"As this lord has long been dead to the world, we shall speak of him
as a man that has been.
"A remarkable reflection, arising from the character of Lord Chatham,
strikes us: No statesman was ever more successful, and no statesman
ever deserved less to have been so.
"This man entered into the army very early in life, and there he
ought to have remained. His enterprise, his rashness, and his
scrupulous sense of honour, were qualities extremely proper in the
profession of arms, and would have adorned any military station,
except that of a chief commander. But the field he renounced for
the Cabinet, and ceased to be a good soldier that he might be a
bad statesman. In nature, he was rash, impetuous, haughty, and
uncontrollable; and these dangerous properties were neither tempered
nor improved by education. To those advantages which are acquired
by study, and those great views which are communicated by habits
of reflection, he was entirely a stranger. His quickness was not
corrected by judgment, and his mind frequently was tired of the
objects presented to it before it could perceive or comprehend
them. In a country where eloquence is little known, his noise and
vociferation acquired that name; and without the experience of
common sense, he was extolled as superior to Demosthenes or Tully.
His speeches were not wanting in fire, but they were innocent of
thought. He was perhaps the only man of his time who could harangue
for many hours without communicating one distinct and well-digested
idea to his audience. In estimating his own merit he knew no bounds.
His vanity was excessive: he saw every man inferior to himself: on
every man, therefore, he lavished his contempt. Capricious to the
most boyish excess, he was perpetually forming resolutions, which he
abandoned before he could put them in execution. Yet his instability,
through a fortuitous and whimsical concurrence of circumstances,
generally led the way to success. The happy blunders of his
administration procured him a reputation to which he had no title.
Every scheme he planned ought to have miscarried. We admire his good
fortune, not his wisdom. Popularity was the idol to which he bowed--a
certain proof that his conduct was not influenced by those superior
ideas which arise in high, liberal, and virtuous minds. Yet to this
idol he would have sacrificed everything: it would have sacrificed
everything to him. He possessed that intemperate pride which, instead
of guarding him from indecent errors, led him to indiscretions; and a
respectable character was seldom a security from the licentious fury
of his tongue. In private life he was restless, fretful, unsocial,
and perpetually affecting complaints which he did not feel: in public
life he was weak, headstrong, imprudent, and had no quality of a good
minister but enterprise. If he had continued in his first profession,
he might have served his country with honour; but his ambition
prompted him to assume the character of a statesman, and he abused it.
"On the whole, he possessed virtues; but his passions hurried them
into excess, and he did not even wish to restrain them."