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together as brethren, to preserve the British constitution, and to guard it against innovation."

On hearing this declaration of his former friend and political instructor, the feelings of Mr. Fox were too powerful to be suppressed. He rose to reply, but they denied him utterance. Relieved by involuntary tears, while the most profound silence pervaded the house, he said, "that however events, might have altered the mind of his honorable friend, for such he must still call him, he could not so easily consent to relinquish and dissolve that intimate connexion which had for twenty-five years subsisted between them. He hoped that Mr. Burke would think on past times, and whatever conduct of his had caused the offence, that he would, at least believe such was not kis intention."-In the course of his speech he still maintained that Burke had once held very different principles, and that he himself had learned from him those very principles which he now reprobated. He endeavoured to support his allegation by references to measures which Burke had either proposed or promoted, and also cited ludicrous expressions and observations of his to the same purpose. Mr. Fox concluded with making a beautiful application of a passage he re collected: "We may bear to be ill used and abused by those on whom we have conferred favours, and who owe every thing to our kind

ness.

It is a calamity which the mind may endure. The injustice and ingratitude of the

world are old topics of reflection. But to be illused and abused by one who has previously won and engaged the soul by kindness, is an affliction for which a grateful heart has no balm."

The repetition of the charge of inconsistency which Mr. Fox made in the middle of this speech completely effaced in Burke's mind that impression which the tenderness displayed at the beginning and the conclusion were calculated to produce.

This separation Mr. Fox painfully felt to the latest period of his life. Both before and after the public declaration of Mr. Burke's resolution, he spared no efforts to effect a reconciliation, but Mr. Burke's invariable reply was; "Will he pronounce the renunciation ?" He alluded to a singular paper drawn up by himself, containing a solemn renunciation of the principles of the French revolution, and a promise that he would never again propose a reform in parliament or the abolition of the test. Mr. Burke insisted that Mr. Fox should make the contents of this paper a part of his speech in full house, a call of which he proposed to procure, that, as he said, nothing might be wanting to the impossibility of future apostacy.

To this humiliation Mr. Fox could not submit; and though their mutual friends exerted their good offices-though the late Dutchess of Devonshire-though Mr. Windham, the favourite, and almost the adopted son of Mr. Burke, united all their efforts, the latter still remained inflexible. To one of these applications he re

plied; "my separation from Mr. Fox is a printiple, and not a passion; I hold it as a sacred duty to confirm what I have said and written by this sacrafice: and to what purpose would be the re-union of a moment? I can have no delight with him, nor he with me.'

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The severe remarks of Mr. Fox's friends, in which Burke frequently indulged, were constantly reported to Fox: but such was the attachment of the latter, that nothing could eradicate it. This was so well known to his friends, that at St. Ann's Hill, Burke was never mentioned but with respect. A gentleman having once observed that Burke was a sophist, and would be thought nothing of but for his dazzling eloquence; Mr. Fox immediately replied, that he entertained a very different opinion of that gentleman;-"The eloquence of Mr. Burke," says he, "rather injures his reputation; it is a veil over his wisdom; remove his eloquence, reduce his language, withdraw his images, and you will find that he is more wise than eloquent, you will have your full weight of the metal though you should melt down the chacing."

The first intelligence of the last illness of Burke, conveyed in a letter from Lord Fitzwilliam, deeply affected Mr. Fox. When he was afterwards informed that it could not fail to terminate fatally, he was agitated as with the expectation of some great calamity. In this state of mind he wrote to Mrs. Burke, expressing his intention of passing through Beacons-field; and

the following day received by an express this

answer:

"Mrs. Burke's compliments to Mr. Fox, and thanks him for his obliging inquiries. Mrs. Burke communicated his letter to Mr. Burke, and by his desire, has to inform Mr. Fox that it has cost Mr. Burke the most heartfelt pain to obey the stern voice of his duty, in rending asunder a long friendship, but that he had effected this necessary sacrifice; that his principles remained the same; and that, in whatever of life yet remained to him, he conceives that he must continue to live for others, and not for himself, Mr. Burke is convinced, that the principles he has endeavored to maintain, are necessary to the good and dignity of his country, and that these principles can be enforced only by the general persuasion of his sincerity. For herself Mrs. Burke has again to express her gratitude to Mr. Fox for his inquiries."

Thus terminated for ever the connection be tween Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox, who wept bitterly when he received the intelligence of the death of that venerable man.

To the honour of Mr. Fox, he has been a strenuous advocate for the abolition of the Slave Trade ever since the first agitation of the question in April 1791. In the discussion of this subject on the 18th of that month, party considerations gave way to those of justice and humanity, and unity in one cause, the two great

leaders in parliament, hostile as they were on almost every other occasion. In an animated speech, in which he described the sufferings of the injured Africans, Mr. Fox likewise took occasion to pronounce an elegant eulogium on the Christian religion, which had the greater weight as coming from a man whose conduct had justly led many to doubt the existence of any fixed religious principles in his mind. He called on gentlemen to make the case of the negroes their own. "Let them suppose," said he, "what might happen, that in some improbable turn in human affairs, England should be overrun with a tribe as savage as Englishmen were on the coast of Africa; and that they carried into slavery a number of the people of England. From what class of Englishmen, however low and uneducated, could they find men so generally dull and senseless as to have no feeling to the wretchedness of personal slavery? What arrogance and blasphemy was it then to suppose that Providence had not endowed men with equal feelings in other countries! Let them look to the words of our Saviour; let them deeply weigh one of the most splendid doctrines of the Christian dispensation-a doctrine, which served perhaps more than any other to illustrate the unparalleled beauty and grandeur of the most amiable of all religions-a doctrine before which slavery was forced to fly; and to which doctrine he attributed the memorable and glorious fact, that soon after the establishment of Christianity in Europe, human slavery was abolished,

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