Another scene was opened, and other actors appeared on the stage. The
State, in the condition I have described it, was delivered into the
hands of Lord Chatham--a great and celebrated name; a name that keeps
the name of this country respectable in every other on the globe. It may
be truly called--
Clarum et venerabile nomen
Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.
Sir, the venerable age of this great man, his merited rank, his superior
eloquence, his splendid qualities, his eminent services, the vast space
he fills in the eye of mankind; and, more than all the rest, his
fall from power, which, like death, canonizes and sanctifies a great
character, will not suffer me to censure any part of his conduct. I am
afraid to flatter him; I am sure I am not disposed to blame him. Let
those, who have betrayed him by their adulation, insult him with their
malevolence. But what I do not presume to censure, I may have leave to
lament. For a wise man, he seemed to me at that time to be governed too
much by general maxims. I speak with the freedom of history, and I hope
without offence. One or two of these maxims, flowing from an opinion
not the most indulgent to our unhappy species, and surely a little too
general, led him into measures that were greatly mischievous to himself;
and for that reason, among others, perhaps fatal to his country;
measures, the effects of which, I am afraid, are for ever incurable.
He made an administration, so checkered and speckled; he put together
a piece of joinery, so crossly indented and whimsically dove-tailed; a
cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a
tesselated pavement without cement; here a bit of black stone, and there
a bit of white; patriots and courtiers, king's friends and republicans;
Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was
indeed a very curious show; but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to
stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared
at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name?--Sir, you
have the advantage of me--Mr. Such-a-one--I beg a thousand pardons--"
I venture to say, it did so happen, that persons had a single office
divided between them, who had never spoken to each other in their lives,
until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads
and points, in the same truckle-bed.
Sir, in consequence of this arrangement, having put so much the larger
part of his enemies and opposers into power, the confusion was such,
that his own principles could not possibly have any effect or influence
in the conduct of affairs. If ever he fell into a fit of the gout, or if
any other cause withdrew him from public cares, principles directly the
contrary were sure to predominate. When he had executed his plan, he had
not an inch of ground to stand upon. When he had accomplished his scheme
of administration, he was no longer a minister. When his face was hid
but for a moment, his whole system was on a wide sea, without chart or
compass. The gentlemen, his particular friends, who, with the names of
various departments of ministry, were admitted to seem as if they
acted a part under him, with a modesty that becomes all men, and with a
confidence in him, which was justified even in its extravagance by
his superior abilities, had never, in any instance, presumed upon any
opinion of their own. Deprived of his guiding influence, they were
whirled about, the sport of every gust, and easily driven into any port;
and as those who joined with them in manning the vessel were the most
directly opposite to his opinions, measures, and character, and far the
most artful and most powerful of the set, they easily prevailed, so as
to seize upon the vacant, unoccupied, and derelict minds of his friends;
and instantly they turned the vessel wholly out of the course of his
policy. As if it were to insult as well as to betray him, even long
before the close of the first session of his administration, when
everything was publicly transacted, and with great parade, in his name,
they made an act, declaring it highly just and expedient to raise a
revenue in America. For even then, Sir, even before this splendid orb
was entirely set, and while the western horizon was in a blaze with his
descending glory, on the opposite quarter of the heavens arose another
luminary, and, for his hour, became lord of the ascendant.