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 forever. 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 color from that weakness which
was the most striking blemish of his character, was certainly unfounded.
His mind, before he became first minister, had been, as we have said, in
an unsound state; and physical and moral causes now concurred to make
the derangement of his faculties complete. The gout, which had been the
torment of his whole life, had been suppressed by strong remedies. For
the first time since he was a boy at Oxford, he had passed several
months without a twinge. But his hand and foot had been relieved at the
expense of his nerves. He became melancholy, fanciful, irritable. The
embarrassing state of public affairs, the grave responsibility which lay
on him, the consciousness of his errors, the disputes of his
colleagues, the savage clamors raised by his detractors, bewildered his
enfeebled mind. One thing alone, he said, could save him. He must
repurchase Hayes. The unwilling consent of the new occupant was extorted
by Lady Chatham's entreaties and tears; and her lord was somewhat
easier. But if business were mentioned to him, he, once the proudest and
boldest of mankind, behaved like a hysterical girl, trembled from head
to foot, and burst into a flood of tears.
His colleagues for a time continued to entertain the expectation that
his health would soon be restored, and that he would emerge from his
retirement. But month followed month, and still he remained hidden in
mysterious seclusion, and sunk, as far as they could learn, in the
deepest dejection of spirits. They at length ceased to hope or to fear
anything from him; and, though he was still nominally Prime Minister,
took without scruple steps which they knew to be diametrically opposed
to all his opinions and feelings, allied themselves with those whom he
had proscribed, disgraced those whom he most esteemed, and laid taxes on
the colonies, in the face of the strong declarations which he had
recently made.
When he had passed about a year and three quarters in gloomy privacy,
the King received a few lines in Lady Chatham's hand. They contained a
request, dictated by her lord, that he might be permitted to resign the
Privy Seal. After some civil show of reluctance, the resignation was
accepted. Indeed Chatham was, by this time, almost as much forgotten as
if he had already been lying in Westminster Abbey.
At length the clouds which had gathered over his mind broke and passed
away. His gout returned, and freed him from a more cruel malady. His
nerves were newly braced. His spirits became buoyant. He woke as from a
sickly dream. It was a strange recovery. Men had been in the habit of
talking of him as of one dead, and, when he first showed himself at the
King's levee, started as if they had seen a ghost. It was more than two
years and a half since he had appeared in public.
He, too, had cause for wonder. The world which he now entered was not
the world which he had quitted. The administration which he had formed
had never been, at any one moment, entirely changed. But there had been
so many losses and so many accessions, that he could scarcely recognize
his own work. Charles Townshend was dead. Lord Shelburne had been
dismissed. Conway had sunk into utter insignificance. The Duke of
Grafton had fallen into the hands of the Bedfords. The Bedfords had
deserted Grenville, had made their peace with the King and the King's
friends, and had been admitted to office. Lord North was Chancellor of
the Exchequer, and was rising fast in importance. Corsica had been given
up to France without a struggle. The disputes with the American colonies
had been revived. A general election had taken place. Wilkes had
returned from exile, and, outlaw as he was, had been chosen knight of
the shire for Middlesex. The multitude was on his side. The court was
obstinately bent on ruining him, and was prepared to shake the very
foundations of the constitution for the sake of a paltry revenge. The
House of Commons, assuming to itself an authority which of right belongs
only to the whole legislature, had declared Wilkes incapable of sitting
in Parliament. Nor had it been thought sufficient to keep him out.
Another must be brought in. Since the freeholders of Middlesex had
obstinately refused to choose a member acceptable to the Court, the
House had chosen a member for them. This was not the only instance,
perhaps not the most disgraceful instance, of the inveterate malignity
of the Court. Exasperated by the steady opposition of the Rockingham
party, the King's friends had tried to rob a distinguished Whig nobleman
of his private estate, and had persisted in their mean wickedness till
their own servile majority had revolted from mere disgust and shame.
Discontent had spread throughout the nation, and was kept up by
stimulants such as had rarely been applied to the public mind. Junius
had taken the field, 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
deathblow, he had been induced to take under his protection. His
exertions redeemed his own fame, but they effected little for his
country.
He found two parties arrayed against the government, the party of his
own brothers-in-law, the Grenvilles, and the party of Lord Rockingham.
On the question of the Middlesex Election these parties were agreed. But
on many other important questions they differed widely; and they were,
in truth, not less hostile to each other than to the court. The
Grenvilles had, during several years, annoyed the Rockinghams with a
succession of acrimonious pamphlets. It was long before the Rockinghams
could be induced to retaliate. But an ill-natured tract, written under
Grenville's direction, and entitled a State of the Nation, was too much
for their patience. Burke undertook to defend and avenge his friends,
and executed the task with admirable skill and vigor. 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 of opinion on the question
of colonial taxation. A reconciliation, however, took place. He visited
Stowe; he shook hands with George Grenville; and the Whig freeholders of
Buckinghamshire, at their public dinners, drank many bumpers to the
union of the three brothers.
In opinions, Chatham was much nearer to the Rockinghams than to his own
relatives. But between him and the Rockinghams there was a gulf not
easily to be passed. He had deeply injured them, and in injuring them
had deeply injured his country. When the balance was trembling between
them and the Court, he had thrown the whole weight of his genius, of his
renown, of his popularity, into the scale of misgovernment. It must be
added, that many eminent members of the party still retained a bitter
recollection of the asperity and disdain with which they had been
treated by him at the time when he assumed the direction of affairs. It
is clear from Burke's pamphlets and speeches, and still more clear from
his private letters, and from the language which he held in
conversation, that he regarded Chatham with a feeling not far removed
from dislike. Chatham was undoubtedly conscious of his error, and
desirous to atone for it. But his overtures of friendship, though made
with earnestness, and even with unwonted humility, were at first
received by Lord Rockingham with cold and austere reserve. Gradually the
intercourse of the two statesmen became courteous and even amicable.
But the past was never wholly forgotten.
Chatham did not, however, stand alone. Round him gathered a party, small
in number, but strong in great and various talents. Lord Camden, Lord
Shelburne, Colonel Barre, and Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton, were
the principal members of this connection.
There is no reason to believe that, from this time till within a few
weeks of Chatham's death, his intellect suffered any decay. His
eloquence was almost to the last heard with delight. But it was not
exactly the eloquence of the House of Lords. That lofty and passionate,
but somewhat desultory declamation, in which he excelled all men, and
which was set off by looks, tones, and gestures, worthy of Garrick or
Talma, was out of place in a small apartment where the audience often
consisted of three or four drowsy prelates, three or four old judges,
accustomed during many years to disregard rhetoric, and to look only at
facts and arguments, and three or four listless and supercilious men of
fashion, whom anything like enthusiasm moved to a sneer. In the House of
Commons, a flash of his eye, a wave of his arm, had sometimes cowed
Murray. But, in the House of Peers, his utmost vehemence and pathos
produced less effect than the moderation, the reasonableness, the
luminous order, and the serene dignity, which 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 ardor or eloquence than Chatham. Before this subject had ceased to
occupy the public mind, George Grenville died. His party rapidly melted
away; and in a short time most of his adherents appeared on the
ministerial benches.
Had George Grenville lived many months longer, the friendly ties which,
after years of estrangement and hostility, had been renewed between him
and his brother-in-law would, in all probability, have been a second
time violently dissolved. For now the quarrel between England and the
North American colonies took a gloomy and terrible aspect. Oppression
provoked resistance; resistance was made the pretext for fresh
oppression. The warnings of all the greatest statesmen of the age were
lost on an imperious court and a deluded nation. Soon a colonial senate
confronted the British Parliament. Then the colonial militia crossed
bayonets with the British regiments. At length the commonwealth was torn
asunder. Two millions of Englishmen who, fifteen years before, had been
as loyal to their prince and as proud of their country as the people of
Kent or Yorkshire, separated themselves by a solemn act from the Empire.
For a time it seemed that the insurgents would struggle to small purpose
against the vast financial and military means of the mother country. But
disasters, following one another in rapid succession, rapidly dispelled
the illusions of national vanity. At length a great British force,
exhausted, famished, harassed on every side by a hostile peasantry, was
compelled to deliver up its arms. Those governments which England had,
in the late war, so signally humbled, and which had during many years
been sullenly brooding over the recollections of Quebec, of Minden, and
of the Moro, now saw with exultation that the day of revenge was at
hand. France recognized the independence of the United States; and there
could be little doubt that the example would soon be followed by Spain.
Chatham and Rockingham had cordially concurred in opposing every part of
the fatal policy which had brought the state into this dangerous
situation. But their paths now diverged. Lord Rockingham thought, and,
as the event proved, thought most justly, that the revolted colonies
were separated from the Empire forever, and that the only effect of
prolonging the war on the American continent would be to divide
resources which it was desirable to concentrate. If the hopeless attempt
to subjugate Pennsylvania and Virginia were abandoned war against the
House of Bourbon might possibly be avoided, or, if inevitable, might be
carried on with success and glory. We might even indemnify ourselves for
part of what we had lost, at the expense of those foreign enemies who
had hoped to profit by our domestic dissensions. Lord Rockingham,
therefore, and those who acted with him, conceived that the wisest
course now open to England was to acknowledge the independence of the
United States, and to turn her whole force against her European enemies.
Chatham, it should seem, ought to have taken the same side. Before
France had taken any part in our quarrel with the colonies, he had
repeatedly, and with great energy of language, declared that it was
impossible to conquer America; and he could not without absurdity
maintain that it was easier to conquer France and America together than
America alone. But his passions overpowered his judgment, and made him
blind to his own inconsistency. The very circumstances which made the
separation of the colonies inevitable made it to him altogether
insupportable. The dismemberment of the Empire seemed to him less
ruinous and humiliating, when produced by domestic dissensions, than
when produced by foreign interference. His blood boiled at the
degradation of his country. Whatever lowered her among the nations of
the earth, he felt as a personal outrage to himself. And the feeling was
natural. He had made her so great. He had been so proud of her; and she
had been so proud of him. He remembered how, more than twenty years
before, in a day of gloom and dismay, when her possessions were torn
from her, when her flag was dishonored, 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 recognized was
the work of his most attached adherents and of his favorite son.
The Duke of Richmond had given notice of an address to the throne,
against the further prosecution of hostilities with America. Chatham
had, during some time, absented himself from Parliament, in consequence
of his growing infirmities. He determined to appear in his place on this
occasion, and to declare that his opinions were decidedly at variance
with those of the Rockingham party. He was in a state of great
excitement. His medical attendants were uneasy, and strongly advised him
to calm himself, and to remain at home. But he was not to be controlled.
His son William, and his son-in-law Lord Mahon, accompanied him to
Westminster. He rested himself in the Chancellor's room till the debate
commenced, and then, leaning on his two young relations, limped to his
seat. The slightest particulars of that day were remembered, and have
been carefully recorded. He bowed, it was remarked, with great
courtliness to those peers who rose to make way for him and his
supporters. His crutch was in his hand. He wore, as was his fashion, a
rich velvet coat. His legs were swathed in flannel. His wig was so
large, and his face so emaciated, that none of his features could be
discerned except the high curve of his nose, and his eyes, which still
retained a gleam of the old fire.
When the Duke of Richmond had spoken, Chatham rose. For some time his
voice was inaudible. At length his tones became distinct and his action
animated. Here and there his hearers caught a thought or an expression
which reminded them of William Pitt. But it was clear that he was not
himself. He lost the thread of his discourse, hesitated, repeated the
same words several times, and was so confused that, in speaking of the
Act of Settlement, he could not recall the name of the Electress Sophia.
The House listened in solemn silence, and with the aspect of profound
respect and compassion. The stillness was so deep that the dropping of a
handkerchief would have been heard. The Duke of Richmond replied with
great tenderness and courtesy; but, while he spoke, the old man was
observed to be restless and irritable. The Duke sat down. Chatham stood
up again, pressed his hand on his breast, and sank down in an apoplectic
fit. Three or four lords who sat near him caught him in his fall. The
House broke up in confusion. The dying man was carried to the residence
of one of the officers of Parliament, and was so far restored as to be
able to bear a journey to Hayes. At Hayes, after lingering a few weeks,
he expired in his seventieth year. His bed was watched to the last, with
anxious tenderness, by his wife and children; and he well deserved their
care. Too often haughty and wayward to others, to them he had been
almost effeminately kind. He had through life been dreaded by his
political opponents, and regarded with more awe than love even by his
political associates. But no fear seems to have mingled with the
affection which his fondness, constantly overflowing in a thousand
endearing forms, had inspired in the little circle at Hayes.
Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses of
Parliament, ten personal adherents. Half the public men of the age had
been estranged from him by his errors, and the other half by the
exertions which he had made to repair his errors. His last speech had
been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the government, and on
the policy recommended by the opposition. But death restored him to his
old place in the affection of his country. Who could hear unmoved of
the fall of that which had been so great, and which had stood so long?
The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than
to real life. A great statesman, full of years and honors, 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 clamors of a nation which remembered only the lofty
genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services, of him who was
no more. For once, the chiefs of all parties were agreed. A public
funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted. The debts of the
deceased were paid. A provision was made for his family. The City of
London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had so long
loved and honored might rest under the dome of her magnificent
cathedral. But the petition came too late. Everything was already
prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey.
Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous honors
to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost exclusively by
opponents of the government. The banner of the lordship of Chatham was
borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord
Rockingham. Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall. Lord Camden was
conspicuous in the procession. The chief mourner was young William Pitt.
After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and
perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the
same pomp, in the same consecrated mould.
Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the Church, in a spot which has
ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other end of the same
transept has long been to poets; Mansfield rests there, and the second
William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and Canning, and Wilberforce. In no
other cemetery do so many great citizens lie within so narrow a space.
High over those venerable graves towers the stately monument of Chatham,
and from above, his effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with
eagle face and outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to
hurl defiance at her foes. The generation which reared that memorial of
him has disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate
judgments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be calmly
revised by history. And History, while, for the warning of vehement,
high, and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will yet
deliberately pronounce that, among the eminent men whose bones lie near
his, scarcely one has left a more stainless, and none a more splendid
name.
FOOTNOTES:
[21]
1. Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham. 4 vols. 8vo. London:
1840.
2. Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to Sir Horace Mann. 4
vols. 8vo. London: 1843-4.
[22] In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that, under
the 23rd article of Union, no Scotch peer could he created a peer of
Great Britain. This resolution was not annulled till the year 1782.
END OF THE CRITICAL AND
HISTORICAL ESSAYS
INDEX TO THE ESSAYS
_A priori_ reasoning, defects of, i. 385.
Absolute uselessness of in political science, 394.
Abbe and Abbot, difference between, ii. 129.
Absalom and Achitophel, Dryden's, i. 231.
Academy, the, character of its doctrines, ii. 450.
Addison, Joseph, birth and education, iii. 400.
Life at Magdalen College, 401.
Knowledge of the Latin poets, 402.
Poems of, 406.
Complimented by Dryden, 408.
Drawn into political life by Charles Montague, 409.
Pensioned and sent abroad to study, 411.
Introduced to Boileau, 413.
Travels in Italy, 416.
Loses his pension, 422.
Returns to England through Germany, 423.
Writes The Campaign, 426.
Publishes his Narrative of Travels in Italy, 430.
Opera of Rosamond, 431.
Not fitted for prominence in Parliament, 433.
Conversational gifts, 436.
His timidity, 437.
His friends, 438.
Goes to Ireland as Chief Secretary, 441.
Contributes to the Tatler, 443.
His humor compared to that of Swift and Voltaire, 445.
Value of his essays in elevating literary taste, 447.
Dismissed from office, 450.
Enters Parliament again, 451.
His Spectator papers, 454.
Contributes to the Guardian; his tragedy of Cato, 457.
Again Chief Secretary of Ireland, 465.
Friendship with Swift, 466.
His comedy The Drummer played; starts the Freeholder, 467.
His quarrel with Pope, 469.
Accused of retaliating on Pope, 474.
Marries the Dowager Countess of Warwick, 476.
Becomes Secretary of State, 477.
His troubles with Steele, 479.
Answers Steele's arguments against the bill for limiting the number
of the Peers, 481.
Dedicates his works to Craggs, 482.
His piety, 483.
Death, 484.
His services to literature, 486.
Addison, Rev. Lancelot, life, iii. 399.
Adiaphorists, the, ii. 68.
Aeschylus, Quintilian's opinion of, i. 42.
His use of the supernatural, 106.
Afghanistan, monarchy of, analogous to that of England in the
sixteenth century, ii. 80.
Aikin, Lucy, her life of Addison reviewed, iii. 396.
Aix, island of, captured, ii. 276.
Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, iii. 270.
Akenside, his Epistle to Curio, ii. 222.
Albigensian Crusade, iii. 9-11.
Alexander the Great, compared with Clive, ii. 760.
Alfieri, Vittorio, first to appreciate Dante, i. 6.
Influenced by the school of Plutarch, 256.
Comparable to Cowper, 591.
Alphabetical writing, the greatest of human inventions, ii. 460.
Comparative views of its value by Plato and Bacon, 460, 461.
Anabaptists, their origin, ii. 72.
Anacharsis, reputed contriver of the potter's wheel, ii. 447.
Anaverdy Khan, governor of the Carnatic, ii. 685.
Angria, his fortress of Gheriah, reduced by Clive, ii. 700.
Anne, Queen, her political and religious inclinations as Queen,
ii. 176.
Changes in her government in 1710, 177.
Relative estimation by the Whigs and the Tories of her reign,
178-186.
Annus Mirabilis, Dryden's, i. 215.
Anytus, first briber of Athenian judges, ii. 431.
Apostolical succession, claimed by Mr. Gladstone for the Church of
England, ii. 645.
Aquinas, Thomas, ii. 482.
Archimedes, his slight estimate of his inventions, ii. 457.
Archytas, rebuked by Plato, ii. 457.
Arcot; Nabob of, his relations with England, ii. 685-692.
His claims recognized by the English, 687.
Argyle, Duke of, secedes from Walpole's administration, ii. 241.
Ariosto, rises above Petrarch's influence, i. 5.