which has during many
ages afforded a quiet resting-place to those whose minds and
bodies have been shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall,
the dust of the illustrious accused should have mingled with the
dust of the illustrious accusers. This was not to be. Yet the
place of interment was not ill chosen. Behind the chancel of the
parish church of Daylesford, in earth which already held the
bones of many chiefs of the house of Hastings, was laid the
coffin of the greatest man who has ever borne that ancient and
widely extended name. On that very spot probably, four-score
years before, the little Warren, meanly clad and scantily fed,
had played with the children of ploughmen. Even then his young
mind had revolved plans which might be called romantic. Yet,
however romantic, it is not likely that they had been so strange
as the truth. Not only had the poor orphan retrieved the fallen
fortunes of his line--not only had he repurchased the old lands,
and rebuilt the old dwelling--he had preserved and extended an
empire. He had founded a polity. He had administered government
and war with more than the capacity of Richelieu. He had
patronised learning with the judicious liberality of Cosmo.  He
had been attacked by the most formidable combination of enemies
that ever sought the destruction of a single victim; and over
that combination, after a struggle of ten years, he had
triumphed. He had at length gone down to his grave in the fulness
of age, in peace, after so many troubles, in honour, after so
much obloquy.

Those who look on his character without favour or malevolence
will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social
virtue, in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for
the sufferings of others, he was deficient. His principles were
somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But though we cannot
with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a merciful
ruler, we cannot regard without admiration the amplitude and
fertility of his intellect, his rare talents for command, for
administration, and for controversy, his dauntless courage, his
honourable poverty, his fervent zeal for the interests of the
State, his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune,
and never disturbed by either.


LORD HOLLAND

(July 1841)

The Opinions of Lord Holland, as recorded in the journals of the
House of Lords from 1797 to 1841. Collected and edited by D. C.
MOYLAN, of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-law. 8vo. London: 1841.

Many reasons make it impossible for us to lay before our readers,
at the present moment, a complete view of the character and
public career of the late Lord Holland. But we feel that we have
already deferred too long the duty of paying some tribute to his
memory. We feel that it is more becoming to bring without further
delay an offering, though intrinsically of little value, than to
leave his tomb longer without some token of our reverence and
love.

We shall say very little of the book which lies on our table. And
yet it is a book which, even if it had been the work of a less
distinguished man, or had appeared under circumstances less
interesting, would have well repaid an attentive perusal. It is
valuable, both as a record of principles and as a model of
composition. We find in it all the great maxims which, during
more than forty years, guided Lord Holland's public conduct, and
the chief reasons on which those maxims rest, condensed into the
smallest possible space, and set forth with admirable
perspicuity, dignity, and precision. To his opinions on Foreign
Policy we for the most part cordially assent; but now and then we
are inclined to think them imprudently generous. We could not
have signed the protest against the detention of Napoleon. The
Protest respecting the course which England pursued at the
Congress of Verona, though it contains much that is excellent,
contains also positions which, we are inclined to think, Lord
Holland would, at a later period, have admitted to be unsound.
But to all his doctrines on constitutional questions, we give our
hearty approbation; and we firmly believe that no British
Government has ever deviated from that line of internal policy
which he has traced, without detriment to the public.

We will give, as a specimen of this little volume, a single
passage, in which a chief article of the political creed of the
Whigs is stated and explained, with singular clearness, force,
and brevity. Our readers will remember that, in 1825, the
Catholic Association raised the cry of emancipation with most
formidable effect. The Tories acted after their kind. Instead of
removing the grievance they tried to put down the agitation, and
brought in a law, apparently sharp and stringent, but in truth
utterly impotent, for restraining the right of petition. Lord
Holland's Protest on that occasion is excellent:

"We are," says he, "well aware that the privileges of the people,
the rights of free discussion, and the spirit and letter of our
popular institutions, must render,--and they are intended to
render,--the continuance of an extensive grievance and of the
dissatisfaction consequent thereupon, dangerous to the
tranquillity of the country, and ultimately subversive of the
authority of the State. Experience and theory alike forbid us to
deny that effect of a free constitution; a sense of justice and a
love of liberty equally deter us from lamenting it. But we have
always been taught to look for the remedy of such disorders in
the redress of the grievances which justify them, and in the
removal of the dissatisfaction from which they flow--not in
restraints on ancient privileges, not in inroads on the right of
public discussion, nor in violations of the principles of a free
government. If, therefore, the legal method of seeking redress,
which has been resorted to by persons labouring under grievous
disabilities, be fraught with immediate or remote danger to the
State, we draw from that circumstance a conclusion long since
foretold by great authority--namely, that the British
constitution, and large exclusions, cannot subsist together; that
the constitution must destroy them, or they will destroy the
constitution."

It was not, however, of this little book, valuable and
interesting as it is, but of the author, that we meant to speak;
and we will try to do so with calmness and impartiality.

In order to fully appreciate the character of Lord Holland, it is
necessary to go far back into the history of his family; for he
had inherited something more than a coronet and an estate. To the
House of which he was the head belongs one distinction which we
believe to be without a parallel in our annals. During more than
a century, there has never been a time at which a Fox has not
stood in a prominent station among public men. Scarcely had the
chequered career of the first Lord Holland closed, when his son,
Charles, rose to the head of the Opposition, and to the first
rank among English debaters. And before Charles was borne to
Westminster Abbey a third Fox had already become one of the most
conspicuous politicians in the kingdom.

It is impossible not to be struck by the strong family likeness
which, in spite of diversities arising from education and
position, appears in these three distinguished persons. In their
faces and figures there was a resemblance, such as is common
enough in novels, where one picture is good for ten generations,
but such as in real life is seldom found. The ample person, the
massy and thoughtful forehead, the large eyebrows, the full cheek
and lip, the expression, so singularly compounded of sense,
humour, courage, openness, a strong will and a sweet temper, were
common to all. But the features of the founder of the House, as
the pencil of Reynolds and the chisel of Nollekens have handed
them down to us, were disagreeably harsh and exaggerated. In his
descendants, the aspect was preserved, but it was softened, till
it became, in the late lord, the most gracious and interesting
countenance that was ever lighted up by the mingled lustre of
intelligence and benevolence.

As it was with the faces of the men of this noble family, so was
it also with their minds. Nature had done much for them all. She
had moulded them all of that clay of which she is most sparing.
To all she had given strong reason and sharp wit, a quick relish
for every physical and intellectual enjoyment, constitutional
intrepidity, and that frankness by which constitutional
intrepidity is generally accompanied, spirits which nothing could
depress, tempers easy, generous, and placable, and that genial
courtesy which has its seat in the heart, and of which artificial
politeness is only a faint and cold imitation. Such a disposition
is the richest inheritance that ever was entailed on any family.

But training and situation greatly modified the fine qualities
which nature lavished with such profusion on three generations of
the house of Fox. The first Lord Holland was a needy political
adventurer. He entered public life at a time when the standard of
integrity among statesmen was low. He started as the adherent of
a minister who had indeed many titles to respect, who possessed
eminent talents both for administration and for debate, who
understood the public interest well, and who meant fairly by the
country, but who had seen so much perfidy and meanness that he
had become sceptical as to the existence of probity. Weary of the
cant of patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a
different kind. Disgusted by that sort of hypocrisy which is at
least a homage to virtue, he was too much in the habit of
practising the less respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously
displays, and sometimes even simulates vice. To Walpole Fox
attached himself, politically and personally, with the ardour
which belonged to his temperament. And it is not to be denied
that in the school of Walpole he contracted faults which
destroyed the value of his many great endowments. He raised
himself, indeed, to the first consideration in the House of
Commons; he became a consummate master of the art of debate; he
attained honours and immense wealth; but the public esteem and
confidence were withheld from him. His private friends, indeed,
justly extolled his generosity and good nature. They maintained
that in those parts of his conduct which they could least defend
there was nothing sordid, and that, if he was misled, he was
misled by amiable feelings, by a desire to serve his friends, and
by anxious tenderness for his children. But by the nation he was
regarded as a man of insatiable rapacity and desperate ambition;
as a man ready to adopt, without scruple, the most immoral and
the most unconstitutional manners; as a man perfectly fitted, by
all his opinions and feelings, for the work of managing the
Parliament by means of secret-service money, and of keeping down
the people with the bayonet. Many of his contemporaries had a
morality quite as lax as his: but very few among them had his
talents, and none had his hardihood and energy. He could not,
like Sandys and Doddington, find safety in contempt. He therefore
became an object of such general aversion as no statesman since
the fall of Strafford has incurred, of such general aversion as
was probably never in any country incurred by a man of so kind
and cordial a disposition. A weak mind would have sunk under such
a load of unpopularity. But that resolute spirit seemed to derive
new firmness from the public hatred. The only effect which
reproaches appeared to produce on him, was to sour, in some
degree, his naturally sweet temper. The last acts of his public
life were marked, not only by that audacity which he had derived
from nature, not only by that immorality which he had learned in
the school of Walpole, but by a harshness which almost amounted
to cruelty, and which had never been supposed to belong to his
character. His severity increased the unpopularity from which it
had sprung. The well-known lampoon of Gray may serve as a
specimen of the feeling of the country. All the images are taken
from shipwrecks, quicksands, and cormorants. Lord Holland is
represented as complaining, that the cowardice of his accomplices
bad prevented him from putting down the free spirit of the city
of London by sword and fire, and as pining for the time when
birds of prey should make their nests in Westminster Abbey, and
unclean beasts burrow in St. Paul's.

Within a few months after the death of this remarkable man, his
second son Charles appeared at the head of the party opposed to
the American War. Charles had inherited the bodily and mental
constitution of his father, and had been much, far too much,
under his father's influence. It was indeed impossible that a son
of so affectionate and noble a nature should not have been warmly
attached to a parent who possessed many fine qualities, and who
carried his indulgence and liberality towards his children even
to a culpable extent. Charles saw that the person to whom he was
bound by the strongest ties was, in the highest degree, odious to
the nation; and the effect was what might have been expected from
the strong passions and constitutional boldness of so high-
spirited a youth. He cast in his lot with his father, and took,
while still a boy, a deep part in the most unjustifiable and
unpopular measures that had been adopted since the reign of James
the Second. In the debates on the Middlesex Election, he
distinguished himself, not only by his precocious powers of
eloquence, but by the vehement and scornful manner in which he
bade defiance to public opinion. He was at that time regarded as
a man likely to be the most formidable champion of arbitrary
government that had appeared since the Revolution, to be a Bute
with far greater powers, a Mansfield with far greater courage.
Happily his father's death liberated him early from the
pernicious influence by which he had been misled. His mind
expanded. His range of observation became wider. His genius broke
through early prejudices. His natural benevolence and magnanimity
had fair play. In a very short time he appeared in a situation
worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose
name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and
corruption, from a party of which the theory and the practice
were equally servile, from the midst of the Luttrells, the
Dysons, the Barringtons, came forth the greatest parliamentary
defender of civil and religious liberty.

The late Lord Holland succeeded to the talents and to the fine
natural dispositions of his House. But his situation was very
different from that of the two eminent men of whom we have
spoken. In some important respects it was better, in some it was
worse than theirs. He had one great advantage over them. He
received a good political education. The first lord was educated
by Sir Robert Walpole. Mr. Fox was educated by his father. The
late lord was educated by Mr. Fox. The pernicious maxims early
imbibed by the first Lord Holland, made his great talents useless
and worse than useless to the State. The pernicious maxims early
imbibed by Mr. Fox, led him, at the commencement of his public
life, into great faults which, though afterwards nobly expiated,
were never forgotten. To the very end of his career, small men,
when they had nothing else to say in defence of their own
tyranny, bigotry, and imbecility, could always raise a cheer by
some paltry taunt about the election of Colonel Luttrell, the
imprisonment of the lord mayor, and other measures in which the
great Whig leader had borne a part at the age of one or two and
twenty. On Lord Holland no such slur could be thrown. Those who
most dissent from his opinions must acknowledge that a public
life more consistent is not to be found in our annals. Every part
of it is in perfect harmony with every other part; and the whole
is in perfect harmony with the great principles of toleration and
civil freedom. This rare felicity is in a great measure to be
attributed to the influence of Mr. Fox. Lord Holland, as was
natural in a person of his talents and expectations, began at a
very early age to take the keenest interest in politics; and Mr.
Fox found the greatest pleasure in forming the mind of so hopeful
a pupil. They corresponded largely on political subjects when the
young lord was only sixteen; and their friendship and mutual
confidence continued to the day of that mournful separation at
Chiswick. Under such training such a man as Lord Holland was in
no danger of falling into those faults which threw a dark shade
over the whole career of his grandfather, and from which the
youth of his uncle was not wholly free.

On the other hand, the late Lord Holland, as compared with his
grandfather and his uncle, laboured under one great disadvantage.
They were members of the House of Commons. He became a Peer while
still an infant. When he entered public life, the House of Lords
was a very small and a very decorous assembly. The minority to
which he belonged was scarcely able to muster five or six votes
on the most important nights, when eighty or ninety lords were
present. Debate had accordingly become a mere form, as it was in
the Irish House of Peers before the Union. This was a great
misfortune to a man like Lord Holland. It was not by occasionally
addressing fifteen or twenty solemn and unfriendly auditors that
his grandfather and his uncle attained their unrivalled
parliamentary skill. The former had learned his art in "the great
Walpolean battles," on nights when Onslow was in the chair
seventeen hours without intermission, when the thick ranks on
both sides kept unbroken order till long after the winter sun had
risen upon them, when the blind were led out by the hand into the
lobby and the paralytic laid down in their bed-clothes on the
benches. The powers of Charles Fox were, from the first,
exercised in conflicts not less exciting. The great talents of
the late Lord Holland had no such advantage. This was the more
unfortunate, because the peculiar species of eloquence which
belonged to him in common with his family required much practice
to develop it. With strong sense, and the greatest readiness of
wit, a certain tendency to hesitation was hereditary in the line
of Fox. This hesitation arose, not from the poverty, but from the
wealth of their vocabulary. They paused, not from the difficulty
of finding one expression, but from the difficulty of choosing
between several. It was only by slow degrees and constant
exercise that the first Lord Holland and his son overcame the
defect. Indeed neither of them overcame it completely.

In statement, the late Lord Holland was not successful; his chief
excellence lay in reply. He had the quick eye of his house for
the unsound parts of an argument, and a great felicity in
exposing them. He was decidedly more distinguished in debate than
any peer of his time who had not sat in the House of Commons.
Nay, to find his equal among persons similarly situated, we must
go back eighty years to Earl Granville. For Mansfield, Thurlow,
Loughborough, Grey, Grenville, Brougham, Plunkett, and other
eminent men, living and dead, whom we will not stop to enumerate,
carried to the Upper House an eloquence formed and matured in the
Lower. The opinion of the most discerning judges was that Lord
Holland's oratorical performances, though sometimes most
successful, afforded no fair measure of his oratorical powers,
and that, in an assembly of which the debates were frequent and
animated, he would have attained a very high order of excellence.
It was, indeed, impossible to listen to his conversation without
seeing that he was born a debater. To him, as to his uncle, the
exercise of the mind in discussion was a positive pleasure. With
the greatest good nature and good breeding, he was the very
opposite to an assenter. The word "disputatious" is generally
used as a word of reproach; but we can express our meaning only
by saying that Lord Holland was most courteously and pleasantly
disputatious. In truth, his quickness in discovering and
apprehending distinctions and analogies was such as a veteran
judge might envy. The lawyers of the Duchy of Lancaster were
astonished to find in an unprofessional man so strong a relish
for the esoteric parts of their science, and complained that as
soon as they had split a hair, Lord Holland proceeded to split
the filaments into filaments still finer. In a mind less happily
constituted, there might have been a risk that this turn for
subtilty would have produced serious evil. But in the heart and
understanding of Lord Holland there was ample security against
all such danger. He was not a man to be the dupe of his own
ingenuity. He put his logic to its proper use; and in him the
dialectician was always subordinate to the statesman.

His political life is written in the chronicles of his country.
Perhaps, as we have already intimated, his opinions on two or
three great questions of foreign policy were open to just
objection. Yet even his errors, if he erred, were amiable and
respectable. We are not sure that we do not love and admire him
the more because he was now and then seduced from what we regard
as a wise policy by sympathy with the oppressed, by generosity
towards the fallen, by a philanthropy so enlarged that it took in
all nations, by love of peace, a love which in him was second
only to the love of freedom, and by the magnanimous credulity of
a mind which was as incapable of suspecting as of devising
mischief.

To his views on questions of domestic policy the voice of his
countrymen does ample justice. They revere the memory of the man
who was, during forty years, the constant protector of all
oppressed races and persecuted sects, of the man whom neither the
prejudices nor the interests belonging to his station could
seduce from the path of right, of the noble, who in every great
crisis cast in his lot with the commons, of the planter, who made
manful war on the slave-trade of the landowner, whose whole heart
was in the struggle against the corn-laws.

We have hitherto touched almost exclusively on those parts of
Lord Holland's character which were open to the observation of
millions. How shall we express the feelings with which his memory
is cherished by those who were honoured with his friendship? Or
in what language shall we speak of that house, once celebrated
for its rare attractions to the furthest ends of the civilised
world, and now silent and desolate as the grave? To that house, a
hundred and twenty years ago, a poet addressed those tender and
graceful lines, which have now acquired a new meaning not less
sad than that which they originally bore:

"Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears?
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks and unpolluted air!
How sweet the glooms beneath thine aged trees,
Thy noon-tide shadow and thine evening breeze
His image thy forsaken bowers restore;
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thine evening breezes, and thy noon-day shade."

Yet a few years, and the shades and structures may follow their
illustrious masters. The wonderful city which, ancient and
gigantic as it is, still continues to grow as fast as a young
town of logwood by a water-privilege in Michigan, may soon
displace those turrets and gardens which are associated with so
much that is interesting and noble, with the courtly magnificence
of Rich with the loves of Ormond, with the counsels of Cromwell,
with the death of Addison. The time is coming when, perhaps, a
few old men, the last survivors of our generation, will in vain
seek, amidst new streets, and squares, and railway stations, for
the site of that dwelling which was in their youth the favourite
resort of wits and beauties, of painters and poets, of scholars,
philosophers, and statesmen. They will then remember, with
strange tenderness, many objects once familiar to them, the
avenue and the terrace, the busts and the paintings, the carving,
the grotesque gilding, and the enigmatical mottoes. With peculiar
fondness they will recall that venerable chamber, in which all
the antique gravity of a college library was so singularly
blended with all that female grace and wit could devise to
embellish a drawing-room. They will recollect, not unmoved, those
shelves loaded with the varied learning of many lands and many
ages, and those portraits in which were preserved the features of
the best and wisest Englishmen of two generations. They will
recollect how many men who have guided the politics of Europe,
who have moved great assemblies by reason and eloquence, who have
put life into bronze and canvas, or who have left to posterity
things so written as it shall not willingly let them die, were
there mixed with all that was loveliest and gayest in the society
of the most splendid of capitals. They will remember the peculiar
character which belonged to that circle, in which every talent
and accomplishment, every art and science, had its place. They
will remember how the last debate was discussed in one corner,
and the last comedy of Scribe in another; while Wilkie gazed with
modest admiration on Sir Joshua's Baretti; while Mackintosh
turned over Thomas Aquinas to verify a quotation; while
Talleyrand related his conversations with Barras at the
Luxembourg, or his ride with Lannes over the field of Austerlitz.
They will remember, above all, the grace, and the kindness, far
more admirable than grace, with which the princely hospitality of
that ancient mansion was dispensed. They will remember the
venerable and benignant countenance and the cordial voice of him
who bade them welcome. They will remember that temper which years
of pain, of sickness, of lameness, of confinement, seemed only to
make sweeter and sweeter, and that frank politeness, which at
once relieved all the embarrassment of the youngest and most
timid writer or artist, who found himself for the first time
among Ambassadors and Earls. They will remember that constant
flow of conversation, so natural, so animated, so various, so
rich with observation and anecdote; that wit which never gave a
wound; that exquisite mimicry which ennobled, instead of
degrading; that goodness of heart which appeared in every look
and accent, and gave additional value to every talent and
acquirement. They will remember, too, that he whose name they
hold in reverence was not less distinguished by the inflexible
uprightness of his political conduct than by his loving
disposition and his winning manners. They will remember that, in
the last lines which he traced, he expressed his joy that he had
done nothing unworthy of the friend of Fox and Grey; and they
will have reason to feel similar joy, if, in looking back on many
troubled years, they cannot accuse themselves of having done
anything unworthy of men who were distinguished by the friendship
of Lord Holland.

Xxx

INDEX AND GLOSSARY OF ALLUSIONS

ACBAR, contemporary with Elizabeth, firmly established the Mogul
rule in India; Aurungzebe (1659-1707) extended the Mogul Empire
over South India.

Aislabie, Chancellor of the Exchequer; forfeited most of his huge
profits.

Alexander VI., Pope, father of Lucretia and Caesar Borgia. He
obtained his office by bribery and held it by a series of
infamous crimes (d. 1503).

Alguazils, "a Spanish adaptation of the Arabic al-wazir, the
minister and used in Spanish both for a justiciary and a
bailiff." Here it implies cruel and extortionate treatment.

Allipore, a suburb of Calcutta.

Amadis, the model knight who is the hero of the famous mediaeval
prose-romance of the same title. Of Portuguese origin, it was
afterwards translated and expanded in Spanish and in French.

Aminta, a pastoral play composed by Tasso in 1581.

Antiochus and Tigranes, overthrown respectively by Pompey, B.C.
65, and Lucullus, B.C. 69.

Atahualpa, King of Peru, captured and put to death by Pizarro in
1532.

Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester and champion of the High Church
and Tory party (1662-1732).

Aumils, district governors.

Aurungzebe, dethroned and succeeded Shah Jehan in 1658 (d. 1707).

Austrian Succession, War of (see the Essay on Frederic the Great,
vol. v. of  this edition).



BABINGTON, Anthony, an English Catholic, executed in 1586 for
plotting to assassinate Elizabeth. Everard Digby was concerned in
the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Babington, an English Catholic executed in 1586 for plotting to
assassinate Elizabeth under the instruction of a Jesuit named
Ballard.

Ballard. See Babington.

Barbariccia and Draghignazzo, the fiends who torment the lost
with hooks in the lake of boiling pitch in Malebolge, the eighth
circle in Dante's Inferno.

Baretti, Giuseppe, an Italian lexiographer who came to London,
was patronised by Johnson and became Secretary of the Royal
Academy.

Barillon, the French Ambassador in England.

Barnard, Sir John, an eminent London merchant, and Lord Mayor
(1685-1764).

Barras, a member of the Jacobin (q. v.) club; he put an end to
Robespierre's Reign of Terror and was a member of the Directory
till Napoleon abolished it (d. 1829).

Batavian liberties, Batavia is an old name for Holland; the
Celtic tribe known as Batavii once dwelt there.

Bath, Lord, William Pulteney, Sir R. Walpole's opponent, and
author of a few magazine articles (1684-1764).

Belisarius, Justinian's great general, who successively repulsed
the Persians, Vandals, Goths, and Huns, but who, tradition says,
was left to become a beggar (d. 565).

Benevolences, royal demands from individuals not sanctioned by
Parliament and supposed to be given willingly; declared illegal
by the Bill of Rights, 1689.

Bentinck, Lord William, the Governor. General (1828-1835) under
whom suttee was abolished, internal communications opened up, and
education considerably furthered.

Bentivoglio, Cardinal, a disciple of Galileo, and one of the
Inquisitors who signed his condemnation (1579-1641).

Berkeley and Pomfret, where Edward II. and Richard II.
respectively met their deaths.

Bernier, a French traveller who wandered over India, 1656-1668.

Blues, The, Royal Horse Guards.

Board of Control, a body responsible to the Ministry with an
authoritative parliamentary head established by Pitt's India Bill
(1784).

Bobadil, the braggart hero in Johnson's Every Man in his Humour,

Bolingbroke, Viscount, Tory Minister under Anne; brought about
the Peace of Utrecht, 1713. His genius and daring were undoubted,
but as a party leader he failed utterly.

Bolivar, the Washington of South America, who freed Venezuela,
Colombia, and Bolivia from Spain (1783-1830).

Bonner, Bishop of London, served "Bloody" Mary's anti-Protestant
zeal, died in the Marshalsea Prison under Elizabeth.

Bonslas, a Maratha tribe not finally subdued till 1817.

Bradshaw, President of the Court that condemned Charles I.

Braganza, House of, the reigning family of Portugal; Charles II
married Catherine of Braganza in 1662.

Breda, Peace of, July 21, 1667. Breda is in North Brabant,
Holland.

Brissotines, those moderate republicans in the French Revolution
who are often known as the Girondists.

Broghill, Lord, better known as Rope Boyle, author of
Parthenissa, etc.

Brooks's, the great Whig Club in St. James's Street amongst whose
members were Burke, Sheridan, Fox, and Garrick.

Brothers, Richard, a fanatic who held that the English were the
lost ten tribes of Israel(1757-1824).

Browne's Estimate (of the Manners and Principles of the Times),
the author was a clergyman noted also for his defence of
utilitarianism in answer to Shaftesbury (Lecky, Hist. Eng. in
18th Cent., ii, 89 f.).

Brutus, i. The reputed expeller of the last King of Rome; ii. One
of Caesar's murderers.

Bulicame, the seventh circle in the Inferno, the place of all the
violent.

Buller, Sir Francis, English judge, author of Introduction to the
Law of Trials at Nisi Prius (1745-1800).

Burger, Gottfried, German poet (1748-1794), author of the fine
ballad "The Wild Huntsman."

Burgoyne, afterwards the General in command of the British troops
whose surrender at Saratoga practically settled the American War
of Independence.

Burlington, Lord, Richard Boyle, an enthusiastic architect of the
Italian school (1695-1Z53).

Button, Henry, a Puritan divine, pilloried, mutilated, and
imprisoned by the Star Chamber (1578-1648).

Busiris, a mythological King of Egypt who used to sacrifice one
foreigner yearly in the hope of ending a prolonged famine.

Buxar, between Patna and Benares, where Major Munro defeated
Sujah Dowlah and Meer Cossim in 1765.



CALAS, Jean, a tradesman of Toulouse, done to death on the wheel
in 1762 on the false charge of murdering his son to prevent his
becoming a Romanist. Voltaire took his case up and vindicated his
memory.

Camden, Lord, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas who declared
general warrants illegal and released Wilkes in 1763.

Capel, Lord Arthur, at first sided with the Parliament, but
afterwards joined the King; executed for attempting to escape
from Colchester in 1649.

Caracci, Annibal, an Italian painter of the Elizabethan age.

Carlton House, the residence of George IV. when Prince of Wales.

Cartoons, the, the famous designs by Raphael, originally intended
for tapestry.

Cato, Addison's play, produced in 1713.

Cavendish, Lord, first Duke of Devonshire (d. 1707). He gave
evidence in favour of Russell and tried to secure his escape.

Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. and brother of Lucrezia,
whose infamous ability, cruelty, and treachery he even surpassed.

Chandernagora, on the Hooghly twenty miles from Calcutta.
Pondicherry, in the Carnatic (i.e. the S.E. coast of India) is
still a French possession.

Chemnitius, a seventeenth-century German historian who wrote a
History of the Swedish War in Germany.

Chicksands, in Bedfordshire.

Childeric or Chilperic, the former was King of the Franks (c460-
480), the latter King of Neustria (c. 560-580); both were puppets
in the hands of their subjects.

Chorasan, a Persian province.

Chowringhee, still the fashionable quarter of Calcutta.

Chudleigh, Miss, maid of honour to the Princess of Wales (mother
of George III.); the original of Beatrix in Thackeray's Esmond.

Churchill, John, the famous Duke of Marlborough.

Clootz, a French Revolutionary and one of the founders of the
Worship of Reason; guillotined 1794.

Cocytus, one of the five rivers of Hades (see Milton's Paradise
Lost, ii. 577ff).

Coleroon, the lower branch of the river Kaveri: it rises in
Mysore and flows to the Bay of Bengal.

Colman, the Duke of York's confessor, in whose rooms were found
papers held to support Oates's story.

Conde, a French general who, fighting for Spain, besieged Arras
but had to abandon it after a defeat by Turenne.

Conjeveram, south-west from Madras and east from Arcot.

Conway, Marshal, cousin to Walpole; fought at Fontenoy and
Culloden; moved the repeal of the Stamp Act (1766).

Corah, one hundred miles north-west from Allahabad, formerly a
town of great importance, now much decayed.

Cornelia, a noble and virtuous Roman matron, daughter of Scipio
Africanus and wife of Sempronius Graccus.

Cortes, conqueror of Mexico (1485-1547).

Cosmo di Medici, a great Florentine ruler, who, however,
understood the use of assassination,

Cossimbuzar (see the description in the Essay on Hastings).

Court of Requests, instituted under Henry VII. for the recovery
of small debts and superseded by the County Courts in 1847.

Covelong and Chingleput, between Madras and Pondicherry.

Craggs. Secretary of State: a man of ablity and character,
probably innocent in the South Sea affair.

Crevelt, near Cleves, in West Prussia; Minden is in Westphalia.

Cumberland . . . single victory, at Culloden, over the young
Pretender's forces, in 1745.

Cutler, St. John, a wealthy London merchant (1608?-1693) whose
permanent avarice outshone his occasional benefactions (see Pope,
Moral Essays, iii. 315).



DAGOBERTS . . . Charles Martel, nominal and real rulers of France
in the seventh and eighth centuries.

D'Aguesseau, a famous French jurist, law reformer, and magistrate
(1668-1751).

D'Alembert, a mathematician and philosopher who helped to sow the
seeds of the French Revolution. Macaulay quite misrepresents
Walpole's attitude to him (see letter of 6th Nov. 1768).

Damien, the attempted assassinator of Louis XV. in 1757.

Danby, Thomas Osborne, Esq. of, one of Charles II.'s courtiers,
impeached for his share in the negotiations by which France was
to pension Charles on condition of his refusal to assist the
Dutch.

Danes, only had a few trading   stations  in India, which they sold
to the British in 1845.

Demosthenes and Hyperides, the two great orators of Athens who
were also contemporaries and friends.

De Pauw, Cornelius, a Dutch canon (1739-99), esteemed by Frederic
the Great among others, as one of the freest speculators of his
day.

Derby, James Stanley, Earl of, one of Charles I's supporters,
captured at Worcester and beheaded in 1651.

Derwentwater . . . Cameron, Stuart adherents who suffered for
their share in the attempts of 1715 and 1745.

Dido, Queen of Carthage, who after years of mourning for her
first husband, vainly sought the love of Aeneas.

Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse (367-343 B.C.) who gathered to
his court the foremost men of the time in literature and
philosophy.

Dodd, Dr., a royal chaplain and fashion ablepreacher whose
extravagance led him to forge a bond of Lord Chesterfield's, for
which he was sentenced to death and duly executed (1729-77).

Dodington, George Bubb, a time-serving and unprincipled
politician in the time of George II., afterwards Baron Melcombe.

Dubois, Cardinal, Prime Minister of France. An able statesman and
a notorious debauchee (1656-1723).

Duke of Lancaster, Henry IV., the deposer and successor of
Richard II.

Dumont, Pierre, a French writer who settled in England and became
the translator and exponent of Bentham's works to Europe (1759-
1829).

Dundee, the persecutor of the Scottish Covenanters under Charles
II

Dyer, John, author of some descriptive poems, e.g. Grongar Hill
(1700-58).



ELDON, John Scott, Earl of, was in turn Solicitor-General,
Attorney-General, Lord Chief Justice of Common Pleas and Lord
Chancellor, and throughout a staunch Tory (1751-1838).

Empson and Dudley, ministers and tax-raisers under Henry VII,
executed by Henry VIII.

Ensign Northerton (see Fielding's Tom Jones, VII. xii.-xv.).

Escobar, a Spanish Jesuit preacher and writer (1589-1669).

Escurial, the palace and monastery built by Philip II.

Essex, One of the Rye House Conspirators; he was found in the
Tower with his throat cut, whether as the result of suicide or
murder is not known.

Euston, a late Jacobean house (and park) 10 miles from Bury St.
Edmunds.



Faithful Shepherdess, a pastoral by Fletcher which may have
suggested the general plan and some of the details of Comus.

Farinata (see Dante's Inferno, canto 10).

Farmer-general, the tax-gatherers of France, prior to the
Revolution: they contracted with the Government for the right to
collect or "farm" the taxes.

Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Aragon, who, by marrying Isabella
of Castile and taking Granada from the Moors, united Spain under
one crown.

Filicaja, a Florentine poet (1642-1707); according to Macaulay
("Essay on Addison") "the greatest lyric poet of modern times,".

Filmer, Sir Robert, advocated the doctrine of absolute regal
power in his Patriarcha, 1680.

Foigard, Father, a French refugee priest in Farquhar's Beaux
Stratagem.

Fouche, Joseph, duke of Otranto. A member of the National
Convention, who voted for the death of Louis XVI., and afterwards
served under Napoleon (as Minister of Police) and Louis XVIII.

Fox, Henry F., father of Charles James Fox, and later Lord
Holland.

Franche-Comte, that part of France which lies south of Lorraine
and west of Switzerland.

French Memoirs, those of Margaret of Valois, daughter of Henry
II. Of and wife of Henry (IV.) of Navarre.

Friar Dominic, a character in Dryden's Spanish Friar designed
to ridicule priestly vices.

Fronde, a French party who opposed the power Of Mazarin and the
Parliament of Paris during the minority of Louis XIV.



GRERIAH, c. seventy miles south from Bombay.

Ghizni, in Afghanistan, taken by Sir John Keane in 1839.

Gifford, John, the pseudonym of John Richards Green, a voluminous
Tory pamphleteer (1758-1818).

Giudecca. In the ninth and lowest circle of the Inferno, the
place of those who betray their benefactors,

Glover, a London merchant who wrote some poetry, including
Admiral Hosier's Ghost.

Godfrey, Sir Edmund, this Protestant magistrate who took Titus
Oates's depositions and was next morning found murdered near
Primrose Hill.

Godolphin, Lord of the Treasury under Charles II., James II., and
William III. Prime Minister 1702-10 when Harley ousted him (d.
1712)

Gooti, north from Mysore in the Bellary district, 589

Goree, near Cape Verde, west coast of Africa, Gaudaloupe, is in
West Indies; Ticonderaga and Niagara, frontier forts in Canada.

Gowries, the, Alexander Ruthven and his brother, the Earl of
Gowrie, who were killed in a scuffle during the visit of King
James to their house in Perth (Aug. 1600).

Grammont, a French count whose Memoirs give a vivid picture of
life at Charles II.'s court.

Grandison, Sir Charles . . . Miss Byron, the title character (and
his lady-love) of one of Richardson's novels.

Granicus, Rocroi, Narva, won respectively by Alexander (aged 22)
against the Persians, by Conde (aged 22) against the Spaniards,
and by Charles XII. (aged 18) against the Russians.

Great Captain, the, Gonzalvo Hernandez di Cordova, who drove the
Moors from Granada and the French from Italy (d. 1515).

Guarini, (see Pastor Fido).

Guicciardini, Florentian statesman and historian; disciple of
Macchiavelli secured the restoration of the Medici, (1485-1540).

Guizot and Villemain, in 1829 upheld liberal opinions against
Charles X., in 1844 took the part of monarchy and Louis Philippe.
Genonde and Jaquelin made the reverse change.



HAFIZ and Ferdusi, famous Persian poets: the former flourished in
the eleventh, the latter in the thirteenth century.

Hamilton, Count, friend of James II. and author of the Memoirs of
the Count de Grammont, the best picture of the English court of
the Restoration (1646-1720)

Hamilton's Bawn, a tumble-down house in the north of Ireland
which inspired Swift to write an amusing Poem.

Hamilton, Gerard, M.P. for Petersfield, a man of somewhat
despicable character. The nickname was "Single-speech Hamilton."

Hammond, Henry, Rector of Penshurst in Kent, and commentator on
the New Testament, the Psalms, etc.

Hardwicke, Lord, the Lord Chancellor (1737-56), whose Marriage
Act (1753) put an end to Fleet marriages.

Harte, Walter, poet, historian, and tutor to Lord Chesterfield's
son (1709-74).

Hayley and Seward, inferior authors who were at one time very
popular.

Hebert, Jacques Rene, editor of the violent revolutionary organ
Pere Duchesne; for opposing his colleagues he was arrested and
guillotined (1756-94).

Heliogabalus, made emperor of Rome by the army in 218; ruled
moderately at first, but soon abandoned himself to excesses of
all kinds, and was assassinated.

Helvetius, a French philosopher of the materialist school (1715-
71).

Henry the Fourth, the famous French king, "Henry of Navarre"
(?1589-1610).

Hildebrand, Pope Gregory VII., who waged war against the vices of
society and the imperial tyranny over the Church.

Hilpa and Shalum, Chinese antediluvians (see Spectator, vol.
viii.). Hilpa was a princess and Shalum her lover.

Hoadley, Benjamin, a prelate and keen controversialist on the
side of civil and religious liberty (1676-1761).

Holkar, a Mahratta chief whose headquarters were at Indore.

Hosein, the son of Ali Hosein's  mother was Fatima, the
favourite daughter of Mahomet.

Houghton, Sir R. Walpole's Norfolk seat.

Hunt, Mr., a well-to-do Wiltshire farmer, who after many attempts
entered Parliament in 1832.

Huntingdon, William, the S.S.="Sinner Save"; Huntingdon was one
of those religious impostors who professed to be the recipient of
divine visions and prophetic oracles.

Hydaspes, or Hytaspes, the Greek name for the river Jhelam in the
Punjab.

Hyphasis, the Greek name for the river Beds in the Punjab.



ILDEFONSO, ST., a village in Old Castile containing a Spanish
royal residence built by Philip V. on the model of Versailles.



JACOBINS, those holding extreme democratic principles. The name
is derived from an extreme Party of French Revolutionists who
used to meet in the ball of the Jacobin Friars.

Jaghires, landed estates.

Jauts, a fighting Hindoo race inhabiting the North-West
Provinces.

Jefferson, Thomas, an American statesman, who took a prominent
part in struggle for independence, and became President, 1801 to
1807.

Jenkinson, one of Bute's supporters, afterwards Earl of
Liverpool.

Jomini, a celebrated Swiss military writer, who served in the
French army as aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney (1779-1869).

Monsieur Jourdain, the honest but uneducated tradesman of
Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, whose sudden wealth lands him
in absurd attempts at aristocracy. 539

Justices in Eyre, i.e. in itinere, on circuit. In 1284 such were
superseded by judges of assize.



KLOPSTOCK, author of the German epic Messiah, and one of the
pioneers of modern German literature (1724-1803).

Knight of Malta, a play by Fletcher, Massinger, and another,
produced before 1619.

Knipperdoling, one of the leading German Anabaptists, stadtholder
of Munster, 1534-35, beheaded there in Jan. 1536.



LALLY, Baron de Tollendal, a distinguished French general in
India who, however, could not work harmoniously with his brother
officers or with his native troops, and was defeated by Eyre
Coote at Wandewash in January 1760. He was imprisoned in the
Bastille and executed (1766) on a charge of betraying French
interests.

Las Casas, a Catholic bishop who laboured among the aborigines of
South America, interposing himself between them and the cruelty
of the Spaniards. Clarkson (ib.) was Wilberforce's fellow-worker
in the abolition of slavery.

Latitudinarians, the school of Cudworth and Henry More (end of
seventeenth century), who sought to affiliate the dogmas of the
Church to a rational philosophy,

Law Mr., afterwards Edward (first) Lord Ellenborough.

Lee, Nathaniel, a minor play-writer (1653-92).

Legge, son of the Earl of Dartmouth. Lord Of the Admiralty 1746,
of the Treasury 1747, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1754 (1708-
64).

Lennox, Charlotte, friend of Johnson and Richardson, wrote The
Female Don Quixote and Shakespeare Illustrated.

Lenthal, Speaker, who presided at the trial of Charles I.

Leo, tenth pope (1513-21) of the name, Giovanni de Medici, son of
Lorenzo the Magnificent, and patron of art, science, and letters.

Lingard, Dr. Job., a Roman Catholic priest who wrote a history
of England to the Accession of William and Mary (d. 1851).

Locusta, a famous female poisoner employed by Agrippina and Nero.

Lothario, a loose character in Rowe's tragedy of The Fair
Penitent.

Lucan, the Roman epic Poet whose Pharsalia describes the struggle
between Caesar and Pompey and breathes freedom throughout.

Ludlow, Edmund, a member of the Court that condemned Charles I.
An ardent republican, he went into exile when Cromwell was
appointed Protector.



MACKENZIE, HENRY, author of The Man of Feeling and other
sentimental writings.

Maccaroni, an eighteenth-century term for a dandy or fop.

Maecenas, patron of literature in the Augustan age of Rome.
Virgil and Horace were largely favoured by him,

Malebolge, i.e. the place of darkness and horror--the eighth Of
the ten circles or pits in Dante's Inferno, and the abode of
barterers, hypocrites, evil counsellors, etc.

Malwa, about 100 miles east from Baroda and nearly 350 miles
north-cast from Bombay.

Marat, Jean Paul, a fanatical democrat whose one fixed idea was
wholesale slaughter of the aristocracy; assassinated by Charlotte
Corday (1743-93).

Mariendal, in Germany. Turenne's defeat here was an incident in
the Thirty Years' War.

Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington, the first was made Prince of
Mindelheim by Emperor Joseph I, the second Duke of Bronte by
Ferdinand IV., the third Duke of Vittoria by Ferdinand VII.

Marli, a forest and village ten miles west from Paris, seat of a
royal (now presidential) country-house.

Marten, Henry, one of the most extreme and most conspicuous
members of the Parliamentary Party. Charles I insulted him in
public and ordered him to be turned out of Hyde Park (1602-80).
The Marten mentioned on p.4 as guilty of judicial misfeasance was
his father (1562?-41).

Mason, William, friend and biographer of Gray; wrote Caractacus
and some odes (1725-97).

Mathias, a noted Anabaptist who, with John of Leyden, committed
great excesses in the endeavour to set up a Kingdom of Mount Zion
in Munster, Westphalia (1535).

Maurice, Elector of Saxony (1521-23) and leader of the Protestants
of Germany against the Emperor Charles V.

Mayor of the Palace, the chief minister of the Kings of France
between 638 and 742.

Mayor of the Palace, the name given to the comptroller of the
household of the Frankish kings. By successive encroachments these
officials became at length more powerful than the monarchs, whom
they finally ousted.

Mazarin(e) Cardinal, chief minister of France during the first
eighteen years of Louis XIV.'s reign,

Memmius, Roman Governor of Bithynia, distinguished for his
rhetorical and literary gifts, 270

Merovingian line, a dynasty of Frankish kings in the sixth and
seventh centuries A.D. They were gradually superseded in power by
their "Mayors of the Palace," and were succeeded by the
Carolingians.

Middleton, Conyers, a Cambridge theologian who had some
controversy with Bentley; distinguished for his "absolutely plain
style" of writing (1683-50).

Miguel, Don, King of Portugal, whose usurpation of the throne,
refusal to marry Maria, daughter of Don Pedro of Brazil, and
general conduct of affairs, led to a civil war, as a result of
which he had to withdraw to Italy (1802-66).

Mississippi Scheme, a plan for reducing the French National Debt,
similar in folly and in downfall to the South Sea Bubble.

Mite, Sir Matthew (see Foote's comedy, The Nabob).

Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, Chancellor of the Exchequer
1694; First Lord of Treasury 1697; impeached by the Tories for
peculation and acquitted; Prime Minister 1714; reformed the
currency.

Montezuma and Guatemozin, two of the native rulers of Mexico prior
to its conquest by Cortez in 1519.

Montezuma, Emperor of Mexico, seized by Cortez in 1519.

Moro, the, a strong fort at the entrance to the harbour of Havana,
taken after a hard struggle by the English under Admiral Sir
George Pocock and General the Earl of Albemarle in July 1762.

Moore, Dr., father of Sir John Moore, European traveller, and
author of the novel Zeluco.

Moorish Envoy, Algerine in Humphrey Clinker.

Mountain of Light, the Koh-i-noor, which after many adventures is
now one of the English crown jewels.

Mucius, a Roman, who, when condemned to the stake, thrust his
right hand unflinchingly into a fire lit for a sacrifice. He was
spared and given the name Scaevola, i. e. left-handed.

Murray, orator; afterwards Earl of Mansfield, and Lord Chief
Justice (1705-93).



NAPIER, COLONEL, served under Sir John Moore. Like Southey he
wrote a History of the Peninsular War.

Nimeguen, treaty of; by this it was agreed that France should
restore all her Dutch conquests, but should keep the Spanish
conquest of Franche-Comte, a clause which naturally incensed the
Emperor and the King of Spain.

Nollekens, Joseph, the eminent English sculptor, and friend of
George III. (1737-1823).

Nuzzurs, presents to persons in authority.



OATES, Bedloe, Dangerfield, in 1678 pretended to have discovered a
"Popish Plot" which aimed at overthrowing the King and
Protestantism.

Odoacer, a Hun, who became emperor in 476 and was assassinated by
his colleague, Theodoric (ib.) the Ostrogoth in 493.

O'Meara, Barry Edward, Napoleon's physician in St. Helena, and
author of A Voice from St. Helena; or, Napoleon in Exile.

Onomasticon, a Greek dictionary of antiquities, in ten books,
arranged according to subject-matter.

Onslow, Arthur, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1728 to 1761.

Oromasdes and Arimanes, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the embodiments of the
principles of good and evil respectively, in the Zoroastrian
religion.

Oxenstiern, Chancellor to Gustavus Adolphus and the director of
the negotiations which led to the Peace of Westphalia and the
close of the Thirty Years' War.



PAGE, SIR FRANCIS, a judge whose "reputation for coarseness and
brutality (e.g. Pope, Dunciad, iv. 2730) is hardly warranted by
the few reported cases in which he took part"(1661?-1741).

Palais Royal, in Paris, formerly very magnificent.

Pannonia, roughly equivalent to the modern Hungary.

Pasquin, Anthony, a fifteenth-century Italian tailor, noted for
his caustic wit.

Pastor Fido, a pastoral play, composed in 1585 by Guarini on the
model of Aminta.

Patna, massacre of.

Peacock Throne, a gilded and jewelled couch with a canopy,
described by a French jeweller named Tavernier, who saw it in
1665, and possibly the present throne of the Shah of Persia.

Perceval, Spencer, supported the Tory party, and became its leader
in 1809; assassinated in the Commons Lobby, 1812.

Perwannahs, magisterial documents containing instructions or
orders.

Peters, Hugh, a famous Independent divine and chaplain to the
Parliamentary forces, executed in 1660 for his alleged share in
the death of Charles 1. He was an upright and genial man, but
somewhat lacking in moderation and taste.

Petit Trianon, a chateau built for Madame du Barry by Louis XV,
and afterwards the favourite resort of Marie Antoinette. In a
subsequent edition Macaulay substituted Versailles.

Phalaris, a tyrant of Agrigentum in Sicily (sixth century).

Pigot, Governor of Madras when Clive was in Bengal, and also, as
Lord Pigot, in the time of Warren Hastings.

Pinto, Fernandez Mendez, a Portuguese traveller (d. 1583), who
visited the Far East and possibly landed in the Gulf of Pekin.

Politian, one of the early scholars of the Renaissance; patronized
by Lorenzo de Medici (1454-94).

Pontiff, that inglorious, Peter Marone (Celestine V.), who was
tricked into abdicating the papacy for Boniface VIII, and died in
prison.

Porto Novo and Pollilore, where Coote defeated Hyder Ali in July
and August 1781, and so finished a long campaign in the Carnatic.

Powis, Lord, Edward Clive, created Earl of Powis in 1804.

Powle, a leading Politician and lawyer in the events connected
with the accession Of William III.

Prynne, William, a Puritan, who attacked the stage and the Queen's
virtue, and suffered by order of the Star Chamber. In late life he
changed his opinions, was imprisoned by Cromwell, and favoured by
Charles II.

Pyrenees, treaty of the, closed the war between France and Spain
(1660), which had continued twelve years after the Peace of
Westphalia was signed.  For the other treaties mentioned here see
the essay on "The War of the Spanish Succession," in vol. ii.



RAPIN, a Huguenot who joined the army of William of Orange, and
wrote a Histoire d'Angleterre which surpassed all its
predecessors.

Ricimer, a fifth-century Swabian soldier who deposed the Emperor
Avitus, and then set up and deposed Majorian, Libius Severus and
Anthemius, and finally set up Olybrius.

Rix dollar, a Scandinavian coin worth between three and four
shillings.

Roe, Sir Thomas, an English traveller who, in 1615, went on an
embassy to Jehangir at Agra.

Rohilcund, north-west of Oude.

Rohillas, Mussulman mountaineers inhabiting Rohilcund (q.v.).

Russell, Lord William, the Hampden of the Restoration period.
Fought hard for the exclusion of James II. from the crown;
unjustly executed for alleged share in the "Rye House Plot" (1639-
83). Algernon Sydney (1621-83) was a fellow-worker and sufferer.



SACHEVERELL, Henry, a famous divine of Queen Anne's reign, who was
impeached by the Whigs for forwardly preaching the doctrine of
non-resistance.

Sackville, Lord George, the general commanding the British cavalry
at Minden. Nervousness led to his disobeying a critical order to
charge, which would have completed the French rout, and he was
court-martialled and degraded.

Saint Cecilia, Mrs. Sheridan, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in
this character because of her love of, and skill in, music.

Salmacius, the Latin name of Claude de Saumaise an eminent French
scholar and linguist (1588-1653), whose Defence of Charles 1.
provoked Milton's crushing reply, Defensio Pro populo Anglicano

Sandys, Samuel, opposed Sir R. Walpole, on whose retirement he
became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and afterwards a peer.

Sattara, a fortified town c. one hundred miles southeast from
Bombay.

Saxe, the foremost French general in the War of the Austrian
Succession (1696-1750.)

Scaligers;, Julius Caesar S., a learned Italian writer and
classical scholar (1484-1558) and his son Joseph Justus S., who
lived in France and was also an eminent scholar.

Schedules A and B. In the Reform Act Of 1832 Schedule A comprised
those boroughs which were no longer to be represented, B those
which were to send one member instead of two.

Scroggs, the infamous Chief-Justice of the King's Bench in the
reign of Charles II., impeached in 680, and pensioned by Charles.

Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1758 to 1768.

Seigneur Oreste and Madame Andromaque. See Racine's Andromaque.

Settle, Elkanah. See Flecknoe and Settle.

Sidney, Algernon, condemned and executed on scanty and illegal
evidence on a charge of implication in the Rye House Plot of 1683.

Somers, President of the Council (1708-10) a great Whig leader (he
had defended the Seven Bishops) and patron of literature (1650-
1716).

Spinola, Spanish marquis and general who served his country with
all his genius and fortune for naught (1571-1630).

Sporus, a favourite of Nero. Owing to his resemblance to that
emperor's wife he was, after her death, dressed as a woman, and
went through a marriage ceremony with Nero.

Stafford, Lord, executed in 1680, on a false charge of complicity
in Oates's Popish Plot.

Stanley, Mr., fourth Earl of Derby, the "Rupert of Debate."

Stella, Esther Johnson, the daughter of one of Lady Giffard's
friends.

St. Martin's Church, the site of the present G. P. 0., formerly a
monastery, church, and "sanctuary."

Sudbury and Old Sarum, rotten boroughs, the one in Suffolk
disfranchised in 1844, the other near Salisbury in 1832.

Sudder Courts, courts of criminal and civil jurisdiction which,
in Macaulay's day, existed alongside the Supreme Court, but
which, since 1858, have with the Supreme Court, been merged in
the "High Courts."

Sunnuds, certificates of possession.

Surajah Dowlah, better Suraj-ud-daulah.

Swan River, in the S.W. of Australia, to which country the name
of New Holland was at first given.

Switzer, that brave, Ulrich Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, who fell
at Cappel in 1531.



TALLEYRAND, French diplomatist (1754-1831), rendered good service
to the Revolution, was influential under Buonaparte and Louis
Philippe's ambassador to England,

Talma, Francis Joseph, a famous French actor of tragic parts, who
passed part of his life in England (1763-1826).

Talus, Sir Artegal's iron man, who in Spenser's Faery Queen, Book
v., represents the executive power of State Justice.

Tamerlane, the Tartar who invaded India in 1398, and whose
descendant, Baber, founded the Mogul dynasty.

Tanjore, a district of Madras, noted for its fertility; ceded to
the East India Company by the Marathas in 1799. The town of
Tanjore is about 300 miles south from Madras.

Temple, Lord Pitt's brother-in-law. Cf. Macaulay's severe
description of him in the second "Essay on Chatham." (vol. v. of
this edition).

Themis, Justice.

Theodosius, emperor of the East 378-395, and for a short time of
the West also. He partly checked the Goths' advance.

Theramenes, Athenian philosopher and general (third century
B.C.), unjustly accused and condemned to drink hemlock.

Theseus, the, one of the most perfect statues in the "Elgin
marbles," of the British Museum.

Thurtell, John, a notorious boxer and gambler (b. 1794), who was
hanged at Hertford on January 9th, 1824, for the brutal murder of
William Weare, one of his boon-companions.

Thirty-Ninth, i.e. the Dorsets.

Thyrsis, a herdsman in the Idylls of Theocritus; similarly a
shepherd in Virgil's Eclogues; hence a rustic or shepherd.

Timoleon, the Corinthian who expelled the tyrants from the Greek
cities of Sicily (415-337 B.C.).

Tindal, Nicholas, clergyman and miscellaneous author (1687-1774).

Topehall, Smollett's drunken fox-hunter in Roderick Random.

Torso, lit. "trunk," a statue which has lost its head and
members.

Torstenson, Bernard, pupil of Gustavus Adolphus, and General-in-
Chief of the Swedish army from 1641. He carried the Thirty Years'
War into the heart of Austria.

Trapbois, the usurer in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel ch. xvii.-xxv.

Trissotin, a literary fop in Moliere's Les Femmes Savantes.

Turcaret, the title-character in one of Le Sage's comedies.

Turgot, the French statesman (1727-81) who for two years managed
the national finances under Louis XVI., and whose reforms, had
they not been thwarted by the nobility and the king's indecision,
would have considerably mitigated the violence of the Revolution.

Turk's Head. The most famous coffeehouse of this name was in the
Strand, and was one of Johnson's frequent resorts.



UGOLINO See Dante's Inferno, xxxii., xxxiii.,



VANSITTART, was governor of Bengal in the interval between
Clive's first and second administrations.

Vattel, the great jurist whose Droit des Gens, a work on Natural
Law and its relation to International Law, appeared in 1758.

Vellore, west of Arcot.

Verres, the Roman governor of Sicily (73-77 B.C.), for plundering
which island he was brought to trial and prosecuted by Cicero.

Virgil's foot race. In Aeneid v. 325 ff it is told how Nisus, who
was leading, tripped Salius, his second, that his, friend
Euryalus might gain the prize.



WALDEGRAVE, Lord, Governor to George III. before the latter's
accession; married Walpole's niece.

Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland, the ablest commander on the
Catholic side in the Thirty Years' War

Warburg, like Minden 1759, a victory gained by Ferdinand of
Brunswick over the French (1760).

Watson, Admiral, made no protest against his name being signed,
and claimed his share of the profits.

Western, Mrs. See Fielding's Tom Jones.

Whithed, Mr. W., Poet-laureate from 1757 to 1785; author of the
School for Lovers, etc.

Wild, Jonathan, a detective who turned villain and was executed
for burglary in 1725; the hero of one of Fielding s stories.

Williams, Sir Charles Hanbury, Ambassador to Berlin (1746-49),
His satires against Walpole's opponents are easy and humorous (d.
1759).

Winnington. In turn Lord of the Admiralty, Lord of the Treasury,
And Paymaster of the Forces. He had infinitely more wit than
principle.

Wood's patent the permission granted to Wood of Wolverhampton to
mint copper coin for Ireland, which called forth Swift's Drapier Letters.



YORKE, Attorney-General; Earl of Hardwicke (q.v.).



ZEMINDARS, landholders,

Zincke and Petitot, eighteenth and seventeenth century enamel
painters who came to England from the Continent.



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