Art. II-A Selection from the Speeches and Writings of the late Lord King. With an Introductory Memoir. By EARL FORTESCUE. 8vo. London: 1844.

TH HE ingratitude of mankind towards their benefactors has long been notorious. It is not, indeed, universal. Neither Cromwell, nor Napoleon, nor O'Connell, could complain of illrequited service. But in general it will be found that those whose merits have been promptly and adequately recognised, have been men who have participated in the opinions and the passions of those around them. They have been statesmen, or soldiers, or demagogues, whose objects have been the same with those of their contemporaries, and who have differed from them only by perceiving more clearly, or employing more unscrupulously, the readiest means of attaining them. Men of a higher moral and intellectual character-men who are unaffected by the prejudices of their age and country-who refuse to aid in gratifying irrational desires, or in maintaining irrational opinionsmust not expect power or even popularity. They labour for posterity, and from posterity they must receive their reward.

But even posterity is not to be depended on. It does not, indeed, treat the memory of those to whom it owes its wisdom and its prosperity as its fathers treated their persons. It does not

hate or despise, but it often neglects or forgets them. This is peculiarly the case where the services rendered have been those rather of a Teacher than of a Legislator-where they have consisted in exposing fallacies, softening prejudices, stigmatising selfishness, and preparing in one generation the way for measures which are to be adopted by another. The Prophet has no honour in his own country, nor, unless he be a worker of miracles, in his own time. Some think him a visionary, others an enthusiast, and others an incendiary or an anarchist. But his opinions gradually spread. They are first accepted by students, then by that portion of the educated classes which is not misled by politics or party, then by the mass of the people, and at length they force their way into the Legislature. The proposed reform is supported by minorities small at first, but gradually, though not regularly, increasing. At last it becomes an Open Question in the Cabinet; and then, though the mode in which it is to succeed cannot be foreseen, its final success may be predicted. The constantly recurring inconvenience of debates in which those who sit on the Treasury Bench have to answer one another—the

unceasing pressure from without, or some accident-a Clare election, a Revolution in France, a Financial deficiency, or a potatoe disease-effects the conversion of the head of the Ministry. He declares to his colleagues that the country has too long suffered from opinions which he now finds to be absurd, and from courses which he now finds to be mischievous. He announces that the measures which he and they have spent their lives in opposing must now be carried by a united cabinet. It is seldom that any of his colleagues resist. If any do, they are ejected. The public is too much delighted with the result to criticise narrowly the means by which it has been brought about. Still less does it stop to enquire who they were, who, in former times, discovered, or established, or kept alive the doctrines which are now bringing their fruit. It allows the Temple to be dedicated to him who first opened it for worship and use. His name is inscribed on the pediment; his statue stands in the portico; and after ages ascribe to him a fabric which, if he had been listened to, would never have been erected. Those who invented the plan, and dug the foundations, and raised the walls, are forgotten, or remembered only by political antiquaries.

If the Tract, the title of which we have prefixed to this article, had not been published, this would unquestionably have been the fate of Lord King. It may be his fate even notwithstanding that publication; and it is in the hope of averting such an injustice that we call the public attention to its contents.

Lord King was born in 1775, succeeded to his title in 1793, took his seat in the House of Lords in 1797, and appears to have spoken for the first time in 1800. From that time until his death in 1833, he took an active part in debate. It is not easy for a party man, and Lord King was a steadfast Whig, to be a regular debater, and always to conciliate his allegiance to party with his allegiance to truth. It is not easy when his party is in power; it is still more difficult when it is in opposition. For since a Cabinet is generally far superior, both morally and intellectually, both in knowledge and in public spirit, to the mass of its supporters, its measures are seldom positively wrong. Its fault consists not so much in what it does, as in what it omits, and an undiscriminating opposition must therefore often be an opposition to what is right. We can suppose a man honestly and wisely to support the measures of a government during a whole session, and at the end to join in a vote of want of confidence; just as we can suppose a man to approve separately of each act done by his servant, and yet to discharge him for gross omissions of duty. But, to do this, requires great forbearance and freedom from the party spirit which is the

besetting sin of the members of a deliberative assembly. This difficult task, however, Lord King appears to have achieved. Lord Fortescue has given us the substance of between seventy and eighty Speeches, delivered during more than thirty years. During the whole of this long period, except the last two years and a half, and the brief Whig administration of 1806, Lord King was in opposition. And yet we can find no traces of faction, no deviation for a moment from the straight line of truth, either to excuse the faults, or to serve the purposes of the party with which he acted. Some mistakes, of course, there are. No man at the close of a long public life can look back at his own conduct, and not discover in it much that experience shows to have been erroneous. But the amount of practical error into which Lord King fell is marvellously small. It is confined, indeed, to his conduct respecting the Spanish Negotiations of 1822, and 1823.

No one, we suppose, now questions the wisdom of Mr Canning's conduct of those Negotiations. It is admitted that he boldly and decidedly separated the policy of England from that of the Holy Alliance. That to prevent the invasion of Spain by France, he interfered by argument and by adviceremonstrated, in short, by every means short of actual menace. That to employ menace, without intending to support it by war, would have been degrading, and to engage in war when no important British interests were affected, unjusti fiable. Lord King, however, supported Lord Ellenborough's motion for an Address to the Crown-declaring that the honour and interest of the nation had not been supported in the Negotiation, and expressing an opinion that more decided measures might have prevented the invasion. He said, that he had read the papers on the table with shame, grief, and dissappointment; that he could not find in them one honest or manly * sentiment, one opinion suited to the occasion, one declaration becoming candid or upright statesmen. He denied even that this forbearance was to be imputed to prudence. It was apathy and indifference to the cause of Spain and of liberty. To find a parallel, their Lordships must go back to the times of the Stuarts.' *

But though we now see that all this was unjust as criticism, and that conduct bottomed on such feelings would have been most mischievous, instead of wondering that Lord King should, on one occasion, have been guilty of mistake, we honour his memory

*P. 321.

when we recollect that the mistake was a single one, and arose from honest indignation at one of the most revolting incidents in the long and calamitous history of the oppression of Spain by France.

It must be admitted, however, that, during a considerable portion of Lord King's political life, to carry on honestly a systematic opposition was much easier than it has since been, or than it had been for many years before. The Percival administration, and that of Lord Liverpool, until it was somewhat liberalized by the death of Lord Londonderry and the preponderance of Mr Canning, were the two worst governments which this country has endured during the last sixty years. It was the period of Lord Eldon's ascendency, and bears the mark of his uncultivated intellect; his narrow sympathies, his restless jealousy, his fierce prejudices, his general ignorance of the causes on which the welfare of the Empire depended, and his indifference to that welfare even in the few cases in which he could understand the means by which it might have been promoted. Administrations in which such a spirit was predominant were naturally administrations of delay, inaction, and repression. Their object was to keep the country stationary, to support bribery in the boroughs and intimidation in the counties; to keep the Catholic degraded, and the Negro enslaved; to restrict our commerce or misdirect our industry; to support corruption by patronage, patronage by large establishments, and large establishments by grinding taxation; and to make that very taxation a plea for prohibitory duties on the necessaries of life. When misgovernment produced distress, and distress discontent, they applied their remedies, not to the disease but to the symptoms; they tried not to remove disaffection, but to repress its expression; they prosecuted the Press; they let loose the Yeomanry on public meetings; and suspended the Habeas Corpus.

It is much to be regretted that Lord King, in his carelessness of fame, should have preserved none of the speeches by which he opposed these weak and unscrupulous administrations. Lord Fortescue has gleaned a few of them from Hansard, but in their abridged, ill-connected form, they are mere memoranda, from which the opinions of the speaker may be inferred, but his powers cannot even be estimated.

It is not, however, to the general parliamentary conduct of Lord King that we direct the reader's special attention. The merit of having been an intelligent, bold, and unwearied opponent of misgovernment, he shared with several others. His peculiar claim to our gratitude arises from his conduct on occasions on which he stood prominent and nearly alone;

from his management of subjects as to which he was in advance of public opinion, where he had to teach doctrines now indeed familiar, but then generally denied, even by the few who endeavoured to comprehend them; and to recommend measures, most of which have already passed into our legislation, and the remainder will have done so before these pages will be in type, but which, when first proposed by him, were rejected as revolutionary extravagances.

The three subjects to which we allude are, 1. The Restoration of the Currency; 2. the Commutation of Tithes; and, 3. the Abolition of the Corn Laws.

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From the time at which our acquaintance with the civilized world begins, until the seventeenth century, it has been the usual policy of governments to retain in their own hands the Coining of Money. To ascertain the fineness of a piece of metal is a troublesome and expensive process. It cannot therefore pass from hand to hand with the rapidity which the functions of money require, unless it carry some stamp in which the public confides, denoting its quality; and it seems to have been generally supposed that none but a government could be intrusted with the affixing such a stamp. As population and wealth and intercourse increased, as men became known to one another, and public opinion made fidelity to engagements a commercial point of honour, it was found that a promise to pay a sum of money on demand, signed by a person in good credit, is of the same value as the money, and for some purposes more convenient. And it was also found that this convenience enables such mises to circulate as money for a considerable time-sometimes two or three years, before some holder requires the promise to be performed. The maker of such a promise, or, as it is usually termed Note, is a borrower who pays no interest; and by employing the fund in return for which it was issued, he may make a profit proportioned to the average amount of his Notes in circulation. It is difficult to perceive the grounds on which governments, which so jealously reserve to themselves the privilege of coining Metallic Money, should so frequently and so easily have allowed subjects to coin Paper Money. It is often as difficult to ascertain the value of a Note as that of a Sovereign. Indeed, much more so, since the senses give no assistance. Paper money may be issued in excess, which can scarcely be the case as to metallic money, and that excess may be very mischievous. And as its issue is profitable, while coining metallic money is generally a loss, there is always a danger that it will be so issued. But notwithstanding these a priori grounds for expecting the contrary, most governments have allowed their subjects, or cer