He began by making war on the press. John Wilkes, member of Parliament

for Aylesbury, was singled out {56}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

green rooms 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

{57}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 {58}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 negotiation 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

{59}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

begun 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 Waburton’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 {60}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 by 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 dependents, 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 {61}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 Undersecretary 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 {62}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 {63}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 {64}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

1760, 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 consideration 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, {65}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 {66}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 {67}King’s resentment was now at 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

Coligni 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 {68}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 customhouse 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 {69}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,

“Exstinxti 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 {70}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 {71}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 {72}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, nun 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 dav 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 Wilmington,

from Sir William Yonge and Henry Fox. They were men worthy to have

charged by the side of Hampden {73}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. {74}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

recognized 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 he, “mere lutestring; pretty summer wear. It will never do for the

winter.”

At this conjuncture Lord Rockingham had the wisdom {75}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’Rourke, 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 {76}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 wars both deeper

and longer than the Gazette had prescribed.

In the mean time, 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. {77}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 shipmoney, 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 {78}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 {79}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 {80}no means necessary to explain

the phænomena. 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 Kings 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 {81}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 every thing else in the state was constantly

changing, these sycophants seemed to have a life estate in their

offices.

It {82}was well known to the King’s friends that, though his Majesty had

consented to the repeal of Stamp Aet, 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 {83}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 man 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 {84}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 {85}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 conld be no doubt what the King’s choice woidd 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 {86}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 any thing 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, {87}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 {88}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 together, 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 {89}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 {90}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 favorite 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 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 {91}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 each 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 {92}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 {93}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 {94}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 {95}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 {96}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,

purse-proud, 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 every thing 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. Every body 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 {97}the mean time, 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 every thing 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 every

thing, and afraid of being known to be afraid of any thing, 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 {98}things were in this state, Chatnam 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 {99}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

any thing 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 {100}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. {101}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, had 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 {102}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 cooperation 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 {103}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 Barré, and Dunning, afterwards Lord

Ashburton, {104}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 rhetorick, and to look only at facts and

arguments, and three or four listless and supercilious men of fashion,

whom any thing 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 characterized 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 {105}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 {106}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 {107}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 {108}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 {109}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 {110}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. Every thing 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 Barré, 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 he 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 {111}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 he near

his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid

name.