"When sinks the orb of day, a borrow'd light
The moon displays, pale _Regent_ of the night.
Vain are her beams to bid the golden grain
Spread plenty's blessings o'er the smiling plain;
No power has she, except from shore to shore
To bid the ocean's troubled billows roar.
With hungry cries the wolf her coming greets;
Then Rapine stalks triumphant through the streets;
Avarice and Fraud in secret ambush lurk,
And Treason's sons their desperate purpose work.
But, lo! the Sun with orient splendour shines,"----
&c. &c. &c.
We cannot indulge ourselves with any more of this loyal lucubration--we
think that the slur at the _Regency_ was not quite fair; we were by no
means aware that the moon was so mischievous; and, as our general
conclusion, we must admit that, if his lordship did not gain the
Laureateship, he amply deserved it. However, better times were at hand.
Pitt, like all other eminent men, had a keen insight into character, and
he had long known the especial qualities of Addington. This solves the
difficulty of accounting at once for his continued personal intercourse,
and yet his apparent official neglect. He knew him to be well-informed,
intelligent, and honest; although his retiring habits had already given
full evidence of his indisposition to face the storms of party.
On Mr Grenville's promotion to the Home department, in 1789, Addington
was proposed for the Speaker's chair, and was elected by two hundred and
fifteen to one hundred and forty-two, who voted for the Opposition
candidate, Sir Gilbert Elliot. In the private correspondence which was
so frequent between him and the minister, various suggestions had been
thrown out by Pitt of the Irish secretaryship, a seat at the treasury,
&c. But the man and the place were now found together, incomparably
adapted to each other. The place implies an honourable neutrality, and
Addington was true to the trust. It requires the favourable opinion of
the House to the man as well as the officer; and Sheridan's first
address to him, as the spokesman of the Opposition, was, "we were all
very sorry to have voted against you." It required considerable
knowledge of general and parliamentary law, and the new Speaker had
devoted years to their acquisition. Even the minor merits of a grave and
commanding presence were there; for Addington, in his early years, was
of as striking a countenance and figure as in old age he was gentle and
amiable.
Characteristic anecdotes are scattered through the volumes: these we
think their most attractive portion; and of such Addington's memory was
full in his later years. One night, on his crying out, in the usual
form, to hush some chattering in the House, "Order, order, or I shall
name names!" Charles Fox, then standing beside the chair, told him that
Wilkes once asked the Speaker, Onslow, what would be the consequence of
his naming names? "Heaven above only knows," was the solemn reply.
One night Fox himself put the same question to Sir Fletcher Norton (the
Speaker,) who nonchalantly answered, "Happen! hang me, if I know or
care!"
A substantial proof of the general approval was given to the new
official, in the addition of L1000 a-year to his salary; thus giving him
L6000 a-year--which, besides a house, with some other emoluments on
public and private bills, and the sale of certain clerkships connected
with the business of the Commons, is generally calculated as equivalent
to about L10,000 yearly. For this, however, the Speaker is expected to
keep up considerable state, to give occasional banquets during the
session to successive parties of the members; to have evening receptions
and levees; and, in general, to lead a rather laborious life; the least
part of whose labour is in the Speaker's chair. He has also the
appointment of a chaplain to the House, which is equivalent to the
disposal of valuable church patronage, the chaplain being always
provided for, after a few years' attendance, by a request of the House
to the crown. To complete this accumulation of good things, the Speaker
who exhibits intelligence, is frequently promoted to the higher offices
of the cabinet, and generally receives a peerage.
But those were the "piping times of peace;" times of trouble and terror
were at hand. The French democracy had already burst on Europe; and
every throne was heaving on the surge which it had raised. Pitt alone,
of all the great ministers of Europe, seemed to disregard its hazards.
Customary as it is for the pamphleteers of later times to assail his
memory, as the promoter of hostilities, the chief outcry against Pitt in
the year 1790, was his tardiness in thinking that those hostilities
could ever force England to take a share in the struggles of the
Continent. The whole aristocracy, the whole property, the whole
mercantile interest, and even the whole moral feeling of the empire, had
become from hour to hour more convinced that a war was inevitable. Even
the Opposition, whose office it was to screen the atrocities of every
national enemy, and who, for a time, had looked to Jacobinism as an
auxiliary in the march to power, had at last shrunk from this horrible
alliance--had felt the natural disgust of Englishmen for an association
with the undisguised vice and vileness of the Republic, and had at last
sunk into silence, if not into shame. Burke had published his immortal
"Reflections," and their sound had gone forth like the tolling of a vast
funeral bell for the obsequies of European monarchy. Still, nothing
could move Pitt. By nature, a financier, and by genius the most
magnificent of all financiers, he calculated the force of nations by the
depths of their treasuries; and seeing France bankrupt, conceived that
she was on the verge of conviction, and waited only to see her sending
her humbled Assembly to beg for a general loan, and for a general peace
at the same moment.
But those were days made to show the shortsightedness of human sagacity.
The lesson was rapidly given; it was proved in European havoc, that
utter powerlessness for good was not merely compatible with tremendous
power for evil, but was actually the means of accumulating that power;
that the more wretched, famishing, and haggard a nation might become at
home, the more irresistible it might prove abroad: that, like the
madman, it might be fevered and tortured by mental disease, into
preternatural strength of frame, and might spring out of the bed where
it had lain down to die, with a force which drove before it all the
ordinary resistance of man. Pitt had still to learn, that this was a
war of Opinion; and had to learn also, that Opinion was a new material
of explosion, against whose agency all former calculation was wholly
unprovided, and whose force was made to fling all the old buttresses and
battlements of European institutions like dust and embers into the air.
It is not worth the trouble now to inquire, whether Pitt's sagacity
equally failed him in estimating the probable effect of the French
Revolution on England. His expression at a dinner party, where
Addington, Grenville, and Burke formed the guests, "Never mind, Mr
Burke, we shall go on as we are until the day of judgment;" shows his
feeling of the stability of the constitution. As we have no love for
discovering the
"Fears of the brave, and follies of the wise,"
we are gratified by thinking that both were partly in the right: Burke,
in regarding the Revolution as destined to sweep the Continent with long
and tremendous violence, and Pitt as believing it likely to make but
little _permanent_ impression on the habits, the power, or the heart of
England. Burke argued from the weakness of the Continental governments;
Pitt from the strength of the British constitution: the former having no
connexion with the national interests, the latter being formed from
those interests, for those interests, and being as much supported by
them as a tree by its roots. There was not a portion of that stately
tree, from its solid trunk to the highest ornament of its foliage, which
was not fed from the ground. The truth was, that the Jacobinisim of
England was confined to adventurers, and never obtained any hold on the
great body of the proprietors and the people. Its spirit evaporated in
tavern harangues, to which the multitude went to listen, as to the
chattering and grimaces of a mountebank.
No man of distinction, no man of birth, and no man of property was ever
engaged in those coffee-house conspiracies; their Jaffiers and Pierres
were cobblers and tinkers, with a sprinkling of petty pamphleteers, and
ruined declaimers. When Hardy and Horne Took, were the priests, what
must be the worshippers at the Jacobin shrine? But in France, the temple
of that idol of confusion was crowded with the chiefs of the Noblesse,
the Church, the Law; headed by the Prince of the blood next to the
throne; all stimulated by a ferocity of folly unexampled in the history
of infatuation, and all unconsciously urged to their ruin by a race of
beings inferior in rank, and almost objects of their scorn, yet, rather
embodied malignities, and essential mischiefs, than men. France in that
fearful time reminded the spectator of Michael Angelo's great picture of
the "Last Judgment"--general convulsion above, universal torment below;
the mighty of the earth falling, kings, nobles, hierarchs, warriors,
plunging down, and met by fiends, at once their tempters, their
taunters, and their torturers; a scene of desolation and destiny.
Pitt's sentiment on the safety of England from revolutionary movements
was so decided, that if France had not invaded Holland, and thus
actually compelled a war, we should probably have had none at this
period.
A distinction between the state of France and England not less
memorable, if not still more effective, than in property, was religion.
In France infidelity was not merely frequent, but was the _fashion_. No
man of any literary name condescended even to the pretence of religion;
but in England, infidelity was a stigma; when it began to take a public
form, it was only in the vilest quarter; and when it assailed religion,
it was instantly put down at once by the pen, by the law, and by the
more decisive tribunal of national opinion. Paine, the chief writer of
the Satanic faction, was a bankrupt staymaker, and a notorious
profligate: his pamphlet had only the effect of making the public
protest against its abominations; he was prosecuted, was forced to leave
the country, and finally died in beggary in America.
It is remarkable to find so cautious a man as Addington at this period
speaking of the Church as "an honest _drone_, who, if she did not stir
herself very soon, would be stung by the wasps of the conventicle." The
metaphor is not good for much, for the drone can sting too, and does
nothing but sting. But what is it that, at any time, makes the church
ineffective? The abuse of the ministerial patronage. The clergy
altogether depend on the guidance, the character, and the activity of
their bishops. If ministers regard the mitre as merely a sort of
donative for their own private tutors, or the chaplains of their noble
friends, or as provision for a relative, dependent, or the brother of a
Treasury clerk, they not merely degrade the office, but they paralyse
the church. Of the living prelacy we do not speak: but it is impossible
to look upon the list of archbishops and bishops (a few excepted) during
the last century, without surprise that the inferior clergy have done so
much, rather than that they have done so little. Where there was no
encouragement for literary exertion, ability naturally relaxed its
efforts; where preferment was lavished on heads "that could not teach,
and would not learn," disgust extinguished diligence; and where
character for intelligence, practical capacity, and public effect, were
evidently overlooked in the calculation of professional claims, it is
only in the natural course of things that their exercise should be
abandoned, in fastidiousness or in contempt, in disgust or in despair.
The church was never in a more ineffective condition than at the close
of the last century; and if the sin was to be laid at the right
threshold, it must have been laid at the door of Whitehall.
Addington certainly deserves the credit of having formed a just estimate
of the French Revolution from the beginning. In a letter to his brother
he inserts this stanza,--
"France shall perish, write that word
In the blood that she has spilt;
Perish hopeless and abhorr'd,
Deep in ruin as in guilt."
He, however, fell into the common error of the time, and looked upon her
overthrow as certain in the first campaign.
It was on the second reading of the Alien Bill that the dagger scene, of
which so much was said at the time, occurred in the House of
Commons--thus described by the Speaker: "Burke, after a few preliminary
remarks, the house being totally unprepared, fumbled in his bosom, and
suddenly drew out the dagger, and threw it on the floor. His extravagant
gesture excited a general disposition to smile, by which most men would
have been disconcerted; but he suddenly collected himself, and by a few
brilliant sentences recalled the seriousness of the house. 'Let us,'
said he, 'keep French principles from our heads and French daggers from
our hearts; let us preserve all our blandishments in life, and all our
consolations in death; all the blessings of time, and all the hopes of
eternity.'"
As all partisanship hated Burke, who had trampled it in the mire, this
dagger scene was sneered at as a stage trick; but Burke was above all
pantomime. The dagger was one which had been sent from France to a
Birmingham manufacturer, with an order for a large number of the same
pattern: and Burke had received it only on that day--and received it
from Sir James Bland Burgess only on his way down to the house--so that
there could have been no preparation for public exhibition. It was a
natural impulse of the moment, in a time when all was emotion.
The murder of the unfortunate King of France, on the 21st of January
1793, perhaps the most wanton murder in all royal history, instantly
brought out a full display of the _real_ feelings of England. The
universal sentiment was horror, mingled with indignation; and when the
royal message came down to the house on the 28th, stating that, in
consequence of the regicide, the king had ordered M. Chauvelin, minister
from the late king, to leave the country, as being no longer accredited
by the sovereign, the message seemed rather the echo of the national
voice than the dictate of the government.
From this period the Whig party diminished day by day. They were chiefly
the great landholders of the kingdom, and they saw in this atrocious act
a declaration against all property; but they had also the higher motive
of its being a declaration against all government. The chief persons of
the Opposition at once crossed the house; but as Horne Tooke, in his apt
and short style, described the party on his trial, "We all," said he,
"entered the revolutionary coach at Reading; but one got out at
Maidenhead, another at Slough, a third at Hounslow, and a fourth at
Brentford. It was _my_ misfortune, my lord, as it was also Mr Fox's, to
go on to London."
The French now threw off all political form, and all diplomatic decorum,
and exhibited the whole savagism of republicanism. On the motion of a
ruffian of the name of Garnier, the Convention publicly resolved that
"Pitt was an enemy to the human race." The same ruffian then proceeded
to move, "that every body had a right to assassinate him." This,
however, was _not_ carried; but an order was sent, on the proposal of
Robespierre, to the armies, that "no quarter should be given to the
English troops;" an order which was not repealed until his death by the
guillotine.
Those were stirring times, and in every instance of success in the
campaign, Pitt sent an immediate courier to Addington when out of town,
of which the Speaker gave the signal to the surrounding country by
lighting up his house. On one occasion of this kind, a friend of his,
travelling on the coach from Bath, heard the coachman say, "I'm sure
there's good news come, for there's the Speaker's house all in a blaze."
In this year Addington was offered the high promotion of Secretary of
State, in the room of Dundas. He consulted Huntingford, who strongly
advised him against giving up his pleasant, safe, and lucrative office,
for the toilsome, hazardous, and unpopular office of the secretary. A
letter from the Solicitor-general Mitford, (afterwards Lord Redesdale,)
confirmed the opinion. It is justly observed by the biographer, that
Mitford, who could be so wise for his friend, was not equally so for
himself; for, after having obtained the speakership in his own person,
he gave it up to assume the office of Irish Chancellor, a situation of
great responsibility, and great labour, in which he was assailed on all
sides, and from which, on the first change of the cabinet, he was
insultingly recalled.
The war had now become almost wholly naval, and it was a war of
successive triumphs. The dominion of Europe seemed about to be divided
between England and France: England mistress of the sea--France sweeping
every thing before her on the land. The famous battle of the 1st of June
extinguished the first revolutionary fleet, seven sail of the line being
captured, and the remainder of the fleet escaping with difficulty into
the French ports.
The minister was also triumphant at home, and the chief persons of the
Whig party were gazetted as taking office under his administration. Earl
Fitzwilliam as President of the Council, the Duke of Portland as
Secretary of State, Earl Spencer, Privy Seal, the Duke of Gordon, Privy
Seal of Scotland, and Windham, Secretary at War.
It had been frequently remarked, that Pitt never sought for coadjutors
of any remarkable ability, from confidence in his own extraordinary
attainments. As Fox candidly and bitterly concluded one of his speeches
in Parliament, saying, "There is one point, and only one on which I
entirely agree with the right honourable gentleman, and that is, in the
high opinion he entertains of his own talents."
It is certain that those accessions to his cabinet were not likely to
excite any jealousy on his part, yet there was one whose absence from
the cabinet may have been justly regretted as detracting at once from
the strength of the administration, and the glory of the minister. The
name of Burke was _not_ found there, though no man had operated so
powerfully in producing the change; no man had so amply deserved the
distinction; and no man would have thrown so permanent a lustre round
the councils in which he shared. There can be no doubt that Burke felt
this neglect, and that he was justified in feeling himself defrauded of
an honour conferred before his face on men who were not fit to be named
in the same breath.
But he has had his noble revenge. Posterity, of all tribunals the most
formidable, yet the most faithful, has done him Justice. While the
favourites of fortune have passed away into the forgetfulness for which
they were made, his services assume a higher rank in the records of
national preservation, and his genius continually fills a prouder place
among the intellectual triumphs of mankind.
In 1794 Burke closed his parliamentary career, by retiring from the
borough of Malton, for which his son became member. In this year, also,
closed the memorable trial of Warren Hastings, which had extended over
ten sessions of parliament, (from February 1788 to 5th April 1795)--the
actual trial lasting for seven years, two months, and ten days. The
legal expenses of the defence amounted to seventy-one thousand and
eighty pounds, which the proprietors of East India stock, by a majority
of three hundred, on a ballot, paid. What the expenses of the
prosecution were, is not told; probably twice the sum.
The whole holds forth an important lesson for the punishment of public
delinquency. If, instead of the masquerade of an impeachment before the
peers and king, Hastings had been called on to answer before the common
law courts, for any one of the hundred acts of personal injury alleged
against him, the decision would have been secured as soon as the
witnesses could have been brought from Calcutta. Of course the world
would have lost a great deal of parliamentary parade and some capital
speeches; all the _poetic_ pomp would have been wanting; and the
court-dresses would have been left at the tailors. But justice would
have been done, which no one now believes to have been done.
The obvious fact is, that the country had grown tired of a trial which
seemed likely to last for life. After the first sounding of trumpets,
the flourish excited curiosity no more. The topic had been a toy in the
great parliamentary nursery, and the children were grown weary of their
tinselled and painted doll. Even the horrors--and some of the details
had all the terrible atrocity of barbarism with its passions inflamed by
impunity--had ceased to startle; the eloquence of the managers had
become commonplace by the repetition which had deprived the horrors of
their sting. The prosecution was yawned to death.
Perhaps there was not a peer in the seats of Westminster Hall, nor a
member of the committee, nor a man in the kingdom, except Burke and
Pitt, who would not have forgiven Hastings twice the amount of his
offences, to have silenced the subject at once and for ever.
With Burke, the impeachment was a vision, half Roman, half Oriental--the
august severity of a Roman senate, combining with the mysterious
splendour of the throne of Aurungzebe. He was the Cicero impeaching
Verres in the presence of the eighteenth century, or a high-priest of
some Indian oracle promulgating the decrees of eternal justice to the
eastern world.
With Pitt, the whole event was a fortunate diversion of the enemy, a
relief from the restless assaults of a Whig opposition, a perpetual
drain on Whig strength, and by a result more effective still, a fruitful
source of popular ridicule on the lingering impotence of Whig labours.
On the acquittal of Hastings, Burke wrote several letters to Addington
as Speaker, which have a tone of the deepest despondency. He writes in
the impassioned anguish of a man to whom the earth exhibited but one
aspect of despair. They were letters such as Priam might have indited on
the night when his Troy was in a blaze. It was evident that the powerful
genius of Burke was partially bewildered by the bent of his feelings. He
raised an imaginary sepulchre for England on the spot where he had
contemplated the erection of a dungeon for Indian crime through all ages
to come.
The Indian directors voted Hastings, an annuity of five thousand pounds,
which he enjoyed to a very advanced age: yet his acquittal has not
received the seal of posterity. A calmer view has regarded him as the
daring agent of acts fitter for the meridian of Hindoo morality than
European. To serve the struggling interests of the Company seems to
have been his highest motive, and there can be no doubt that he served
them with equal sagacity and success. That he was a vigorous
administrator, an enterprising statesman, and a popular governor, is
beyond denial; that he was personally unstained by avarice or extortion,
is admitted. But history demands higher proofs of principle; and no
governor since his time has ever attempted to imitate his example, or
ever ventured to excuse his own errors, by alleging the conduct or the
acquittal of Hastings.
There are some men, whom no position can render ridiculous, and there
are some quite the reverse: of the latter class was Ferguson of Pitfour.
Ferguson's notion of the essential quality of a Lord Advocate was
tallness. "We Scotch members," said he, "always vote with the Lord
Advocate, and we therefore require to see him in a division. Now I can
see Mr Pitt, and I can see Mr Addington, but I cannot see the Lord
Advocate." His lordship evidently not rising to Ferguson's regulation
size of a statesman.
One evening as Ferguson was taking his dinner in the coffee-room, some
one ran in, to say, that "Pitt was on his legs." Every one rose to leave
the room, except Ferguson. "What!" said they, "won't you go to hear Mr
Pitt?" "No," he replied, "Why should I? do you think Mr Pitt would go to
hear me?"
At a dinner given by Dundas, at Wimbledon, where Addington, Sheridan,
and Erskine were present, the latter was rallied on his not taking so
prominent a part in the debates as his fame required. Sheridan said
(with a roughness unusual with him,) "I tell you how it happens:
Erskine, you are afraid of Pitt, and that's the flabby part of your
character."
This piece of candour, however, was probably owing to the claret. But
Erskine's comparative taciturnity in the House may be accounted for on
more honourable terms. Erskine was no poltroon: he was the boldest
speaker at the bar. But the bar was his place, and no man has ever
attained perfection in the two styles of oratory. It is true, that
distinguished barristers have sometimes been distinguished in the House
of Commons, but they have not been of the race of orators; they have
been sharp, shrewd, bitter men, ready on vexatious topics, quick in
peevish speech, and willing to plunge themselves into subjects whose
labour or license is disdained by higher minds. But Erskine was an
_orator_, vivid, high-toned, and sensitive; shrinking from the
common-place subjects which common-place men take up as their natural
portion; rather indolent, as is common with men of genius; and rather
careless of fame in the senate, from his consciousness of the
unquestioned fame which he had already won at the bar.
Of Fox some pretty anecdotes are told, substantiating that eminent man's
character for courtesy. One day, as Addington was riding by the grounds
of St Ann's Hill, he was seen over the palings by Fox, who called out to
him to stop, invited him in, and displayed the beauties of his garden,
to which he had always devoted a great deal of care. As Addington
particularly admired some weeping ash trees, Fox promised him some
cuttings. Some months elapsed, when one evening, Fox, after going
through a stormy meeting, in Palace-yard, went up to the Speaker in the
chair, and said--"I have not forgotten your cuttings, but have brought
them up to town with me," giving him directions at the same time for
their treatment. In a few minutes after, he was warmly engaged in debate
with Pitt and Burke.
Fox's enjoyment of St Ann's Hill was proverbial. On some one's asking
General Fitzpatrick, in the midst of one of the hottest periods of the
debates on the French war--Where is Fox? the answer was, "I daresay he
is at home, sitting on a hay-cock, reading novels, and watching the jays
stealing his cherries."
The year 1796 was a formidable year for England. Prussia and Spain had
given up her alliance. Belgium and Holland had been taken possession of
by the French. Austria was still firm, but her armies were dispirited,
her generals had lost their reputation, her statesmen had been baffled,
her finances were supported only by English loans, and France was
already by anticipation marking out a campaign under the walls of
Vienna. The English Opposition, at once embittered by defeat, and
stimulated by a new hope of storming the cabinet, carried on a perpetual
assault in the shape of motions for peace. The remnants of Jacobinism in
England united their strength with the populace once more; and, taking
advantage of the continental defeats, of the general timidity of our
allies, and of the apparent hopelessness of all success against an enemy
who grew stronger every day, made desperate efforts to reduce the
government to the humiliation of a forced treaty of peace.
The necessity for raising eighteen millions, followed by seven millions
and a half more, increased the public discontent; and, although the
solid strength of England was still untouched, and the _real_ opinion of
the country was totally opposed to their rash demands for peace, there
can be no question, that the louder voice of the multitude seemed to
carry the day. A bad harvest also had increased the public difficulties;
and, as if every thing was to be unfortunate at this moment, Admiral
Christian's expedition--one of the largest which had ever left an
English port, and which was prepared to sweep the French out of the West
Indies--sailing in December, encountered such a succession of gales in
the chops of the Channel that a great part of this noble armament was
lost, and the admiral reached the West Indies with the survivors, only
to see them perish by the dreadful maladies of the climate.
But, to complete the general disastrous aspect of affairs, a new
phenomenon suddenly blazed over Europe. The year 1796 first saw Napoleon
Buonaparte at the head of an army. Passing the Alps on the 9th of April,
he fell with such skill and vigour on the Austrian and Italian troops,
that in his first campaign he destroyed five successive Austrian armies;
broke up the alliances of that cluster of feeble and contemptible
sovereignties which had so long disgraced Italy in the eyes of Europe;
trampled on their effeminate and debauched population, with the
sternness of an executioner rather than the force of a conqueror; and
after sending the plunder of their palaces to Paris, in the spirit and
with the pomp of the old Roman triumphs, dragged their princes after him
to swell his own triumphal progress through Italy.
The war now engrossed every feeling of the nation; and England showed
her national spirit in her gallant defiance of the threat of invasion.
The whole kingdom was ready to rise in arms on the firing of the first
beacon;--men of the highest rank headed their tenantry; men even of
those grave and important avocations and offices, which might seem to
imply a complete exemption from arms, put themselves at the head of
corps in every part of the empire; and England showed her prime minister
as Colonel Pitt of the Walmer volunteers, and the speaker of her House
of Commons, as Captain Addington of the Woodley cavalry.
But a brilliant change was at hand. In September, Addington received the
following note from Pitt, enclosing the bulletin of the battle of the
Nile:--
"I have just time to send you the enclosed Bulletin (_vive la
Marine Anglaise_,) and to tell you, that we mean, (out of
precaution) the meeting of Parliament for the 6th of November.
"Sir, ever yours, W. P."
The bulletin which gave value to this note, belongs to history, and
gives to history one of the noblest events of our naval annals. It
exhibits a singular contrast to the present rapidity of communication,
that even the "rumour" of Nelson's immortal victory did not reach until
fifty-seven days after the event. The Gazette could not be published
until the 2d of October.
But the star of Pitt, which had hitherto shone with increasing
brightness from year to year, and which had passed through all the
clouds of time uneclipsed, was now to wane. The Irish attempt to
establish a separate Regency, the Irish Rebellion, and the growing
influence of the Popish party, combined with Liberalism in the Irish
legislature, had determined Pitt to unite the parliaments of the two
kingdoms. For this purpose, he made overtures to the Popish party,
whose influence he most dreaded in the Irish House; and, in a species of
"understanding" rather than a distinct compact, he proposed to the
Popish body the measure which has been subsequently called
"Emancipation," with some general intimation of pensioning their
priesthood.
The Union was carried; and Lord Castlereagh, who had conducted it in
Ireland, was appointed to bring the Popish proposition forward. It had
been a subject of deliberation in the cabinet for nearly six months
before they mentioned it to the king. His Majesty virtually pronounced
it irreconcilable to his conscience; and, after having received the
opinion of Lord Kenyon, the chief-justice, in complete confirmation of
his own, he sent for the speaker. Pitt had written, in the meantime, to
the king, that he must carry the measure or resign. The king then
proposed that Addington should take the conduct of the government. On
his entreating to decline the proposal, the king said emphatically "Put
your hand upon your heart, and ask yourself where I am to turn for
support, if _you_ do not stand by me?" Addington then honourably
attempted once more to induce Pitt to be reconciled to the king's
desire, who replied, as to Addington's taking the cabinet, "I see
nothing but _ruin_ if you hesitate." A letter from the king to Pitt
still left an opening for his return, but his answer was still
inflexible; and, on the 5th of January, 1801, the correspondence was
concluded by the royal announcement that "a new arrangement would be
made without delay."
The determination of George III. was personal and purely conscientious.
An anecdote is given by General Garth strikingly in accordance with this
opinion. The General, who was one of the royal equerries, was riding out
with the king one day at this time, when his Majesty said to him, "I
have not had any sleep this night, and am very bilious and unwell;" he
added, "that it was in consequence of Mr Pitt's applying to him on the
subject of Catholic Emancipation."
On his arrival at Kew, he desired Garth to read the Coronation Oath, and
then followed the exclamation,--"Where is that power on earth to absolve
me from the due observance of every sentence of that oath, particularly
the one requiring me to maintain the Protestant religion? Was not my
family seated on the throne for that express purpose? And shall I be the
first to suffer it to be undermined, perhaps overturned? No. I had
rather beg my bread from door to door throughout Europe, than consent to
any such measure."
This was the language of an honest man, and it was also the language of
a wise one. What has the introduction of Papists into parliament
occasioned to England, but political confusion? What benefit has it
produced to Ireland? No country in the wildest portion of the earth has
exhibited a more lamentable picture of insubordination, dissension, and
public misery. The peasantry gradually sinking into the most abject
poverty; the gentry living on loans; the laws set at defiance; the
demand for rents answered by assassination; a fierce faction existing in
the bowels of the land, as if for the express purpose of inflaming every
passion of an ignorant people into frenzy, and deepening every
visitation of nature into national ruin. At this moment, England is
paying for the daily food of two millions of people; employing seven
hundred thousand labourers, simply to keep them alive; and burthening
the most heavily-taxed industry in the world with millions of pounds
more, for the sole object of rescuing Ireland from the last extremities
of famine.
We take our leave of this most distressing subject, by the obvious
remark, that Pitt and the politicians, in treating popery as a political
object, have all alike overlooked the true nature of the question.
Popery is a _religion_, and if that religion be _false_, no crime can be
greater in the sight of Heaven, nor more sure to bring evil on man, than
to give it any assistance in its temptations, progress, or power, by any
means whatever. To propagate a false religion is to declare war against
the Divine will, and in that warfare suffering must follow. But what
Protestant can have a doubt upon the subject? England may regard
herself as signally fortunate, if the just penalty of her weakness is
already paid.
Mr Addington's Ministry began auspiciously, with the peace of Amiens.
The world was weary of war. France had just learned the power of the
British army, by the capture of her army in Egypt; she was without a
ship on the seas; Napoleon was desirous of consolidating his power, and
ascending a throne; and thus, all interests coinciding, peace was
proclaimed.
Lord Sidmouth's life from this period was connected with the highest
transactions of the state, until 1822, when he retired from office,
followed by the universal respect of the country, and bearing with him
into his retirement a conscience as void of offence, as perhaps ever
belonged to any Minister of England.
Then followed a period, which might have been regarded as, even here,
the fitting reward of such a life. Prom 1822 to 1844, he lived in the
enjoyment of health, and that honour, and those troops of friends, which
are the noblest human evidence of a well-spent existence.
Old age came on him at last, but with singular gentleness. Some of his
maxims exhibit the mild philosophy of his temperament. "In youth," said
he, "the absence of pleasure is pain, in age the absence of pain is
pleasure." He characteristically observed, "At my age, it strikes me
very much, what little proportion there is between man's ambition, and
the shortness of his life." Of the wars during his time he said, "I used
to think all the sufferings of war lost in its glory; I now consider all
its glory lost in its sufferings." In allusion to the desponding tone of
some public men, he said, "I have always fought under the standard of
hope, and I never shall desert it." At another time, he expressed the
truth, which only the wise man feels--"It is a very important part of
wisdom, to know what to overlook." He repeated a fine expression of
George III, of which he acknowledged the full value,--"Give me the man
who judges _one_ human being with severity, and every other with
indulgence."
His religious feelings were such as might be expected from his
well-spent life,--pure, benevolent, and high-toned. Speaking to his
family, in his last illness, he said, "Kind, dutiful, affectionate
children, all have been to me; and if I am permitted to attain to that
happy state to which I aspire, and am permitted to look down, how often
shall I be with you, my children!"
On the 3d of February, 1844, he was seized with an attack of influenza,
which on the 10th became hopeless; and on the 15th he calmly died, in
his 87th year.
We have preferred giving an abstract of the leading portions of this
able and amiable man's ministerial career, to following it minutely
through his later public years, as the earlier were those which decided
the character of the whole: and we have also preferred the tracing the
course of the individual, to criticisms on the volumes of his
biographer. But the work deserves much approval, for its general
intelligence, the clearness of its arrangement, and the fulness of its
information. It exercises judgment in the spirit of independence, and,
expressing its opinions without severity, exhibits the grave sagacity of
a man of sense, the style of a scholar, and the temper of a divine.