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was below the imitation of Camillus. It was mean ambition to stoop from humbling the crowned heads of France and Spain, to contend with proud individuals and the arrogance of factions at least, would a real man have doated on a coronet who prided himself in lowering the peerage? Lord Chatham had been an arbiter of Europe; he affected to be the master of the English nobility; he fasted, and remained with a train of domestics whom he could not pay, More like Nicholas Rienzi than Ximenes, the lord of Rome became ridiculous by aping the tawdry pageant of a triumph. Yet, as what is here said is the voice of truth, not the hiss of satire, British posterity will ever remember that, as Lord Chatham's first Administration obtained and secured the most real and substantial benefits to this country, the puerilities of his second could not efface their lustre. The man was lessened, not his merits. Even the shameful peace of Paris, concluded in defiance of him, could not rob the nation of all he had acquired, nor could George III. resign so much as Pitt had gained for George II. Half the empire of Indostan, conquered under his Administration by the spirit he had infused, still pours its treasures into the Thames. Canada was subdued by his councils, and Spain and France-that yet dread the name, attest the reality of his services. The memory of his eloquence, which effected all these wonders, will remain when the neglect of his contemporaries, and my criticisms, will be forgotten. Yet it was the duty of an annalist, and of a painter of nature, to exhibit the varying features of hist portrait. The lights and shades of a great character are a moral lesson, Philosophy loves to study the man more than the hero or the statesman; and whether his qualities were real or fictitious, his actions were so illustrious, that few names in the register of Time will excite more curiosity than that of William Pitt.-Memoirs of George III., vol. ii.

BREAKING PITT ON THE WHEEL.

By his extraordinary talents and boldness, Mr. Pitt contrived to preserve his popularity in vicissitudes of sentiments.

and connexions, under which any other politician of the day would have sunk. He did not, however, altogether escape censure, which was sharpened by the observation that he had hardly pocketed the Marlborough legacy, when he changed the conduct for which it had been given. So formidable, however, were "the terrors of his tongue and the lightning of his eye," that we find few traces of such reproaches having been made in Parliament, and to his face: One instance has been preserved by Horace Walpole. On the occasion of the large vote of subsidies, he writes to Sir Horace Mann, 15th April, 1746:

"You will wonder at my running so glibly over eighteen. thousand Hanoverians, especially as they are to be all in our pay, but the nation's dejection has been much facilitated by the pill given to Pitt, of Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. Last Friday was the debate on this subject, when we carried these troops by 255 against 122. Pitt, Lyttelton, three Grenvilles, and Lord Barrington, all voting roundly for them, though the chiefest Grenville two years ago had declared in the House, that he would seal it with his blood, that he never would give his vote for a Hanoverian-don't you shudder at such perjury? Pitt was the only one of this ominous band that opened his mouth, and it was to add impudence to profligacy, but no criminal at the Place de Grêve was ever so racked as he was by Dr. Lee, a friend of Lord Granville, who gave him the question, both ordinary and extraordinary."

This power of breaking Mr. Pitt on the wheel must have existed only in the strength of his facts. Mr. Pitt seems to have thought it prudent to make no reply; and we have no information of any other person's having had the courage to beard the tame lion with allusions to his present servility. But, out of doors, he was very severely handled, both in prose and verse. One ballad (by Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, the political balladist,) had a considerable vogue, rather from a spice of truth, which gives it pungency, than from its poetical merit; it is as follows:

THE UNEMBARRASSED COUNTENANCE.
A NEW BALLAD.

To a certain old chapel, well known in the town-
The inside quite rotten, the outside near down-
A fellow got in who could talk and could prate;
I'll tell you his story and sing you his fate.

He always affected to make the House ring
'Gainst Hanover troops and a Hanover King:
He applauded the way to keep Englishmen free,
By "digging Hanover quite into the sea."*
By flaming so loudly he got him a name,
Tho' many believ'd it would cost him a shame;
But Nature had given him, ne'er to be harass'd,
An unfeeling Heart, and a Front unembarrass'd.

This doggrel, and much more that appeared in a higher tone both of wit and argument, provoked Lyttelton to address a panegyric to his friend on his appointment as Vice-Treasurer. The first is a kind of defence of Mr. Pitt's political conversion :

Blest Genius, with each shining talent born,
Whom letters polish, and whom arts adorn,
Fit as thy country calls, with equal skill,
To watch her dangers, or her triumphs fill;
Erst, Tully-like, ordain'd to loud applause,
You pleaded Liberty's, and England's cause;
Foremost in ardent patriot bands you stood,
A firm Opposer,-for the public good-

While power's rude hand, though by yourself disdain'd,
You felt, indignant for an injured land.
This danger past, becalm'd you now declare
A generous truce, nor wage a needless war,
By sharing power, be now your candour seen,

A private station would be arrant spleen;
To prove your Justice, you must Greatness bear,
And suffer honour you are doom'd to wear.

This is but indifferent verse: the concluding passage is, however, worth quoting for its prophetic anticipations of Mr. Pitt's future glory as minister of his country. The poet

* One of Mr. Pitt's strong phrases, which has not, we believe, been preserved in the Reports.

admits that the Irish office is hardly what should have rewarded such transcendent merit, but adds:

Yet fear we not; tho' now in western skies
You seem to sink; 'tis but again to rise.

When in those strains, which wondering senates hear,
You win with sacred truth the royal ear;

And stand, ere long, a favourite near the throne-
For to be favoured, is but to be known-
Then British annals shall new wonders trace,
Wide power unenvy'd, and domestic peace;
Charmed into rest, loud factions shall agree,
Nor fear a Minister, when Pitt is he!

-Quarterly Review, No. 131; abridged.

A weekly paper called "The Test," was started under the editorship of Arthur Murphy, the dramatist, expressly to show up the "the orator with the unembarrassed countenance." In this, Pitt is spoken of as William the Fourth on account of his dictatorial deportment; or as the Man Mountain, or as Dr. Gulielmo Bombasto Podagra.

Although Pitt possessed great natural advantages, with which he occasionally struck terror into his opponents in debate, sometimes a Member could be found rash enough to assail the Great Commoner. On one occasion, Mr. Morton, Chief Justice of Chester, whom a satirist describes as

All petulance and froth,

happened to say: "King, Lords, and Commons, or (directing his eye towards Mr. Pitt,) as that right honourable member would call them, Commons, Lords, and King." The only fault of this sentence is its nonsense. Mr. Pitt arose, as he ever did, with great deliberation, and called to order. "I have," he said, "heard frequently in this House, doctrines which have surprised me, but now my blood runs cold. I desire the words of the honourable Member may be taken down." The Clerk of the House took down the words. "Bring them to me," said Mr. Pitt, with a voice of thunder. By this time Mr. Morton was frightened out of his senses. said, addressing himself to the Speaker, "I am sorry to have given offence to the right honourable Member, or to the

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House. I meant nothing-King, Lords, and CommonsLords, Commons, and King-Commons, Lords, and Kingtria juncta in uno. I meant nothing-indeed, I meant nothing." "I don't wish to push the matter further," said Mr. Pitt, in a voice a little above a whisper; then in a higher tone, "the moment a man acknowledges his error, he ceases to be guilty. I have a great regard for the honourable Member, and as an instance of that regard, I give him this advice." A pause of some moments ensued, then assuming a look of unspeakable derision, he said, in a colloquial tone, "Whenever that Member means nothing, I recommend him to say nothing."-Charles Butler's Reminiscences.

BURKE'S APOTHEOSIS OF LORD CHATHAM.

During the debate on the East India Question, in 1766, Burke, in one of his finest speeches, declaimed against the measure; it was the first instance of dragging to the bar men with whom the public meant to treat. They were assured that their property might be confiscated. A dangerous attempt was making for little advantage. On Lord Chatham his figures were severe, painting him as a great Invisible Power, that left no Minister in the House of Commons. The greatest Integrity (Conway) had no power there. The rest approached him veiling their faces with their wings. Let us supplicate this divinity, said he, that he would spare public credit. Augustus Hervey called him to order. "I have often suffered," added Burke, "under persecution of order, but did not expect its lash while at my prayers. I venerate the great man, and speak of him accordingly."

Another account reports this speech with a difference, as follows:

After pointing out the ill effects which so violent a measure would have on the public credit,-" But perhaps," said he, "this House is not the place where our reasons can be of any avail: the great person who is to determine on this question may be a being far above our view; one so immeasurably

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