on Sir William a look of inexpressible disgust, exclaimed: "Pardon me, Mr. Speaker, any agitation: when that member calls for the question, I fear I hear the knell of my country's ruin." Alluding to his small number of adherents, he said. that he appeared in the House of Commons, as Eve in the garden of God, single and naked, yet not ashamed! He once said: "Magna Charta-the Petition of Right-the Bill of Rights-form the Bible of the English Constitution. Had some of the King's unhappy predecessors trusted less to the commentary of their advisers, and been better read in the Text itself, the glorious Revolution might have remained only possible in theory, and their fate would not now have stood upon record, a formidable example to all their successors."

In moving for the adjournment of a debate on the right of petition in the House of Lords (1770), at half-past one in the morning, he said: "If the Constitution must be wounded, let it not receive its mortal stab at this dark midnight hour, when honest men are asleep in their beds, and when only felons and assassins are seeking for prey."

Never did either the splendid eloquence or the resolute counsels of Lord Chatham shine forth more brightly than during the last few years of his career. In the debate on the Public Discontent, in January, 1770, notes of his wonderful speech, not published till long afterwards, were taken at the time by Sir Philip Francis. To one memorable expression of the great Earl, in this debate, Francis thus alluded many years later in a pamphlet under his own name : "Let the war take its course, or as I heard Lord Chatham declare in the House of Lords, with a monarch's voice: 'Let discord prevail for ever!' As if these words had not been strong enough, Lord Chatham went on to say: 'I know to what point this doctrine and this language will appear directed. But rather than the nation should surrender their birthright to a despotic Minister, I hope, my Lords, old as I am, I shall see the question brought to issue, and fairly tried between the people and the Government.' In this speech, also, Lord

Chatham took occasion to explain his plan for reform in our representative system. He desired that each county should return one Member more, which he called to infuse a portion of new health into the Constitution.' But against any idea of disfranchisement he strongly protested."

In the following session, never was Lord Chatham seen in more active opposition; and when his health permitted, he brought forward several uncompromising motions against the measures of the Government. In all these he was defeated.

The adherents of the Minister endeavoured to re-assure themselves by whispers of his recent insanity. "A mad motion of the mad Earl of Chatham," says that disinterested patriot, Mr. Rigby. Of Lord Rockingham's

the Earl says: "Moderation! Moderation is the burden of the song among the body. For myself I am resolved to be in earnest for the public, and shall be a scarecrow of violence to the gentle warblers of the grove, the moderate Whigs and temperate statesmen."

In one of the debates for the repeal of the Toleration Act of William III. of subscribing certain of the Articles, in 1772, Lord Chatham ventured to describe the Church of England as being Popish in her Liturgy, Calvinistic in her Articles, and Arminian in her clergy:-"A shallow witticism," observes Mr. Gladstone, "little worthy of so illustrious a man." This saying of Lord Chatham is not to be found in the meagre parliamentary reports of his day, but was mentioned. by Burke many years afterwards in the House of Commons (Mar. 2, 1790).

When towards the close of 1774 the disastrous news arrived from America, Walpole writes to Mr. Conway: "We are at our wits' end, which was no great journey. Oh! you conclude Lord Chatham's crutch will be supposed a wand, and be sent for. They might as well send for my crutch; and they should not have it; the stile is a little too high to help them over. His Lordship is a little fitter for raising a storm than laying one, and of late seems to have lost both virtues. The Americans, at last, have acted like men,-gone to the

bottom at once, and set the whole upon the whole. Our conduct has been that of pert children: we have thrown a pebble at a mastiff, and are surprised it was not frightened."

Lord Chatham, in a letter of Dec. 24th, says: "I have not words to express my satisfaction that the Congress has conducted this most arduous and delicate business with such manly wisdom and calm resolution as do the highest honour to their deliberations. Very few are the things contained in their resolves, that I could wish had been otherwise."(Chatham Correspondence, vol. iv.)

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That Lord Chatham was the most powerful orator that ever illustrated and ruled the senate of this empire,—that for nearly half a century he was not merely the arbiter of the destinies of his own country, but "the foremost man in all the world"-that he had an unparalleled grandeur and affluence of intellectual powers, softened and brightened by all the minor accomplishments-that his ambition was noble-his views instinctively elevated-his patriotism all but excessive -that in all the domestic relations of life he was exemplary and amiable-a fine scholar, a finished gentleman, a sincere Christian-one whom his private friends and servants loved as a good man, and all the world admired as a great onethese are the praises which his contemporaries awarded, and which posterity has, with little diminution, confirmed.

But on the other hand there were serious defects which decreased his splendour, impaired his authority, and rendered his great abilities rather glorious to himself, than for any practical purposes beneficial to his country. These defects, though of course well known to the political circles in which he moved, and deplored and censured by the sober few, were so much in the fashion of the times, and were so glossed over by his own wonderful powers, as to excite comparatively little contemporaneous observation-but since his life has become history, and been elucidated by contemporaneous letters and memoirs, they have appeared every day more and more flagrant; and the publication of his Correspondence-an honest

publication, we will say-has brought them out in still bolder prominence. Quarterly Review, No. 131.

MR. PITT AND THE PRESS.

At various periods of his career Mr. Pitt was assailed by a torrent of papers and pamphlets condemning his plans, his measures, his principles, his politics, and even reviling his person; while the King himself was not spared for having taken him into his service, and for not dismissing him. Pitt permitted all these attacks to die unnoticed; he felt not the least smart from any of them. One day, when Mr. Grenville mentioned some of them to Pitt, he smiled and only said: "The press is like the air—a charter'd libertine."—(Shakspeare's Henry V.)

These were palmy days for mock political partisans. Almon states that, "Smollett, Mallett, Francis, Home, Murphy, Mauduitt, and many others, were employed: and it has been said that the sums paid to these and other hired writers during the first three years of the reign of George III., exceeded one hundred thousand pounds; and the printing charges amounted to more than twice that sum. In facilitating the views of the party, the money was well laid out, for the nation was completely duped." Almon's statements must be received doubtingly; although the above is quoted from "The Seventh Edition, corrected," of his Anecdotes of Lord Chatham.

MR. PITT'S BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF THE POOR.

Mr. Charles Butler relates that Mr. Pitt being on a visit in Essex, descanted with great satisfaction on the prosperous state of the country, and particularly on the comfortable condition of the poor. His host let the discourse drop, but contrived that on the following day Mr. Pitt should walk into the adjoining town of Halstead. It presented a spectre of the utmost poverty and wretchedness:-he surveyed it for some

time in wonder and silence; and then declared that he had no conception that England presented, in any part of it, such a scene; he made a liberal donation to its distressed inhabitants, and soon afterwards brought into Parliament a bill for the relief of the poor. Nothing (says Mr. Butler) can show the unmanageable nature of the subject more than the fate of this bill a slight discussion of it discovered its absolute impracticability; yet Mr. Pitt possessed talents of uncommon magnitude, and had every assistance in forming and arranging the bill which the experience and ingenuity of others could supply.

CARDINAL XIMENES AND LORD CHATHAM, A PARALLEL.*

In all Lord Chatham's actions, (says Walpole,) was discernible an imitation of his model Ximenes; a model illsuited to a free government, and worse to a man whose situation and necessities were totally different. Was the poor monk thwarted or disgraced, the asylum of his convent was open; and a cardinal who was clothed in a hair-cloth at court, missed no fine linen, no luxury, in his cloister. Lord Chatham was as abstemious in his diet; but mixed Persian grandeur with herbs and roots. His equipages and train were too expensive for his highest zenith of wealth, and he maintained them when out of place and overwhelmed with debts; a wife and children were strange impediments to a Ximenes. Grandeur, show, and a pension, could not wrestle with an opulent and independent nobility, nor could he buy them, though he had sold himself. His services to his country were far above those of Ximenes, who trampled on Castilian pride but to sacrifice it to the monarch of Castile. Lord Chatham had recalled the spirit of a brave nation, had given it victory and glory, and victory secured its liberty. As Ximenes had no such objects, the inflexibility of Ximenes

* This resemblance is less surprising when we learn that Pitt, at the outset of his administration, once, in conversation with Fox, talked much of Ximenes, who, he owned, was his favourite character in history.