negro emancipation refused, and was beaten. But another and a severer blow succeeded: And this also reached him through the bosom of a friend. Melville, once his most intimate associate, but, according to Wilberforce, estranged ever since the communications with Addington in 1802, had long suffered under imputations of official dishonesty. A strong party was forming against him in the Commons. The virtue of George Rose was shocked. The poor prudence of Sidmouth was frightened. He recommended the resignation, and deprecated the defence, of their obnoxious colleague. The commissioners of enquiry presented a report, on which Whitbread founded a motion of censure. This was carried in the Commons by the Speaker's casting vote, and was followed by Melville's resignation. Sidmouth, having mortified Pitt thus far by his timid caution, proceeded to injure him further by ill-timed disagreement. The Admiralty was tendered by the Premier to Sir C. Middleton, a man of whom Wilberforce thought highly. Sidmouth, with his congenial love of mediocrity, had wished it to be conferred on Lord Buckinghamshire, of whom nobody thought much then, and nobody knows anything now. This dissatisfaction now found its vent and its vengeance. The impeachment of Melville was moved by Whitbread. One of Addington's inseparables, Bond Hopkins, the Judge Advocate in posse, moved an amendment, substituting a criminal prosecution by the Attorney-General. This was simply a variation of procedure. It was strenuously resisted, accordingly, by Pitt's followers, but ultimately carried. But another night saw this decision reversed; and the vote for impeachment substituted. In both debates a degree of malignity and rancour towards Melville had been displayed, which must have struck Pitt with astonishment as well as grief. Temple, Grey, the Addington set, and, worse than all, Wilberforce, all spoke, and spoke sternly, against the ex-minister. When the impeachment was carried, the House proclaimed its exultation by a terrific shout. It smote Pitt's heart to the core. Ere the impeachment could proceed, he was in his grave!

After such an incident, it was scarcely possible for Sidmouth to remain in office under Pitt. Still less could Bond Hopkins, the mover of the amendment, look for future favour. Curiously enough, Lord Sidmouth found himself in communication with Mr Fox just at this crisis. What with his own expectations, and those of his friends, he determined to resign. He accordingly waited on the King with the key of the Council. The King, whom every excitement now drove upon the borders of his malady, was greatly irritated at this. You must not give it to 'me,' he said, but to Lord Hawkesbury.' Addington pleaded

a private quarrel with Lord Hawkesbury as his excuse. This irritated the King more; but Sidmouth still went on with his story of personal grievances. When he at last withdrew, his Majesty exclained, That has been plaguing me to death!' The eorrespondence relating to this business included the last letter which Sidmouth ever received from Pitt. A few months later brought him the last from Nelson.

It was, on the whole, unfortunate for both, that Sidmouth should have returned to office under Pitt. They were suspicious of each other; and could not resume their old relations. Sidmouth now thought himself necessary, and appears to have expected a greater share of power and consideration than Pitt would have granted, probably, to anybody. But certainly Pitt should have come in with the broad Administration, of which he once spoke, or not at all. He should have stipulated for Fox's admission absolutely. On the other hand, Sidmouth ought to have deelined office under Pitt, unless he could have cooperated with him heartily on all subjects. Open questions presume eonfidence. But how the impeachment of a cabinet minister should ever have been considered as an open question, it is difficult for us to conceive. But Sidmouth wanted to be eoaxed by Pitt, and to show his own value to the world. Pitt believed that he himself was the only man who could carry England through the war-tempest that beat upon the high shore of Europe. The vanity of the former was gratified. What became of the vision of the latter, is written in the History of the World.

Meanwhile, great and disastrous events were looming in the distance. The Republie of France had become the Empire.' The First Consul had been enthroned Emperor. The French army was already on the Rhine; after which, within twelve days, Mack, aged and effete, was shut up at Ulm: and Bonaparte ealled upon his soldiers to compensate themselves for the lost plunder of London. Mack saved them the necessity of a siege bya capitulation; and upwards of 30,000 unscathed prisoners were marched into France. This was the first fruit of Pitt's premature confederation of the Northern powers. Prussia, neutral-Bavaria, false Austria, beaten! But worse remained behind-Austerlitz followed close on Ulm, and scattered the hopes of the allies to the winds. To England it was a day of gloom; to Pitt it was death. His every scheme had failed; his every expectation had been foiled. Large subsidies had been raised, costly armaments and defences equipped, and all was now wreck and ruin. The impeachment of one friend-the hostility of others, though connected by ties of intimacy and the stronger ties of blood-the

growing despondence of the nation-the overshadowing pre-
eminence of the French empire-all these pressed with fatal
weight upon a heart which was too proud to acknowledge the
grief it was too sensitive to vanquish. One night of exultation
had been permitted to him, but of exultation soon turned into a
It was reserved for him to
sorrow, which found relief in tears.
know that the French fleet had ceased to be; but the triumph
of the victory was darkened by the death of the conqueror.
Beyond this, all was gloom and sadness. Hasit lateri lethalis
arundo. He died of old age at forty-six.

It can hardly be believed that Sidmouth knew nothing of On the 17th of January the Bishop of his dangerous state. Lincoln had written to him to say that Pitt was rather better; on the 20th, that he was rather worse; on the 22d, that he was dying. Pitt was dying at Putney; and Sidmouth remained quiet at Richmond! This is the most painful incident in his life. Not long before this he had himself tasted the Pitt, though bitterness of grief in the death of his son. broken down and feeble, had found time to pay a visit of condolence to the friend from whom he had twice been estranged by politics. But Sidmouth could merely write from Richmond to Putney letters of enquiry and of condolence, while Pitt was dying. We do not mean that Sidmouth did not feel Pitt's death, and feel it acutely; but his nature neither elevated nor generous-was brooding at the time over the wounds of an irritated self-love, of which he could not clear his mind so readily and so entirely as to allow himself to do justice. to his better feelings.

When Pitt was dead, George III. sent for Lord Hawkesbury as the nearest type (after Lord Sidmouth) that could be found of the statesman that was dearest to the royal heart. Sidmouth, we presume, had no disposition to try his hand a second time at governing and Hawkesbury was wise enough, at that time, to profit by an example, which it might, perhaps, have been as well if it had warned him for all future time. In the end the King had no alternative but to send for Lord Grenville and Fox. They were both identified with the cause of the Roman Catholics. Practical politics have few graver questions-none more painful-none more certain of being misrepresented, than the cases in which a public man may be called upon to sacrifice for a time this opinion or that, in the hope of obtaining a greater public good. In this instance we do not believe that emancipation was delayed a day by their accepting office; while office enabled them to do their country great service in many ways, and especially by abolishing the slave-trade. Sidmouth was, as

usual, on the look-out, with his array of expectant neutrals. A pocket of forty or fifty votes was not to be despised in the statical equilibrium of all parties. Fox applied to him, as Pitt had applied before; and he received Fox's advances as he had received Pitt's! He consented to take the Privy Seal; but then he had his umbra. The style of an in-coming premier's letter to Sidmouth must have been very much like Horace's invitation to dinner - Tu quotus esse velis, rescribe. Of course Hiley, Bathurst, Bond, and Vansittart, were included in his prospectus, and admitted. He also stood out for Lord Buckinghamshire some time, but finally gave him up, on condition of Lord Ellenborough's taking his place in the cabinet. This was about the only thing that Sidmouth did for The talents;' and the introduction of the Chief Justice into the cabinet brought the wasp-like Canning and a storm of constitutional indignation about their heads, and very justly. On the agitation of the slave question, he took, as he had before taken, a temporising course, sadly grievous to the enthusiastic spirit of poor Wilberforce.

But these and all other differences were soon prematurely closed. Within a few months England had seen the deaths of two great men, Nelson and Pitt; a third was soon to follow. A fatal disease struck Fox at the moment when he was absorbed in that work of love which occupied his every thought-the pacification of Europe. He died in the spirit of peace-breathing peace on a regretful world. Pitt's death seems to have affected Sidmouth less profoundly than that of Fox: probably because the character of the latter rubbed less austerely on his self-love. Fox was, indeed, a man made to be loved-not by a few who understood his disposition, or whose pride he did not offend-but by all. Sidmouth soon became attached to him, and wrote of him as he doubtless felt. 'I never knew a man of more apparent' (he might have said 'genuine') sincerity: more free from rancour, or even severity; and hardly any one so entirely devoid of affectation.'

The death of Fox completed that disruption of parties which began on the death of Pitt. It had, in truth, been difficult of late to assign the limits and properties of parties; when Windham and Sheridan, Fox and Grenville, Pittites, Foxites, and Addingtonites, sat in the same cabinet. The difficulty was not diminished now. A slight change was made in a few offices: Lord Grenville remained at the head of the Treasury; Lord Howick succeeded Fox at the Foreign Office; Sidmouth exchanged the Privy Seal for the Presidency of the Council; but the administration had a short and troubled life before them. The Catholics were the stumbling-block of offence now, as they had been before. Lord Howick introduced a bill for extending the privi

leges enjoyed by Romanist officers serving in Ireland to Romanist officers serving in England; and also for opening to them, and other dissenters, the highest ranks of the profession. This was said to be undermining Protestant ascendency, when attack by storm had failed. It was so regarded by the King: and he at once fell into one of his nervous fits: but his resolution was unchanged. He was Protestant to the backbone, and would hear of no underhand concession. The ministry was compelled to abandon all hope of carrying, by a clause in the Mutiny Act, a furtive admission of a general but obnoxious principle. Time, however, coerces those whom it cannot convert. The policy of this measure, indeed its necessity, were signally confirmed twenty years afterwards; when the champions of Protestantism carried Emancipation, with the confessed object of preserving the loyalty of the Roman Catholic soldiers by so doing! In deference to the King's prejudices, and no less in deference to the objections of their own colleagues, the authors and supporters of this project, however, now withdrew it.

When the cabinet was divided on any question in which the King was interested, it is superfluous to state what side the 'King's friend' took. Sidmouth not only sided with the King ultimately in his disapproval of his colleagues' intentions, but shared with him at first in his misconception of those intentions. But when at last the King, by attempting to extort a pledge from Lord Grenville and Lord Spencer, that they would waive all future agitation of the Roman Catholic claims, compelled them to send in their resignation, Lord Sidmouth resigned also. His biographer attibutes this to his delicacy. We do not wish to deprive his heirs of all claim to this amiable virtue; but we think we can suggest another reason for his unwillingness to retain office in a new administration. Whoever might come in, Canning was now sure to come in too. Indeed, negotiations had already begun between him and the Grenvilles; and if the difficulty of the Roman Catholics had not intervened, it is most likely that they would have agreed to every thing which he might name, to procure the support of the man in Parliament from whom they had most to fear-the pupil and representative of Pitt. Canning had but one condition to proposethat Sidmouth should not be his colleague. Sidmouth had only one apprehension-that Canning might be his colleague. Between the disgust of the one and the alarm of the other, Lord Sidmouth can scarcely have persuaded himself that he was exercising any great degree of delicacy' towards his colleagues, by resigning with them. A less pardonable timidity than that which shunned the galling fire of Canning's ridicule, prevented