they had been an object of purchase, and public money the proper sort of money to be employed in the purchase, no small quantity of such money would, in that case, have been necessary.

In the way of experiment — in the endeavour to make this purchase, money, though the man's own, and not public money, was, in the duke's case, actually employed, and in memorable and still-remembered abundance: but how completely the experiment failed, is at least as well remembered.

To return to the deficiency of the sort in question, supposed to have been, on the more recent occasion, displayed in the same place. This deficiency, then, such as it was and still is — parliament, in the case of Mr. Pitt, did not, so long as he lived, think fit to supply: at any rate, left unsupplied. What was done was the giving a mass of public money. to the amount of £40,000 or thereabouts among a set of people, names undisclosed, but said to be the deceased minister's creditors. Friends remembered their friendships: enemies, now that the enemy was no longer in their way, forgot their enmity: friends and enemies vied in sentimentality vied in generosity—always at the public expense and a justification, yea, and more than a justification, was thus made, for the cases of the still future-contingent widow of Lord Grenville, and the then paulo-post FUTURE widow of Mr. Fox.

Should it here be asked why those trustees of the people chose to saddle their principals with the payment of debts, for which they were not engaged, and the necessity of which they themselves could not take upon themselves to pronounce, my answer is that if anything in the shape of an efficient, final, or historical cause will satisfy them, plenty may be seen already:- but if by the word why, anything like a justificative cause — a rational cause a good and sufficient reason— be meant to be asked for, I for my part know of none. At the same time, for the support of the proposition that stands on my side of the argument-it being the negative viz. that for no such purpose as that of encouraging and inducing ministers to apply to their own use the money of individuals, can it ever be necessary that money raised by taxes should be employed for the support of any proposition to this effect—so plain does the proposition seem to me, that neither can I see any demand for a support to it in the shape of a reason, nor in truth should I know very well how to go about to find one. Not thus clear of all demand for support is the side taken by the right honourable gentleman. By his vote and influence whatsoever on that occasion was done, having been supported and encouraged, on him, in point of consistency, the obligation is incumbent: he stands con VOL. V.

cluded, as the lawyers say, in both ways: on the one hand, not having ventured to propose any correspondent addition, or any addition at all, to be made to the mass of emolument openly and constantly attached to the office, he is estopped from saying that any such extra expenditure was necessary; - on the other hand, having, in the case of the individual by whom that expenditure was made, concurred in the vote and act* passed for filling up, at the public charge, the gaps made by that same expenditure in the property of other individuals, he stands convicted by his own confession of concurring in charging the public with a burthen, the necessity of which could not be so much as pretended.

On this occasion, "may we not venture to ask," whether this may not be in the number of those cases, in which gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, under the guidance of right honourable, have, in the words of our right honourable author, been “misled by mistaken ideas of virtue?" (p. 77.)

Be this as it may, by this one operation, which is so much to the taste of the right honourable gentleman-(not to speak of so many other right honourable, honourable, and even pious gentlemen) — two distinguishable lessons, may they not be seen given-two distinguishable lessons given to so many dif ferent classes of persons, standing in so many different situations? One of these lessons, to wit, to ministers; the other to any such person or persons whose situation might enable them to form plans for fulfilling their duty to themselves, by lending money to ministers.

To ministers an invitation was thus held out, to expend upon themselves, in addition to whatever money is really necessary, as much more as it may happen to them to be disposed so to employ, of that which is not necessary.

Thus far as to the quantum:—and as to the mode, by borrowing money, or taking up goods of individuals, knowing themselves not to have any adequate means of repayment, and determining not to put themselves into the possession of any such means.

To persons at large, an invitation was at the sametime held out to become intriguers; and, by seizing or making opportunities of throwing themselves in the way of a minister, to supply him with money, more than he would be able to repay on demand, and having thus got him in a state of dependence, to obtain from his distress always at the expense of the public-good gifts in every imaginable shape:-peerages-baronetcies — ribbons — lucrative offices contracts assistance in parliamentary jobs, good things, in a word, of all sorts, for which, no money being paid or parted with, neither the giver nor the re

ceiver would run any the slightest risk of being either punished, or in any other way made responsible.

By a loan, though, for example, it were but of £5000, if properly timed-and that on both occasions-first as to the time of the administering the supply, and then as to the time of pressing for repayment,-that, may it not every now and then be done, which could not have been done by a gift of £10,000? How often have not seats, for example, been in this way obtained—and this even without any such imputation as that of the sin, the venial sin, of parliamentary simony?

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In virtue of the invitation thus given by the magnanimity and generosity of parliament, an invitation open at all times to the acceptance of persons to whom it may happen to find themselves in the corresponding situations-who is there that does not see, how snugly the benefit of bribery may be reaped on both sides, and to any amount, without any of the risk?

A banker is made a lord. Why is a banker to be made a lord? What is it that the banker ever did, that he is to be made a lord? A merchant is made a lord. Why is a merchant to be made a lord? What is it that the merchant ever did, that he is to be made a lord? These are among the questions which are in themselves as natural, as the answers, true or untrue, might be unpleasant to some and dangerous to others.

We have heard, many of us, of the once celebrated Nabob of Arcot and his creditors: and the mode in which their respective debts were to an as yet unfathomed extent, contracted: those debts, which, in so large a proportion, and to so large an amount, just and unjust together, in name the expiring Company, and in effect the whole body of the people, have paid, or, spite of the best possible discrimination, will have to pay.

within a certain circle, they are not altoge ther unsusceptible of a certain degree of currency. Of the truth of this proposition, the Mr. Pitt in question affords at least one instance.

It proves indeed something more: for, in so far as purposely forbearing to receive what it is in a man's option to receive, is tantamount to paying, it proves that, in the instance in question, the value of these commodities was equal to that of a very considerable sum of money in round numbers, worth £40,000- at any rate, worth more than £39,000.

Not that in the eyes of the hero, money had no value for it had much too great a value: it possessed a value greater than the estimated value of common honesty and independence.

He loved money, and by much too well: he loved it with the love of covetousness. Not that he hoarded it, or put it out to usury. But there are two sorts of covetous men: those who covet it to keep it, and those who covet it to spend it: the class he belonged to was this coveting-and-spending class. Yes: that he did: - Pitt the second did love money: and not his own money merely, but other people's likewise: loving it, he coveted it; and coveting it, he obtained it.

The debt which he contracted was so much money coveted, obtained, and expended, for and in the purchase of such miscellaneous pleasures as happened to be suited to his taste. The sinecure money which he might have had and would not have, was so much money expended in the shape of insurance money on account of power: in the purchase of that respect and reputation, which his prudence represented as necessary to the preservation of so valuable an article against storms and tempests from above. Sinecure money, to any given amount, the hero could have got for himself, with at least as much facility as for his right honourable panegyrist; but the respect and the reputation were defences, which in that situation could not be put to hazard. Of the battles he had to fight with the sort of dragons commonly called secret advisers, this bare hint is all that can be given by one who knows nothing of anybody or anything: his right honourable Achates, by whom he must (alas! how oft!) have been seen in a tottering and almost sinking attitude, more particulars could doubtless be given, by a great many, than by a gentleman of his discretion it would.... (unless it were in a posthumous diary, for which posterity would be much obliged to him) be "useful on his sole authority. ... to enter into any detail of." It was to enable virtue to rise triumphant out of all these trials, that the amount of all this sinecure money was thus expended, and without having been received.