But now the whole force of administration was demanded; and I made up my mind to ascertain by trial, what no man can be sure of without that trial, whether I possessed any capacity for public life.

The subject on which I first spoke was an address to the throne, in answer to the King's message on the war. On this night Pitt, but lately recovered from a fit of his hereditary gout, spoke briefly, and with evident feebleness of frame. Fox, whose energy seemed always to depend on his rival's power, and whose eloquence always rose or fell with the vigour or languor of the minister-Fox, never so great as when Pitt put forth all his strength, on this night idled away his hour, through the mere want of an antagonist; but Sheridan made ample compensation for his leader. The

House had fallen into lassitude, and the benches were already thin when he arose. I had heard him as the humorist on some trivial occasions of debate. I had enjoyed the social pleasantry which placed him at the head of the wits; but I was still but imperfectly acquainted with the strong sarcasm, the deep disdain, and the grave sophistry, which this extraordinary man could exhibit with such redundant ease, and wield with such vigorous dexterity. I must give but an outline:

"You have made war," said he, "and you have made the arms of your country contemptible by failures, which you rendered inevitable by your rashness. You, sir," and he fixed his flashing eye on the premier, “have commenced that war by a series of declarations, which made our diplomacy as contemptible as our campaigns. The national sword had been wrested from our hands. But you were not content with that humiliation, and you added to it the disgrace of the national understanding. You laid down a succession of principles, and then trampled them in the dust on the first opportunity. You encumbered yourself for action with pledges which you could never have intended to sustain, or which in the first collision your pusillanimity threw away. Yet I deprecate your perfidy even more than I despise your weakness. I can comprehend the effrontery of a fair

aggression; but I scorn the meanness of intrigue. I may face the man-atarms, but I shudder at the assassin. I may determine to hunt down and destroy the lion, but I disdain the trap and the pitfall. And what has been the pretext of his majesty's ministers? Moderation. In this spirit of moderation they invaded France; in this spirit of moderation they captured her fortresses, and then handed them over to the Emperor; in this spirit of moderation they denounced the men who had given France a constitution; and in this spirit of moderation you now prepare to rebuild her Bastile, to restore her scaffolds, to reforge her chains, and summon all the kings of Europe, instead of taking a salutary lesson from the tomb of the monarchy, to see its skeleton exhumed, and placed, robed and crowned, upon the throne, with the nation forced to offer homage, at once in mockery and terror, to the grinning emblem; in which, with all your philtres, you can never put life again."

The orator then gave a general and singularly imposing view of the state of our European connexions; which he described as utterly frail, the result of interested motives, and sure to be broken up at the first temptation. But the "first lord of the treasury and chancellor of his majesty's exchequer," said he, "smiles at my alarm; he has his security at his side

he has the purse, which commands all the baser portion of our nature with such irresistible control! On one point I fully agree with the right honourable gentleman—that nothing but the purse could ever keep them faithful. Yet, is there nothing but gold that can bribe? is there no bribe in territory? will he not find, when he hurries to the purchase of allieswith the millions of the treasury in his hand, that more powerful purchasers have been there before him? When he offers the loan, will he not find them offering the province? when he bids with the subsidy, will he not be outbid with the kingdom? Or, if the anticipated conquerors of Europe, raising their sense of dignity to the level of their power, should disdain the traffic of corruption; will not the roaring of the French cannon in the ears of kings make them

feel, that, to persist in your ill-omened alliance, is to devote themselves to ruin? will they bargain, in sight of the axe? will they dare to traffic in the blood of their people, with the grave dug at their feet? will they be dazzled by your gold, while the French bayonet is startling their eyes? Within ten years, if England exists, she will be without an ally; or, if she continues to fight, it will be in loneliness, in terror, and in despair."

In this strain he poured out his daring conceptions for more than two hours, during which he kept the whole audience in the deepest attention. He concluded in an uproar of plaudits from both sides of the House.

My time now came. And the rising of a new member, always regarded with a generous spirit of courtesy, produced some additional interest, from the knowledge of my services on the Continent, and my immediate connexion with the ministry. The House, which had filled to overflowing in the course of Sheridan's incomparable speech, was now hushed to the most total silence, and every eye was turned on me. I shall say nothing of my perturbation, further than that I had stood before an enemy's line of ten thousand men, with their muskets levelled within half a hundred yards of me; and that I thought the benches of the House of Commons on that night looked much the more formidable of the two. My head swam, my throat burned, my eyes grew dim. I thought that the ground was shaking under my feet, and I could have almost rejoiced to have sunk into it, from the gaze and the silence, which equally appalled me. While I attempted to mutter a few sentences, of which I felt the sound die within my lips, my eye was caught by the quick turn of Pitt's head, who fixed his impatient glance upon me. Fox, with that kindliness of heart which always forgot party when a good-natured act was to be done, gave his sonorous cheer. From that instant I was another man; I breathed freely, and, recovering my voice and mind together, I plunged boldly into the boundless subject before me.

After scattering a few of the showy sophisms which the orator of the opposition had constructed into his specious

argument, I placed the war on the ground of necessity. "Nations cannot act like individuals-they cannot submit to self-sacrifice-they cannot give up their rights-they cannot affect an indolent disdain or an idle generosity. The reason of the distinction is, that in every instance the nation is a trustee-It has the rights of posterity in its keeping; it has nothing of its own to throw away; it is responsible to every generation to come. If war be essential to the integrity of the empire, war is as much a duty-a terrible duty, I allow-as the protection of our children's property from the grasp of rapine, or the defence of their lives against the midnight robber. But we are advised to peace. No man on earth would do more willing homage than myself to that beneficent genius of nations. But where am I to offer my homage? Am I to kneel on the high-road where the enemy's armies, fierce with the hope of plunder, are rushing along? Am I to build my altar in the midst of contending thousands, or on the ground covered with corpses-in the battle, or on the grave? Or am I to carry my offering to the capital, and there talk the language of national cordiality in the ear of the multitude dragging their king to the scaffold? Am I to appeal to the feelings of human brotherhood in streets smoking with civil massacre; to adjure the nation by the national honour, where revolt is an avowed principle; to press upon them the opinion of Europe, where they have proclaimed war with the world; to invoke them by the faith which they have renounced, the allegiance which they have disdained, the God whom they have blasphemed? Those things are impossible. If we are to have a treaty with this new order of thinking and action, it must be a compact of crime, a solemn agreement of treachery, a formal bond of plunder; it must be a treaty fitter for the cavern of conspiracy than for the chamber of council; its pledge must be like that of Catiline, the cup of human blood! No; the most powerful reprobation which ever shot from the indignant lip of the moralist, would not be too strong for the baseness which stooped to such a treaty, or the folly which entangled itself its toils. No burning language o

phecy would be too solemn and too stinging for the premeditated wretchedness, and incurable calamity, of such a bond. No; if we must violate the simplicity of our national interests by such degrading, and such desperate involvements-if we should not shrink from this conspiracy against mankind, let it, at least, not be consummated in the face of day; let us at once abandon the hollow pretences of human honesty; let us pledge ourselves to a perpetual league of rapine and revolution; let it be transacted in some lower region of existence, where it shall not disgrace the light of the sun; and let its ceremonial be worthy of the spirit of evil which it embodies, whose power it proclaims, and to whose supremacy it commands all nations to bow down."

In alluding to the menace that our allies would soon desert us, I asked, "Is this the magnanimity of party? Is England to be pronounced so poor, or so pusillanimous, that she must give up all hope unless she can be suffered to lurk in the rear of the battle? What says her prince of poets?

'England shall never rue,

If England to herself shall be but true.'

Is this little body with a mighty heart,' to depend for existence on the decaying strength or the decrepit courage of the Continent? Is she only to borrow the shattered armour which has hung up for ages in the halls of continental royalty, and encumber herself with its broken and rusty panoply for the ridicule of the world? The European governments have undergone the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead of scoffing at the facility of their overthrow, let us raise them on their feet again; or, if that be beyond human means, I shall not join the party-cry which insults their fall-I certainly shall not exult in that melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the

manacle and the dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I doubt whether the country will ever be conscious of her true strength until the war of the Continent is at an end. I more than doubt the wisdom of suffering others to take the lead, which belongs to us by the right of superior rank, superior prowess, and superior fame. I shall have but slight regret for the fall of those outworks which-massive, nay, majestic, as they are-waste the power of England by the division of her force, and make us decline the gallant enterprize of the field-ramparts and fosses which reduce us to defence, and which, while they offer a thousand points of entrance to an active assault, shut us in, and disqualify us from victory."

I now repeat this language of the moment, merely from later and long experience of its truth. I fully believe, that if England had come forward to the front of the battle in the early years of the war, she would have crushed all resistance; or if she had found, by the chance of things, the Continent impenetrable to her arms, she would have surrounded it with a wall of fire, until its factions had left nothing of themselves but their ashes.

I was now fully engaged in public life. The effort which I had made in Parliament had received the approval of Pitt, who, without stooping to notice things so trivial as style and manner on questions of national life and death, highly applauded the courage which had dared to face so distinguished a Parliamentary favourite as Sheridan, and had taken a view of affairs so accordant with his own. From this period, I was constantly occupied in debate; and, taking the premier for my model, I made rapid proficiency in the difficult art of addressing a British House of Commons. Of course, I have no idea of giving myself the praise on this subject, which no man can give to himself on any, without offence. But I felt that this was an art which might escape, and which had often escaped, men of distinguished ability, and which might be possessed by men of powers altogether inferior. I must acknowledge. that a portion of my success was ow

ing to the advice of that shrewdest, and at the same time most friendly, of human beings, the secretary. "You must be a man of business," said he, "or you will be nothing; for praise is nothing-popularity is nothingeven the applause of the House is nothing. These matters pass away, and the orators pass away with them. John Bull is a solid animal, and likes reality. This is the true secret of the successes of hundreds of men of mediocrity, and of the failures of almost every man of brilliant faculties. The latter fly too high, and thus make no way along the ground. They always alight on the same spot; while the weaker, but wiser, have put one foot before another, and have pushed on. Sheridan, at this moment, has no more weight in the House than he had within a twelvemonth after taking his seat. Fox, with the most powerful abilities, is looked on simply as a magnificent speechmaker. His only weight is in his following. If his party fell from him to-morrow, all his eloquence would find its only echo in bare walls, and its only panegyric in street-placards. Pitt is a man of business, complete, profound, indefatigable. If you have his talents, copy his prudence; if you have not, still copy his prudence-make it the interest of men to consult you, and you must be ultimately successful."

I laughingly observed, that the "Nullum numen abest" had been honoured with an unexpected illustration.

"Sir," said the minister, fixing his keen grey eye upon me, "if Eton had never taught any other maxim, it would have been well worth all the tail of its longs and shorts. It is the concentration of wisdom, personal, private, and public; the polar star of politics, as probably you would say; or, as I in my matter-of-fact style should express it, the fingerpost of the road to fortune."

But there never was a time when all the maxims of political wisdom were more required. A long succession of disasters had already broken down the outworks of the continental thrones. The renown of the great armies of Germany was lost; the discipline of the Prussian, and the steady intrepidity of the Austrian, had

been swept before the wild disorder of the French. Men began to believe that the art of war had been hitherto unknown, and that the enemy had at length mastered the exclusive secret. Monarchy came to be regarded as only another name for weakness; and civilized order for national decrepitude. A kind of superstition stole over the minds of men; the signs of European overthrow were discovered in every change; calculations were calmly raised on the chances of existence to the most powerful dynasties; the age of crowns was in the move, the age of republics was in the ascendant; and while the feebler minds looked with quiescent awe on what they regarded as the inevitable tide of events, the more daring regarded the prospect as a summons to prepare for their part of the spoil. The struggles of Opposition grew more resolute as the hope of success came nearer, and the Government began to feel the effects of this perpetual assault, in the sudden neutrality of some of its most ostentatious champions, and in the general reserve of its supporters in the House. Even the superb perseverance of Pitt was beginning to be weary of a contest, in which victory lost its fruits on the one side, while defeat seemed only to give fresh vigour on the other. But a new triumph was to cheer the face of things.

The

I was returning one morning from the House, after a night spent in a fierce debate on the war, which Fox denounced with an asperity unusual to his generous temperament. premier had made a powerful speech, vindicating the government from all share in the continental misfortunes; pronouncing loftily, that, in a war not made for conquest, it was sophistry to speak of our failure of possession as a crime; and declaring in a tone of singular boldness and energy-that if the Continent were untrod by a British soldier, there was a still broader field for the arms and the triumphs of England. But his eloquence had more effect in exposing the errors, than in reducing the numbers of his opponents, and the smallness of his majority would have made a feebler mind resign on the spot. The announcement of the numbers was received with an insulting

cheer by the minority, and the cabinet was already by anticipation in their hands.

I left the House wearied and dejected, and was returning to Downing Street, to throw myself on a couch, and get a few hours of rest before my morning toil; when I found a messenger at the door of my office, bearing a request from the secretary of state, that I should attend him as soon as possible. I found my friend before a table covered with despatches, his brow furrowed with weariness like my own.

"You see me here, Marston, more tired than any ploughman or watchman, or any other son of labour from this to John O'Groat's House. I was sent for, from the House, six hours ago, and every hour since have I been poring over those puzzled papers. How long I can stand this wear and tear the physicians must tell, but it would require the constitution of Hercules or Samson, or both together, to go through the work that is beginning to fall on the members of the cabinet.

I offered to give him such assistance as was in my power.

"No, no, Marston; I am chained to the oar for this night at least, and must pull till I fall asleep. My purpose in keeping you from your pillow at this time of night, is not to relieve myself from trouble; but to ask whether you are disposed to relieve the government from serious difficulty, and in a way which I hope will be not disagreeable to yourself." I concluded that my mission was to be continental, and my heart danced at the suggestion. In England it was impossible to continue my search for the being in whom all my thoughts were fixed; but once beyond the sea I should have the world before me. I asked whether there was any intention of trying the chances of attack again on the French frontier.

"None whatever. The greater probability is, that the French will make some experiment on the strength of ours."

I looked all astonishment. He interpreted my look, and said "To solve the enigma at once, It is our wish to send you to Ireland."

I listened in silence while he went

into a long detail of the hazard of the island, arising from the interests of a powerful republican party, who, inflamed by the successes of France, were preparing to receive troops and arms from the republic. He finished by saying, in a tone of compliment, which, from him, was as unusual as I believe it was sincere, that my exertions in debate had attracted high consideration in the highest quarter, and that I had been proposed by the monarch himself for the chief-secretaryship of Ireland. The premier had assented to the appointment at once ; "and here," said he, "is the warrant, which I have prepared in anticipation of its acceptance. You are, from this moment, virtual viceroy of Ireland."

This was elevation indeed! I had at once surmounted all the slow gradations of office. The broadest prospect of official ambition had suddenly opened before me; popularity, founded on the most solid grounds, was now waiting only my acceptance; the sense of power, always dear to the heart of man, glowed in every vein; and it is only justice to myself to say, that the strongest impulse of all was the desire to leave my name as a benefactor to a people, who seemed to me as much gifted by nature as they were unhappy by circumstances.

"How long will it take you to prepare for the journey?" asked the minister.

"Half an hour," was my reply.

"Bravo! Marston. I see your campaigning has not been thrown away upon you. You have the soldier's promptitude. We were prepared to allow you a week. But the sooner you set off the better. The truth is," said he rising, 66 we are in great difficulties in that quarter. The most thoroughly English portion of the island is at this moment the most disturbed. There are drillings, purchases of arms, midnight musterings, and even something not far from prepared attacks upon the king's troops. The papers among which you found me, contain a regular and a very complete organization of an insurrectionary government. You will require all the energy of the soldier and all the prudence of the statesman."

"Let me add to them," said I,