man in this country is nearly sure, at some period of his life, to labour. We are convinced that this was the great cause of all those attacks, which, in the early part of Mr. Pitt's life, were made upon the consistency of his public character. He had attached himself to the party headed by Lord Cobham; that party adopted some unpopular measures, in which Mr. Pitt joined :-might he not have joined in them, because he thought they involved no sacrifice of important principle, and because he was unwilling to weaken the bonds of an union, which he deemed a patriotic and honourable one? Again, that party adopted some popular measures, in which Mr. Pitt differed from them: might he not have differed, because he conscientiously believed that patriotism and truth demanded a public dissent? In short, might he not, in both cases, be acting an honourable, and even a consistent part?

And the true way of deciding this question is, by examining the context of his whole public life. When a statesman, or a private individual, adopts a measure which admits of two constructions, a measure which, regarded in one point of view, may be considered as indicating an honourable motive, and, seen in another, may be evidence of a bad one,—we determine our opinion from the analogy furnished by the rest of his conduct. To a test like this, we cheerfully submit the few doubtful acts of Lord Chatham; and we feel convinced, that no candid man will interpret them against him, so long as we can refer to the remainder of his history. If it should be found, as we believe it will, by any one who examines the public life of this great statesman with ordinary attention and candour, that he sought, on all occasions, the honour of his country and her true interests; that with this noble purpose, he braved all opposition and resisted all allurements; that neither the bleak winds of unpopularity, nor the sun of royal favour, could make him throw aside that mantle of integrity with which he had invested himself; that, in times of almost universal corruption, he held on in the paths of consistency and honour, "faithful found among the faithless ;" and that his life, though, during its progress, he had been often misunderstood and misrepresented, closed at last amidst the loud and zealous praises of every public man in the country;-if, we say, these things should be found to be true, then we apprehend that a clue is found, which will guide us among all the seeming difficulties and anomalies that may perplex our observations.

Most of our readers, no doubt, remember Lord Oldborough, in Miss Edgeworth's Patronage. We have heard it surmised that the author had Lord Chatham in her eye when that character was sketched. No doubt there are many

points of resemblance between the real and the fictitious statesman. There are, however, several important points of difference; and we recollect one sentiment put by Miss Edgeworth into the mouth of Lord Oldborough, which Lord Chatham, had he consulted his own quiet, would have done well to adopt. "Never," says the statesman in the novel, "never acknowledge an error-it is enough if you repair it." Unluckily for himself, Mr. Pitt was deficient in this species of prudence; for he sometimes laid himself open to the charge of inconsistency, and even of weakness, by the candour with which he acknowledged any political error of which he might have been guilty. To such a man as Horace Walpole, a candour so incomprehensible must have appeared to be the grossest folly, or even something worse; and accordingly we find, that he speaks of it in the following terms.

"Pitt was undoubtedly one of the greatest masters of ornamental eloquence. His language was amazingly fine and flowing; his voice admirable; his action most expressive; his figure genteel and commanding. Bitter satire was his forte; when he attempted ridicule, which was very seldom, he succeeded happily; when he attempted to reason, poorly. But where he chiefly shone was in exposing his own conduct; having waded through the most notorious apostacy in politics, he treated it with an impudent confidence, that made all reflections upon him poor and spiritless, when worded by any other man.” -Memoires, i. 79.

We introduce this passage for two reasons: first, that we may appeal to our readers whether such a degree of frankness in Lord Chatham was not likely to expose him to misrepresentations, similar to that of which Horace Walpole has been guilty; and secondly, that we may ask whether it does not call for the praises, rather than the censures, of every unprejudiced

man?

We think, that the considerations already urged are calculated to make us view with some distrust any censures which may have been thrown upon Lord Chatham by his political contemporaries. It will be observed, that we are compelled to confine ourselves solely to general observations; since the limits of a single article are obviously too narrow to permit any detailed or minute examination of a public life, so busy and so long. General observations, we are aware, can hardly ever produce conviction; but they may lead to it. They may furnish us with a rule by which our judgements should be guided in the examination of any doubtful question; they may guard us against error; they may indicate, though faintly, the path of candour and of reason, and may thus bring us, at last, to a rational and satisfactory result. When a reader enters

upon such a work as that of Lord Waldegrave, he is in imminent danger of adopting most of the opinions of a writer so obviously sensible and candid; he is likely to repose with peculiar confidence upon every account, which an author, so qualified, may give of those, of whom he must have seen, and heard, and known a great deal. Surely it cannot be superfluous to inform such a reader, that Lord Waldegrave, rational and candid as he was, nevertheless wrote in times of universal distrust; that he was himself a fallen minister; that many of those whose characters he has sketched (Lord Chatham among the rest) were violently opposed to his administration; and that with Lord Chatham he never seems to have had such a degree of intimate acquaintance, as could unfold to him that statesman's real character.

If it were necessary to assign any other reasons for examining with caution those sketches of Mr. Pitt, which have been left us by his political contemporaries and rivals, we might find them in the austerity (and perhaps harshness) of his public demeanour. That decision of character, which so eminently belonged to him, assumed, not unfrequently, an appearance of severity and dogmatism, which must have offended, in nearly equal degree, his opponents and his own partisans. His was the very character which has been so admirably depicted by a most nervous writer of the present day :

"A decisive man is in danger of extending but little tolerance to the prejudices, hesitation, and timidity, of those with whom he has to act. If full scope be allowed to this tendency, it will make even a man of elevated virtue a tyrant, who, in the consciousness of the right intention, and the assurance of the wise contrivance of his designs, will hold himself justified in being regardless of every thing but the accomplishment of them. He will forget all respect for the feelings and liberties of beings who are to be regarded as but a subordinate machinery, to be actuated or to be thrown aside when not actuated, by the spring of his commanding spirit."-Foster's Essays.

In speaking of his political opponents, he frequently assumed the language of mingled scorn and detestation, with a manner so authoritative and bitter, as would not have been tolerated for a moment in any man but himself. Nor was his conduct towards those with whom he acted in politics especially towards his colleagues, when he was in office,conciliatory or even respectful. Many instances of this impolitic severity of character are given in the volumes before us: we shall select two.

"The rule or custom is, the secretary of state sends all the orders respecting the navy, which have been agreed to in the cabinet, to

the Admiralty, and the secretary to the board writes these orders again, in the form of instructions, from the Admiralty to the admiral or captain of the fleet, expedition, &c. for whom they are designed; which instructions must be signed by three of the board. But during Mr. Pitt's administration, he wrote the instructions himself, and sent them to their lordships to be signed; always ordering his secretary to put a sheet of white paper over the writing. Thus they were left in perfect ignorance of what they signed; and the secretary and clerks of the board were all in the same state of exclusion.”—I. 229.

On another occasion we find, that he contents himself with giving a bare opinion in the cabinet, and then threatens to resign if his colleagues refuse to adopt it. It will be observed, that he does not favour them with a single reason.

"When the fleet returned from Rochefort, a puerile scheme was proposed by those whose impolitic measures had given birth to the Baltic alliance against us, to send the fleet to the assistance of the Duke of Cumberland, who was flying before the French in Hanover. Mr. Pitt alone resisted the proposal; upon which the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke, who had pressed it, gave it up. Mr. Pitt had not a thorough confidence in his coadjutors, and therefore he did not always assign his reasons for his opinion. On this occasion, he only said, that the assistance of a naval armament in the north had been frustrated; and therefore the scene, as well as the instrument of war, must be changed, before any hopes of success could be entertained; but if a contrary opinion prevailed, he would lay the seals at his majesty's feet, and retire from his situation. The cabinet ministers from this time resigned their judgement; in which they were influenced by two motives: one was, a dread of his superior abilities, which threw their minor talents into the shade; the other was, an expectation, that by permitting him to indulge in the exercise of his own opinions, he would precipitate his own exclusion from power, by drawing upon himself some capital disgrace."-I. 241.

This method of guiding a cabinet-so imperious, as even to remind one of the manner in which a point was carried by the Prince d'Anhalt-aux-Moustaches*-was not unfrequently

"The King (of Prussia) appointed a council of war, composed of a certain number of generals, under the presidency of the Prince d'Anhalt-Dessau, known by the name of d'Anhalt-aux-Moustaches (d'Anhalt with the mustachios). Frederic was tried at this tribunal; and when sentence was about to be passed, the president, with his formidable mustachios, rose and declared, that on his honour and conscience, he, for his part, perceived no cause for passing sentence of death on the accused prince, and that none among them had a right to pass such a sentence; then drawing his sword, he swore he would

practised by Lord Chatham. And we may ask, whether every tittle of praise, which might be given to such a man in his lifetime, by those who had come into contact with him in almost any way, must not have been either involuntary or insidious? On the other hand, could he fail to incur, whether he deserved them or not, hostility the most rancorous, and censures the most unmeasured?

We lament, in common with all who can deplore the errors of a great and virtuous character, that Lord Chatham should have been deficient in even one of the requisites to a minister's success--we mean, some degree of complaisance to the feelings of others. Every other requisite he possessed in the highest perfection; for the history of his administration, from the year 1756 to 1761, will abundantly shew how eminently qualified he was to promote the honour and interests of his country. So much as the energies of a single individual could effect, certainly was effected. But it is undeniable, that the austerity and hauteur which characterized the minister, were considerably prejudicial to the country, inasmuch as they not only precluded any association of other men's talents, but also accelerated his own fall from power. Our last extract may shew the very natural discontents which prevailed in Mr. Pitt's cabinet of 1757; and the following passage will serve to indicate some of the difficulties in which the same failing involved him at a subsequent period.

"Before Lord Chatham had finally settled his arrangements, he made several offers to different persons of great weight and consideration, with a view of strengthening his ministry, and of detaching them from their friends. But that superiority of mind, which had denied him the usual habits of intercourse with the world, gave an air of austerity to his manners, and precluded the policy of a convenient condescension to the minutiae of politeness and fascinating powers of address. He made offers to Lord Scarborough, Mr. Dowdeswell, and several others, but in such terms of hauteur, as seemed to provoke, though unintentionally, the necessity of refusal. They were all rejected. He then waited upon Lord Rockingham, at his house in Grosvenor Square; but Lord Rockingham, who was at home, refused

*

cut off the ears of any man who should differ from him in opinion. In this manner he collected the suffrages, and the prince was unanimously acquitted."-Thiebault's Anecdotes of Frederic II. King of Prussia, vol. i. p. 107.

* To the first, an abrupt message was sent," that he might have an office if he would." To the second, "that such an office was still vacant." To a third, "that he must take such an office or none."—Note by the author.