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is, he will make an ass of you." It was as dangerous to have any political connection with Newcastle as to buy and sell with old Trapbois. He was greedy after power with a greediness all his own. He was jealous of all his colleagues, and even of his own brother. Under the disguise of levity he was false be

terical tears. Jis oratory resembles that of Justice Shallow. It was nonsense effervescent with animal spirits and impertinence. Of his ignorance many anecdotes remain, some well authenticated, some probably invented at cof fee-houses, but all exquisitely characteristic. "Oh-yes-yes-to be sure-Annapolis must be defended-troops must be sent to Annapo-yond all example of political falsehood. All lis-Pray, where is Annapolis ?"-" Cape Breton an island! wonderful-show it me in the map. So it is, sure enough. My dear sir, you always bring us good news. I must go and tell the king that Cape Breton is an island."

And this man was during nearly thirty years secretary of state, and during nearly ten years first lord of the treasury! His large fortune, his strong hereditary connection, his great parliamentary interest, will not alone explain this extraordinary fact. His success is a signal instance of what may be effected by a man who devotes his whole heart and soul without reserve to one object. He was eaten up by ambition. His love of influence and authority resembled the avarice of the old usurer in the "Fortunes of Nigel." It was so intense a passion that it supplied the place of talents, that it inspired even fatuity with cunning. "Have no money dealings with my father," says Martha to Lord Glenvarloch; "for, dotard as he

the able men of his time ridiculed him as a dunce, a driveller, a child who never knew his own mind for an hour together, and he overreached them all round.

If the country had remained at peace, it is not impossible that this man would have con. tinued at the head of affairs, without admitting any other person to a share of his authority, until the throne was filled by a new prince, who brought with him new maxims of govern ment, new favourites, and a strong will. But the inauspicious commencement of the Seven Years' War brought on a crisis to which New. castle was altogether unequal. After a calm of fifteen years the spirit of the nation was again stirred to its inmost depths. In a few days the whole aspect of the political world was changed.

But that change is too remarkable an event to be discussed at the end of an article already too long. It is probable that we may, at no remote time, resume the subject.

VOL. II.-29

1

THACKERAY'S HISTORY OF THE EARL OF

CHATHAM.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1834.]

THOUGH several years have elapsed since | ral excellence-the just man made perfect. the publication of this work, it is still, we believe, a new publication to most of our readers. Nor are we surprised at this. The book is large and the style heavy. The information which Mr. Thackeray has obtained from the State Paper Office is new, but much of it is to us very uninteresting. The rest of his narrative is very little better than Gifford's or Tomline's Life of the Second Pitt, and tells us little or nothing that may not be found quite as well told in the "Parliamentary History," the "Annual Register," and other works equally com

anon.

Almost every mechanical employment, it is said, has a tendency to injure some one or other of the bodily organs of the artisan. Grinders of cutlery die of consumption; weavers are stunted in their growth; and smiths become blear-eyed. In the same manner almost every intellectual employment has a tendency to produce some intellectual malady. Biographers, translators, editors-all, in short, who employ themselves in illustrating the lives or the writings of others, are peculiarly exposed to the Lues Boswelliana, or disease of admiration. But we scarcely remember ever to have seen a patient so far gone in this distemper as Mr. Thackeray. He is not satisfied with forcing us to confess that Pitt was a great orator, a vigorous minister, an honourable and highspirited gentleman. He will have it that all virtues and all accomplishments met in his hero. In spite of gods, men, and columns, Pitt must be a poet-a poet capable of producing a heroic poem of the first order; and we are assured that we ought to find many charms in such lines as these:

"Midst all the tumults of the warring sphere, My light-charged bark may haply glide;

He was in the right when he attempted to establish an inquisition, and to give bounties for perjury, in order to get Walpole's head. He was in the right when he declared Walpole to have been an excellent minister. He was in the right when, being in opposition, he maintained that no peace ought to be made with Spain, till she should formally renounce the right of search. He was in the right when, being in office, he silently acquiesced in a treaty by which Spain did not renounce the right of search. When he left the Duke of Newcastle, when he coalesced with the Duke of Newcastle; when he thundered against subsidies, when he lavished subsidies with unexampled profusion; when he execrated the Hanoverian connection; when he declared that Hanover ought to be as dear to us as Hampshire; he was still invariably speaking the language of a virtuous and enlightened statesman.

The truth is, that there scarcely ever lived a person who had so little claim to this sort of praise as Pitt. He was undoubtedly a great man. But his was not a complete and wellproportioned greatness. The public life of Hampden, or of Somers, resembles a regular drama, which can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection with the main action. The public life of Pitt, on the other hand, is a rude though striking piece-a piece abounding in incongruities-a piece without any unity of plan, but redeemed by some noble passages, the effect of which is increased by the tameness or extravagance of what precedes and of what follows. His opinions were unfixed. His conduct at some of the most important conjunctures of his life was evidently determined by

Some gate may waft, some conscious thought shall pride and resentment. He had one fault, which

cheer,

And the small freight unanxious glide."

Pitt was in the army for a few months in time of peace. Mr. Thackeray accordingly insists on our confessing that, if the young cornet had remained in the service, he would have been one of the ablest commanders that ever lived. But this is not all. Pitt, it seems, was not merely a great poet in esse, and a great general in posse, but a finished example of mo

A History of the Right Honourable William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, containing his Speeches in Parliament, a considerable portion of his Correspondence when Secretary of State, upon French, Spanish, and American Affairs, never before published; and an account of the principal Events and Persons of his Time, connected with his Life, Sentiments, and Administration. By the Rev. FRANCIS THACKERAY, A.M. 2 vols. 4to. London. 1827.

of all human faults is most rarely found in company with true greatness. He was extremely affected. He was an almost solitary instance of a man of real genius, and of a brave, lofty, and commanding spirit, without simplicity of character. He was an actor in the closet, an actor at Council, an actor in Parliament; and even in private society he could not lay aside his theatrical tones and attitudes. We know that one of the most distinguished of his partisans often complained that he could never obtain admittance to Lord Chatham's room till every thing was ready for the repre sentation, till the dresses and properties were all correctly disposed, till the light was thrown with Rembrandt-like effect on the head of the illustrious performer, till the flannels had been

arranged with the air of a Grecian drapery, and the crutch placed as gracefully as that of Belisarius or Lear.

Yet, with all his faults and affectations, Pitt bad, in a very extraordinary degree, many of the elements of greatness. He had splendid talents, strong passions, quick sensibility, and vehement enthusiasm for the grand and the beautiful. There was something about him which ennobled tergiversation itself. He often went wrong, very wrong. But to quote the language of Wordsworth,

"He still retained,

'Mid such abasement, what he had received
From nature, an intense and glowing mind.”

venteen he was entered at Trinity College,
Oxford. During the second year of his resi-
dence at the University, George the First died;
and the event was, after the fashion of that ge
neration, celebrated by the Oxonians in many
very middling copies of verses.
On this occa-
sion Pitt published some Latin lines, which
Mr. Thackeray has preserved. They prove
that he had but a very limited knowledge even
of the mechanical part of his art. All true
Etonians will hear with concern, that their
illustrious school-fellow is guilty of making
the first syllable in labenti short. The matter
of the poem is as worthless as that of any
college exercise that was ever written before
or since. There is, of course, much about
Mars, Themis, Neptune, and Cocytus. The
Muses are earnestly entreated to weep for
Cæsar; for Cæsar, says the poet, loved the
Muses;-Cæsar, who could not read a line of
Pope, and who leved nothing but punch and
fat women.

In an age of low and dirty prostitution-in the age of Doddington and Sandys-it was something to have a man who might, perhaps, under some strong excitement, have been tempted to ruin his country, but who never would have stooped to pilfer from her;-a man whose errors arose, not from a sordid desire Pitt had been, from his schooldays, cruelly of gain, but from a fierce thirst for power, for tormented by the gout; and was at last advised glory, and for vengeance. History owes to to travel for his health. He accordingly left him this attestation-that, at a time when any Oxford without taking a degree, and visited thing short of direct embezzlement of the pub- France and Italy. He returned, however, lic money was considered as quite fair in pub- without having received much benefit from his lic men, he showed the most scrupulous dis-excursion, and continued, till the close of his interestedness; that, at a time when it seemed life, to suffer most severely from his constituto be generally taken for granted that govern- tional malady. ment could be upheld only by the basest and His father was now dead, and had left very most immoral arts, he appealed to the better little to the younger children. It was neces and nobler parts of human nature; that he sary that William should choose a profession. made a brave and splendid attempt to do, by He decided for the army, and a cornet's com means of public opinion, what no other states-mission was procured for him in the Blues. man of his day thought it possible to do, except by means of corruption; that he looked for support, not like the Pelhams, to a strong aristocratical connection, not, like Bute, to the personal favour of the sovereign, but to the middle class of Englishmen; that he inspired that class with a firm confidence in his integrity and ability; that, backed by them, he forced an unwilling court and an unwilling oligarchy to admit him to an ample share of power; and that he used his power in such a manner as clearly proved that he had sought it, not for the sake of profit or patronage, but from a wish to establish for himself a great and durable reputation by means of eminent services rendered to the state.

But, small as his fortune was, his family had both the power and the inclination to serve him. At the general election of 1734, his eider brother Thomas was chosen both for Old Sarum and for Oakhampton. When Parliament met in 1735, Thomas made his election to serve for Oakhampton, and William was returned for Old Sarum.

Walpole had now been, during fourteen years, at the head of affairs. He had risen to power under the most favourable circumstances. The whole of the Whig party-of that party which professed peculiar attachment to the principles of the Revolution, and which exclusively enjoyed the confidence of the reigning house-had been united in support The family of Pitt was wealthy and respect of his administration. Happily for him, he able. His grandfather was Governor of Madras; had been out of office when the South Sea Act and brought back from India that celebrated was passed; and, though he does not appear diamond which the Regent Orleans, by the ad- to have foreseen all the consequences of that vice of Saint Simon, purchased for upwards measure, he had strenuously opposed it, as he of three millions of livres, and which is still opposed almost all the measures, good or bad, considered as the most precious of the crown of Sunderland's administration. When the jewels of France. Governor Pitt bought estates South Sea Company were voting dividends of and rotten boroughs, and sat in the House of fifty per cent.—when a hundred pounds of their Commons for Old Sarum. His son Robert was stock were selling for eleven hundred pounds at one time member for Old Sarum, and at an--when Threadneedle street was daily crowdother for Oakhampton. Robert had two sons. ed with the coaches of dukes and prelates Thomas, the elder, inherited the estates and when divines and philosophers turned gamblers the parliamentary interest of his father. The second was the celebrated William Pitt.

He was born in November, 1708. About the early part of his life little more is known than that he was educated at Eton, and that at se

when a thousand kindred bubbles were daily blown into existence-the periwig company, and the Spanish-jackass company, and the quicksilver-fixation company-Walpole's calm good sense preserved him from the general in

Of all the members of the cabinet, Carteret was the most eloquent and accomplished. His talents for debate were of the first order; his knowledge of foreign affairs superior to that of any living statesman; his attachment to the Protestant succession was undoubted. But there was not room in one government for him and Walpole. Carteret retired, and was, from that time forward, one of the most persevering and formidable enemies of his old colleague.

fatuation. He condemned the prevailing mad- an offer. He indignantly refused to accept'r ness in public, and turned a considerable sum For some time he continued to brood over his by taking advantage of it in private. When wrongs, and to watch for an opportunity of the crash came-when ten thousand families revenge. As soon as a favourable conjunc were reduced to beggary in a day--when the ture arrived, he joined the minority, and be people, in the frenzy of their rage and despair, came the greatest leader of Opposition that the clamoured not only against the lower agents House of Commons had ever seen. in the juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the English ministers, against the king himself--when Parliament met, eager for confiscation and blood-when members of the House of Commons proposed that the directors should be treated like parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their eyes. Four years before he had been driven from power by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope, and the lead in the House of Commons had been intrusted to Craggs and Aislabie. Stanhope was no more. Aislabie was expelled from Parliament, on account of his disgraceful conduct regarding the South Sea scheme. Craggs was saved by a timely death from a similar mark of infamy. A large minority in the House of Commons voted for a severe censure on Sunderland, who, finding it impossible to withstand the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired from office, and outlived his retirement but a very short time. The schism which had divided the Whig party was now completely healed. Walpole had no opposition to encounter except that of the Tories, and the Tories were naturally regarded by the king with the strongest suspicion and dislike.

If there was any man with whom Walpole could have consented to make a partition of power, that man was Lord Townshend. They were distant kinsmen by birth, near kinsmen by marriage. They had been friends from childhood. They had been schoolfellows at Eton. They were country-neighbours in Nor folk. They had been in office together under Godolphin. They had gone into opposition together when Harley rose to power. They had been persecuted by the same House of Commons. They had, after the death of Anne, been recailed together to office. They had again been driven out by Sunderland, and had again come back together when the influence of Sunderland had declined. Their opinions on public affairs almost always coincided They were both men of frank, generous, and For a time business went on with a smooth-compassionate natures; their intercourse had ness and a despatch such as had not been known since the days of the Tudors. During the session of 1724, for example, there was only a single division. It was not impossible that, by taking the course which Pelham afterwards took-by admitting into the government all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party, and by making room here and there for a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Brunswick-Walpole might have averted the tremendous conflict in which he passed the latter years of his administration, and in which he was at length vanquished. The Opposition which overthrew him was an opposition created by his own policy. by his own insatiable love of power.

been for many years most affectionate and cor. dial. But the ties of blood, of marriage, and of friendship, the memory of mutual services and common persecutions, were insufficient to restrain that ambition which domineered over all the virtues and vices of Walpole. He was resolved, to use his own metaphor, that the firm of the house should be, not "Townshend and Walpole," but "Walpole and Townshend." At length the rivals proceeded to personal abuse before witnesses, seized each other by the collar, and grasped their swords. The women squalled. The men parted the combatants. By friendly intervention the scandal of a duel between cousins, brothers-in-law, oid friends, and old colleagues, was prevented. In the very act of forming his ministry, he But the disputants could not long continue to turned one of the ablest and most attached of act together. Townshend retired, and with his supporters into a deadly enemy. Pulteney rare moderation and public spirit, refused to had strong public and private claims to a high take any part in politics. He could not, he situation in the new arrangement. His fortune said, trust his temper. He feared that the rewas immense. His private character was collection of his private wrongs might impel respectable. He was already a distinguished him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to speaker. He had acquired official experience oppose measures which he thought generally in an important post. He had been, through beneficial to the country. He, therefore, never all changes of fortune, a consistent Whig. visited London after his resignation; but pass When the Whig party was split into two sec-ed the closing years of his life in dignity and tions, Pulteney had resigned a valuable place, repose among his trees and pictures at Rain and had followed the fortunes of Walpole. Yet ham. when Walpole returned to power, Pulteney was not invited to take office. An angry discussion took place between the friends. The minister offered a peerage. It was impossible for Pulteney not to discern the motive of such

Next went Chesterfield. He too was a Whig

*The scene of this extraordinary quarrel was, we be lieve, a house in Cleveland Square, now occupied by Mr. Ellice, the Secretary at War. It was then the resi dence of Colonel Selwvn.

character could drag down such parts; and Winnington, whose private morals lay, justly or unjustly, under imputations of the worst kind. The discontented Whigs were, not perhaps in number, but certainly in ability, experience, and weight, by far the most important part of the Opposition. The Tories furnished little more than rows of ponderous fox-hunters, fat with Staffordshire or Devonshire ale-men who drank to the king over the water, and believed that all the fundholders were Jewsmen whose religion consisted in hating the Dissenters, and whose political researches had

and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of etters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill." His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy ;--caution in the conduct of public affairs; energy where his own administration was concerned. He withdrew his bill, and turned out all his hostile or waver-led them to fear, like Squire Western, that their ing colleagues. Chesterfield was stopped on the great staircase of St. James's, and summoned to deliver up the staff which he bore as Lord Steward of the Household. A crowd of noble and powerful functionaries-the Dukes of Montrose and Bolton, Lord Burlington, Lord Stair, Lord Cobham, Lord Marchmont, Lord Clinton-were at the same time dismissed from the service of the crown.

land might be sent over to Hanover to be put into the sinking-fund. The eloquence of these patriotic squires, the remnant of the one formidable October Club, seldom went beyond a hearty Ay or No. Very few members of this party had distinguished themselves mach in Parliament, or could, under any circumstances, have been called to fill any high office; and those few had generally, like Sir William Not long after these events, the Opposition Wyndham, learned in the company of their was reinforced by the Duke of Argyle, a man new associates the doctrines of toleration and vainglorious indeed and fickle, but brave, elo-political liberty, and might indeed with strict quent, and popular. It was in a great mea- propriety be called Whigs. sure owing to his exertions that the Act of Set- It was to the Whigs in opposition, the patlement had been peaceably executed in Eng-triots, as they were called, that the most disland immediately after the death of Anne, and tinguished of the English youth, who at this that the Jacobite rebellion which, during the season entered into public life, attached themfollowing year, broke out in Scotland, was sup- selves. These inexperienced politicians felt pressed. He too carried over to the minority all the enthusiasm which the name of liberty the aid of his great name, his talents, and his naturally excites in young and ardent minds. paramount influence in his native country. They conceived that the theory of the Tory Opposition, and the practice of Walpole's government, were alike inconsistent with the principles of liberty. They accordingly re

up. While opposing the Whig minister, they professed a firm adherence to the purest doctrines of Whigism. He was the schismatic; they were the true Catholics, the peculiar people, the depositaries of the orthodox faith of Hampden and Russell; the one sect which, amidst the corruptions generated by time, and by the long possession of power, had preserved inviolate the principles of the Revolution. Of the young men who attached themselves to this portion of the Opposition, the most distinguished were Lyttleton and Pitt.

In each of these cases taken separately, a skilful defender of Walpole might perhaps make out a case for him. But when we see that during a long course of years all the foot-paired to the standard which Pulteney had set steps are turned the same way-that all the most eminent of those public men who agreed with the minister in their general views of policy left him, one after another, with sore and irritated minds, we find it impossible not to believe that the real explanation of the phenomenon is to be found in the words of his son, "Sir Robert Walpole loved power so much that he would not endure a rival."* Hume has described this famous minister with great felicity in one short sentence-"moderate in exercising power, not equitable in engrossing it." Kind-hearted, jovial, and placible as Walpole was, he was yet a man with whom no person of high pretensions and high spirit could long continue to act. He had, therefore, to stand against an Opposition containing all the most accomplished statesmen of the age, with no better support than that which he received from persons like his brother Horace, or Henry Pelham, whose industrious mediocrity gave him no cause for jealousy; or from clever adventurers, whose situation and character diminish- Nothing is more natural than that, in a mo ed the dread which their talents might other-narchy, where a constitutional Opposition ex wise have inspired. To this last class belonged Fox, who was too poor to live without office; Sir William Yonge, of whom Walpole himself said, that nothing but such parts could buoy up such a character, that nothing but such a

*Memoirs, vol. i. p. 201.

When Pitt entered Parliament, the whole political world was attentively watching the progress of an event which soon added great strength to the Opposition, and particularly to that section of the Opposition in which the young statesman enrolled himself. The Prince of Wales was gradually becoming more and more estranged from his father and his father's ministers, and more and more friendly to the patriots.

ists, the heir-apparent of the throne should put himself at the head of that Opposition. He is impelled to such a course by every feeling of ambition and of vanity. He cannot be more than second in the estimation of the party which is in. He is sure to be the first mem

ber of the party which is out. The highest

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