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monotonous clamour; to wit, the attempts of Lords Spencer and Grenville and Mr. Windham "to force Mr. Fox upon the King."--Having failed, as they soon perceived they had, in persuading the people, that the fault of exclusion lay with their Sovereign, and that Mr. Pitt almost shed tears of blood to soften the inflexibility of his Majesty's objection to Mr. Fox, the partisans of the new ministry veered short about, and began to accuse Mr. Windham and the Grenvilles, but particularly the latter, with an inconsistency little short of criminal, because they now refused to join in the ministry without the admission of Mr. Fox, a person with whom they had, for so many years, been engaged in a political warfare of the most violent and desperate kind. Nor did the accusation stop here certain opinions and principles, or assumed opinions and principles of Mr. Fox, were displayed in all their terrors; and, the refractory statesmen were asked, if this was the man to whom they were all at once become so much attached. The word Jacobin was now and then half articulated; and, in one or two instances, these zealous partisans have gone so far as to call upon the people "to support their tried and faithful pilot, and their good old King, against a faction headed by a per"son notoriously devoted to disorganizing principles." Any thing at once so base and so preposterous as this never was before committed to the press. There always was amongst the creatures and close adherents of Mr. Pitt, a strange mixture of profligacy and cant: jobbers all the morning and methodists in the afternoon. There was a set that at one time went by the name of "Mr. Pitt's young friends," the least profound of whom would have put the Tartuffe to the blush: lads that would literally sing you "a smutty song to a psalm tune." But, to return to the exhortation to the people: The partisans of Mr. Pitt have told the people a hundred times, they have dinned it in their ears till they were tired of the sound, that Mr. Pitt, the person for whom they now demand support as the wisest and most upright statesman: they have told us, they have assured us, with reiterated declarations and almost with oaths, that Mr. Pitt exerted himself to the utmost to prevail on the King to admit Mr. Fox into the cabinet; not being able to succeed with his Majesty, Mr. Pitt did, they next told us, offer to Mr. Fox any post that he might choose in the diplomatic line, proposed to send him to the continent, with power to treat with whomsoever he pleased and upon his own terms: they themselves have, over and over again, expressed their profound sorrow, that his Majesty did not yield, upon this head, "to the earnest and sincere prayers of the nation put up by the mouth of Mr. Pitt;" and, now behold, they have the unconscionable assurance to tell us, that Mr. Fox is a man of dangerous principles, and totally unfit to be trusted in the cabinet! If this be so, if this be not an atrocious calumny, how shall we characterize Mr. Pitt? Did he really endeavour to prevail upon the King to admit Mr. Fox? Where then shall we look for his sagacity, or his fidelity? for, in one of these, if his partisans are not calumniators, he must be shamefully deficient. Will his friends say that he did not endeavour to bring about the admission of Mr. Fox? What then becomes of his sincerity? Thus these indiscreet partisans must make a recantation of what they have lately asserted and insinuated, with respect to Mr. Fox, or they leave their political hero a choice of nothing but different sorts of disgrace-It has, by many persons, been regarded as a grand error, in Mr. Pitt, to profess a desire to have Mr. Fox in the cabinet with him, and particularly to rest a defence of his conduct upon the

circumstance of his having earnestly endeavoured to prevail upon the King to receive Mr. Fox. This, say these persons, was doing for his rival what nothing else could have done: not so completely, perhaps : but the truth is, that there remained but little to be done; the whole nation, as I said before, were heartily tired of the political Trojan war, and deprecated the idea of seeing it renewed. Mr. Pitt knew this; and, though it is probable, that, with Lord Grenville and the other leaders of the New Opposition along with him, he would have set the public wish at defiance, and would never have pretended that he had urged the admission of Mr. Fox, without those gentlemen such defiance was more than he could, on any account, think it advisable to hazard, especially when he was about to take the government upon him, accompanied with six out of ten of those "weak and inefficient ministers," whom he had so often lashed and ridiculed, and whom he had been greatly instrumental in turning out, from the avowed motive of their being utterly incapable of conducting the affairs of the state! No: thus to come in, without alleging that he had endeavoured to form a ministry of a different stamp, would have been to deprive his friends of every possible ground whereon to speak in his defence. In this situation, therefore, he was compelled either openly to declare that he despised the opinion and the wishes of the nation, or, to make such a justification as should, at the same time, amount to a solemn and unretractable declaration on his part of Mr Fox's fitness for the ministry. He saw clearly enough that he was cutting off from his partisans a most abundant supply of warlike materials, but he preferred distant defeat to an immediate surrender. Those partisans are, however, of a sort not to be easily disconcerted: they are such as hardly any minister will want, if he can condescend to make use of them. Mr. Addington was honoured with their support: support, indeed, at the expense of his sincerity and veracity, but it was, nevertheless, not rejected. He and his colleagues, for instance, explicitly declared, that they would, as to the cause of their making peace, never be a party to the plea of pecuniary necessity; but, their partisans, out of doors, constantly and unequivocally urged this necessity in reply to all the facts and arguments that you could produce against the measure; and when they were reminded, that this plea was rejected with disdain by their principals, they smiled in your face, as if it argued great inexperience in you to suppose, that ministers ever were sincere in their public declarations. Exactly the same course is at this moment pursued by the out-door partisans of Mr. Pitt, who have now no scruple to acknowledge their belief, that he never was so weak as to endeavour, in good earnest, to induce his Majesty to admit Mr. Fox into the Cabinet! Can such men be called friends and supporters? Can a minister, trusting to such support, long maintain his ground? Assuredly he cannot; and, if there were wanting indubitable proof of the transitory nature of his power, and of his own consciousness of the fact, he has recently furnished it in the boasting declaration made to the Parliament. "I will take no hint: you may get rid of my bill, but you shall not get rid of me." These words did not proceed from his confidence, but from his fear: they can be compared to nothing but the blustering noise of the plough-boy, as he goes trembling through the Church yard at midnight. The House and the nation must and will get rid of him as Prime Minister, and in no other respect does any man that I know of wish to get rid of him; but, since he has again assumed the reins of power, it is for the benefit of the country, that he should continue

to hold them till he is forced to resign them by a fair parliamentary opposition, conveying to his Majesty the deliberate sentiments of his loyal and affectionate people.— -I should now make some remarks on several parts of Mr. Pitt's speech of the 18th instant, particularly on what he is reported to have said as to his being the champion of the royal prerogative. The passage relating to the praises formerly bestowed on him by the members of the Grenville family, is also worthy of attention, especially when considered in conjunction with what was said on that subject on a subsequent day. His defence of the character and consistency of his six colleagues who made part of the late "inefficient " ministry, ought not to escape notice; and the sarcastic comparison which he drew between himself and Mr. Addington ought to be so fixed in the memory as never to be forgotten.

AN

ANALYTICAL AND COMPARATIVE VIEW

Of two Pamphlets, lately published, the one entitled "Cursory Remarks upon the State of Parties during the Administration of Mr. Addington, by A NEAR OBSERVER;" and the other entitled, "A Plain Answer to the Misrepresentations and Calumnies contained in the Cursory Remarks of a Near Observer, by A MORE ACCURATE OBSERVER."

NOTE BY THE EDITORS.]-The following articles make a tract of considerable length. But we deem them well worthy of the space they must occupy; because they are full of historical matter, and throw much light on the politics and the spirit of parties during the time when they were written. We have been obliged to recur to a date (Dec. 1803) beyond which we had already advanced, in order to collect these articles and make them consecutive.

MERELY as literary performances, these pamphlets are by no means entitled to particular attention; but, as developing the party views of the late and of the present minister, as discovering some of those secret wheels on which the interests and honour of the nation are made to turn, they are of great public importance. Such being their nature and use, it is evident, that some explanation as to their origin ought to precede an examination of the facts and arguments advanced in them.

That the Cursory Remarks could not be written without information, received, either directly or indirectly, from Mr. Addington, is pretty certain; because they state the very words of conversations, which took place between Mr. Addington and Mr. Pitt only. The author of this pamphlet is a Mr. Bentley; or, at least, the proof sheets were carried from the bookseller's to Mr. Bentley, by whom, after their being corrected, they were sent back to the bookseller's. It is said, that Mr. Serjeant, one of the Secretaries of the Treasury, carried the materials from the minister to Mr. Bentley for the truth of this fact, I will not answer: indeed I know nothing at all about it; but, I do know, that, on the 15th of October last, the Treasury had purchased seven hundred and fifty copies of the work, five hundred of which were cut close to the print, in

order to render them more convenient for conveyance by post. These facts make Mr. Addington a party to the Cursory Remarks: they do, indeed, make him answerable for every word of that pamphlet, as fully, to all intents and purposes, as if he himself had been the author, with his name inserted in the title-page. -The Plain Answer, as evidently, comes, if not from under the hand, at least, from under the eye, of Mr. Pitt. It is generally attributed to Mr. Long; but some persons give it to a Mr. Hunter, a relation of Lord Mulgrave's. For my own part, I believe it to be Mr. Long's; but, this is a matter of little consequence, seeing that it is next to impossible, that it should have been written, without the consent, and even without the aid, of Mr. Pitt. Here, then, these two gentlemen are fairly before the public: Mr. Addington the accuser of Mr. Pitt, who appears as the defender of himself, and, in his turn, the accuser of Mr. Addington. To assist the public in making a just decision between them is my principal object, in the course of this view, and to that I should solely have confined myself, had they not introduced other political characters, with respect to whom it will be necessary to make some few remarks.

The grounds of the attack, made by the Near Observer, on Mr. Pitt, Lord Grenville, and Mr. Windham," are thus stated, by the Accurate Observer :

"The time, the manner, and the occasion, of their quitting their official situ. "tions; the promise given and withdrawn, of constant, active, and zealous "support; the circumstances of the negotiation for the return of Mr. Pitt to office; and the general conduct of these persons in Parliament.'"

But these grounds are not fairly stated. The Near Observer does, indeed, attack all three of these gentleinen on the ground of their quitting office, and on that of their parliamentary conduct since; but Lord Grenville is not implicated in the charge relative to the negotiation for Mr. Pitt's return to office, and Mr. Windham is included, neither in that charge, nor in the charge of having given a promise of "constant, active, and zealous support," or, of support of any kind. We shall, however, as we proceed, observe many instances, in which this more Accurate Observer is extremely anxious to place Mr. Pitt in company, wherever he finds that gentleman in circumstances which show him to the least advantage; and, to this anxiety alone must be ascribed his including under one head, the conduct in Parliament of Mr. Pitt, and that of Lord Grenville and Mr. Windham. A more fair, clear, and natural division of the subject would, I think, have been that which I here propose to pursue ; to wit: I. The time, the manner, and the occasion, of the late ministry quitting their official situations.* II. The promise, said to have been made by Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville, to give to Mr. Addington their constant, active, and zealous support. III. The circumstances of the negotiation for the return of Mr. Pitt to office. IV. The conduct of the New Opposition in Parliament. V. Mr. Pitt's conduct in Parliament, since his retiring from office.

I. The time, the manner, and the occasion, of the late ministry quitting their official situations.

On this topic, the Near Observer states, that, at the time when the late ministry quitted his Majesty's council, the nation was fatigued and

This was the Ministry of Mr. PITT, who quitted office in March, 1801, and was succeeded by Mr. ADDINGTON.-ED.

discouraged by the length and events of the war, and was deserted by every useful ally; that France had subdued the whole of the Continent of Europe, except Austria, Prussia, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, the three latter of which powers were arming against our maritime rights, and calling on us to wage a new war, while the attitude of our old enemy became every day more formidable to us, even upon our own shores; that the artifices of party, and the unhappy success of so many expensive expeditions, had entirely indisposed the country towards offensive operations, and that the mistakes and misfortunes in several instances, but particularly in that of the annulling of the treaty of El-Arich, had caused the highest distrust and dissatisfaction as to the conduct of the war, and the capacity of the persons entrusted with it; that an expedition was, indeed, prepared for retrieving our error in Egypt, and a fleet to assist our negotiations with the Northern Powers, but that no ministers could have been sanguine enough to expect their success, because that a British fleet had once before been sent to Copenhagen to embolden Lord Whitworth to sign a treaty of adjournment, at the expense of some implied and virtual concessions, which, in happier times, could never have been extorted from a British Cabinet, and because, as to Egypt, though it pleased Providence to bless his Majesty's arms with glorious success, it is impossible to deny the total incompetency of that expedition to its object, or to think that it deserved, or could have been crowned with victory according to human computation and probability.

"In this complicated predicament," says he, "of evil and despondency, with every part of Europe hostile to our interests, and preparing to annoy us; with"out a distinct end or remaining object in the war; our expeditions hopeless: our enemy flushed with insolence and success, and galled by recent insult and "repulse; what hope or faint speculation of peace remained, what part of our "affairs appeared irretrievable? I appeal to the memory of all the country; "who am myself a witness of its situation and despair!"

On the indisposition of his Majesty the Near Observer dwells with peculiar emphasis, and expresses himself in language which one cannot help lamenting to see employed for a purpose such as that which he evidently has in view.

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"I throw a veil," says he, "over the malady of our beloved Sovereign, who never gave pain to his subjects, but when they trembled for his life. But the future "historian of this eventful era will make it his care to dwell upon a calamity, "which heightened every terror in our circumstances, and more than redoubled every other calamity. It was at such a moment, that his Majesty's late ministers "thought proper to retire from his service!"

"

The conclusion which he draws, or rather, which he says the world has drawn, from these assumed facts, is, that the late ministers, in resigning the reins of government, were actuated by "despondency and apprehension" and not by those considerations of duty and of honour, which, as they alleged, compelled them to resign, unless they could carry into effect the measure, which they had in view relative to the Catholics of Ireland, a conclusion which he, in several parts of his work, attempts to strengthen by insinuating, and sometimes asserting, that their resignation is, to this hour, "unaccounted for and unaccountable."

In his answer as to this point, the Accurate Observer begins by stating, that, as far as was consistent with their duty to their Sovereign, the late ministers did not hesitate to acquaint the public with the motives which had induced them to relinquish their situations :

"Feeling," they said, an incumbent duty upon them to propose a measure, on