a Peer, at least three newspapers would say the next morning that he had been kicked upstairs.

Against the Test Acts Lord Halifax both voted and spoke. It was this which enabled him afterwards to address the Dissenters with so much effect against accepting the proposal of the King to include them in the dispensation from these statutes. He could say, and he did say, 'I am against all religious disabilities. But it is better to endure unjust exclusion from office than to put the King above the law.' It is more remarkable, considering his subsequent opposition to the Exclusion Bill, that he should have supported Lord Carlisle in providing against the marriage of Catholics with heirs to the throne. Charles, who at this time probably was a Catholic, though Halifax did not know it, disliked him at first, and was with difficulty persuaded to nominate him on the Council of Thirty in 1679. But once there, he soon became a prime favourite with Charles, and was ‘never from the King's elbow.' The King, though from always telling the same stories he came at last to be regarded as a bore, knew good company as well as any man in his dominions, and in all his dominions there was no better company than Halifax. His intellect was extraordinarily subtle, his wit was marvellously keen: he had studied, as Matthew Arnold says, in the book of the world rather than in the world of books. He took the King's measure accurately enough, as his famous Character shows. But nobody could amuse the King more, and there was nothing the King liked more than to be amused. The same year that he joined the Council Halifax was raised to an earldom, and obtained a still higher post of vantage from which to launch his satire against hereditary distinctions. He brought to that disreputable Court, and he did not lose in it, the rare and priceless gift of urbanity. Though essentially good-natured, and not in the least vindictive, he allowed no man's feelings to stand in the way of a jest, and his mocking spirit might have made him many enemies. But it was almost impossible to be angry with Halifax. His own temper was so imperturbably serene, his breeding so perfect, his politeness so engaging, that he could say what he liked-and he always said what he liked-without giving offence. His manners, like all manners which are really good, were the reflection of a kind heart and a genial disposition. Cruelty and revenge were abhorrent to him.

The greatest of Halifax's parliamentary triumphs was his successful resistance to the Exclusion Bill in 1680. He was opposed to the first Lord Shaftesbury, the most adroit and versatile statesman of the age, a great lawyer, but not a mere lawyer, the ancestor of many able men, and by far the ablest of them all. When the House of Lords was in Committee on the Bill, Shaftesbury and Halifax spoke sixteen times in succession. Such a rhetorical duel has never been fought in Parliament since, not between Pitt and Fox, not between

Peel and Russell, not between Gladstone and Disraeli. No word of it is left. But just as the chief debaters of this century have always been told that they could not hope to rival Lord Plunket on the Union, so the future Earl of Chatham was assured that he could not equal the performances of Lord Halifax on the Exclusion Bill. The Bill was rejected, as the Habeas Corpus Act had been passed nearly twenty years before, by a very small majority. There were sixty Contents, and sixty-three Not Contents. There is an old tradition, or superstition, that speeches never change votes; but considering the closeness of the numbers, and the comparative looseness of party ties, in the seventeenth century, the loss of the Exclusion Bill may fairly be attributed to the eloquence of Halifax, the Gotham of Dryden, 'endued by nature, and by learning taught, to move assemblies.' The supreme importance of the vote is obvious. If the Exclusion Bill had passed both Houses and received the royal assent, which was then no fiction, the Crown would have devolved upon Mary at the death of Charles, the Prince of Orange would have been nominally no more than the Prince of Denmark was in the reign of Anne, and the country would have been spared the worst reign in English history. So at least it now seems. History, said Arthur Helps, is spoiled for us by our knowledge of the event. Lord Halifax could predict events better than most people. But he was not infallible. He believed that conditions could be imposed upon James which James would be forced to accept. He underrated William of Orange. He held, perhaps correctly, that public opinion was not ripe for the exclusion of Catholics from the throne, and that a too militant Protestantism would lead to civil war. His views prevailed, and James marched without impediment to his doom. Jeffries and the Bloody Assize did what the arguments of Shaftesbury had failed to do: they made England a Protestant country and Dutch William an English king. Reaction against the villainies of Oates, and repentance for the scandal of the Popish Plot, were powerful allies of the Duke of York. The stupidity and bigotry of James the Second wiped them out of existence, and Halifax himself could not, if he had tried, have explained away the trial of the seven Bishops. He stood by the Bishops, and visited them in the Tower. But he would not concur in the invitation to William. He was certainly not wanting in courage. The defence of unpopular causes and of still more unpopular persons had never had any terrors for him. But he would not, perhaps from temperament, go all lengths with any faction. He played a leading part in the Revolutionary Settlement; it was he who, in the name of both Houses, offered the crown to William and Mary. His cavalier blood and his philosophic temper disqualified him for a revolutionary hero.

As Halifax held office under Charles the Second, it was natural, and perhaps inevitable, that he should be offered a bribe by the French Court. The agent employed was Barillon, the French

Ambassador. But the attempt was futile. Although Halifax had not the contempt for worldly honours which he professed, was as anxious as Sir Walter Scott for the perpetuation of his family, and was rather fond of money than otherwise, he was above pecuniary corruption. Very few of his contemporaries were. He was certainly under no special temptation, for his estates were ample and they were not embarrassed. But

crescit amor nummi quantum ipsa pecunia crescit.

There is no greater fallacy than to assume that rich men cannot be corrupted and will not steal. The poor go to prison, but that is another story. It is one of Lord Halifax's many titles to respect and esteem that, in an age of low and coarse venality, he maintained a high standard of personal honour. His designs for the future failed. His son, the second Marquis, did not long survive him, and the peerage became extinct, though it was immediately afterwards revived for the benefit of Charles Montague. The baronetcy reverted to a distant kinsman, and descended in the middle of the eighteenth century to an eminent Whig universally esteemed. Lord Halifax's daughter, for whom he wrote his celebrated Advice, became the mother of Lord Chesterfield. Her husband is said to have inscribed upon his copy of the letter, Labour in vain,' and the marriage was not a happy one. Stanhope appealed to his father-in-law, and Miss Foxcroft has printed Halifax's reply. It is the letter of a wise and kind man, full of sense and tact. Miss Foxcroft throws doubt upon the tradition, accepted by Macaulay, that Halifax was the father of Henry Carey, and consequently the ancestor of Edmund Kean. She suggests that the real father was the second Marquis, but her reasons are, as might have been expected, inconclusive.

Lord Halifax was not long in office under James the Second. No two men in the world could have had less in common. Halifax was graceful, subtle, dexterous, sceptical, and humane; James was dull, dogged, superstitious, and cruel. Halifax was a rigid and formal Constitutionalist; to James the Constitution was an impertinent check upon power which he believed himself to have derived from God. He at once set about to repeal the Test Act, which stood in the way of his religion, and the Habeas Corpus Act, which stood in the way of his tyranny. Halifax opposed him, and was at once, notwithstanding his services in the debates on the Exclusion Bill, struck off the Council. He was thus relieved of all further responsibility for the most dismal and disastrous of all failures to enslave the English people. Dryden's Hind and Panther is commonly said to have been the one great literary work which the reign of James the Second produced. I venture to say that the Character of a Trimmer, the Anatomy of an Equivalent, and the Letter to a Dissenter are far more valuable contributions to the English language and to speculative thought. Dryden, though a great poet

and a magnificent writer of English prose, was no theologian. He cared no more for the differences between Protestants and Catholics than the Vicar of Bray himself. The Hind and the Panther, though it contains many fine verses, is far below the standard of Absalom and Achitophel. Halifax, on the other hand, was a thorough master of his subject. He understood the art of politics as well as Richelieu and the philosophy of politics as well as Montesquieu. He was equally at home in the abstract and in the concrete. His principles, though broad and comprehensive, were always capable of immediate application to the problems of the day. The great mistake of his life, his gran rifiuto, was his delay in joining the Revolution of 1688. It was certainly not made per viltà. The unpopularity of a cause, or of a man, always attracted instead of repelling him. But when all the world was turning from James to William, Halifax instinctively turned from William to James. He would rather not go far enough than go too far. He thought that anybody could be taught anything, and that therefore James the Second might be taught to keep his word. But James, as his Memoirs show, was the most logical of men. He held that there could be no binding obligation from a king to his subjects. He was a king, and could release himself from any promises he might make. Nothing could restrain him except fear, and the moment the fear was over the restraint was at an end. Happily for English freedom, nobody could help James. His obstinate folly confounded the wisdom of Halifax, as it had paralysed the power of Louis. He left Halifax in the lurch, and that was a thing which mortal man never had the chance of doing twice. The flight of James made Halifax a Williamite, not because it proved William to be victorious, but because it proved James to be a fool. When the Peers met for consultation on the 21st of December, they chose Halifax to be their chairman. In the Convention Parliament he was elected Speaker by the House of Lords, and William made him Lord Privy Seal. He did not long retain either place, and in 1693, two years before his death, he finally retired from official life. He attended the House of Lords to the last, and he signed a protest against renewing the Censorship of the Press. His Essay on Taxes and his Maxims of State appeared in 1693. In 1694 he wrote, or at least published, his Rough Draft of a New Model at Sea. In the last few weeks of his life he drew up his Cautions Offered for the Consideration of those who are to Choose Members to Serve in the Ensuing Parliament. He did not live to see the result of the General Election of 1695, which was favourable to the Government, and in which his old enemy John Hampden lost his seat. His final tract, not Number Ninety but Number Six, was written for once on the winning side: the Parliament of 1695 was loyal to the Revolution.

Miss Foxcroft, differing from Macaulay, argues that Halifax

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retired in 1693 of his own accord, and against the will of the King. I think that she has made out her case, and that Macaulay exaggerated the importance of a hasty exclamation which came from William in Council, that the Marquis could never make up his mind. William was what we mean by a practical politician, and Halifax, with all his shrewdness, was not. But, on the other hand, the King, as became his position, was neither Whig nor Tory, and Halifax proclaimed himself a Trimmer. The great enemy of trimmers was Judge Jeffries, and it was to the fury with which he railed at one of them from the Bench that he owed his recognition in disguise, his capture, and his death in the Tower. The private cause of Halifax's retirement was domestic affliction. The public cause was the ascendency of the Lord Treasurer Carmarthen. But indeed his natural place, though he did not know it, was in Opposition.

Some interesting and valuable notes made by Lord Halifax upon the Murder Committee have been preserved, and are now printed in Miss Foxcroft's book. The Committee, which inquired into the judicial murders of William Russell and Algernon Sidney, exonerated Halifax from all blame. But he did not like the attacks made upon him, and he was sick of public affairs. Macaulay says that the one stain upon his career is his correspondence with James through Peter Cook, a Jacobite agent, in 1691. This is an obscure and rather mysterious transaction. From the language in which Halifax speaks of a similar charge, afterwards made against Bishop Sprat by a scoundrel called Young, it may be inferred that he saw no particular harm in making the best of both kings. He thought himself ill-treated by the triumphant Whigs, who suspected him because he would not go the whole way with them, and in the reign of William the Third discontent with the Court of St. James usually meant correspondence with the Court of Saint-Germains. Halifax died seven years before King William, and it was not till the death of Queen Anne that the Jacobites threw away their last chance. The equilibrium of little Hooknose's' throne was of the kind which mathematicians call unstable, and Halifax may have contemplated the possibility of James's return under conditions.

The charm of Halifax's character is more easily felt than explained. He was, it must be confessed, rather a selfish man, a refined, well-bred, tolerant voluptuary. In a gross age he was without grossness, and he was entirely free, like the Prince of Orange, from the cruelty of which neither Whigs nor Tories can be acquitted. Consistent he was not. In theory a Republican, making the hereditary principle the subject of merciless ridicule, he procured for himself in rapid succession a Viscounty, an Earldom, and a Marquisate. For a man brought up in the Court of Charles the Second his morals were singularly pure, and he indignantly repelled the charge of Atheism, adding that he did not believe in the existence of Atheists. He seems to have been a sincere