an offer. He indignantly refused to accept it. For some time he continued to brood over his wrongs, and to watch for an opportunity of revenge. As soon as a favourable conjuncture arrived, he joined the minority, and became the greatest leader of Opposition that the House of Commons had ever seen.

Of all the members of the cabinet, Carteret was the most eloquent and accomplished. His talents for debate were of the first order; his knowledge of foreign affairs superior to that Protestant succession was undoubted. But there was not room in one government for him and Walpole. Carteret retired, and was, from that time forward, one of the most persevering and formidable enemies of his old colleague.

fatuation. He condemned the prevailing madness in public, and turned a considerable sum by taking advantage of it in private. When the crash came-when ten thousand families were reduced to beggary in a day--when the people, in the frenzy of their rage and despair, clamoured not only against the lower agents in the juggle, but against the Hanoverian favourites, against the English ministers, against the king himself--when Parliament met, eager for confiscation and blood--when members of the House of Commons proposed that the di-of any living statesman; his attachment to the rectors should be treated like parricides in ancient Rome, tied up in sacks, and thrown into the Thames, Walpole was the man on whom all parties turned their eyes. Four years before he had been driven from power by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope, and the If there was any man with whom Walpole lead in the House of Commons had been in- could have consented to make a partition of trusted to Craggs and Aislabie. Stanhope was power, that man was Lord Townshend. They no more. Aislabie was expelled from Parlia- were distant kinsmen by birth, near kinsmen ment, on account of his disgraceful conduct by marriage. They had been friends from regarding the South Sea scheme. Craggs was childhood. They had been schoolfellows at saved by a timely death from a similar mark Eton. They were country-neighbours in Norof infamy. A large minority in the House of folk. They had been in office together under Commons voted for a severe censure on Sun- Godolphin. They had gone into opposition derland, who, finding it impossible to withstand together when Harley rose to power. They the force of the prevailing sentiment, retired had been persecuted by the same House of from office, and outlived his retirement but a Commons. They had, after the death of Anne, very short time. The schism which had di- been recailed together to office. They had vided the Whig party was now completely again been driven out by Sunderland, and had healed. Walpole had no opposition to en-again come back together when the influence counter except that of the Tories, and the of Sunderland had declined. Their opinions Tories were naturally regarded by the king on public affairs almost always coincided. with the strongest suspicion and dislike. They were both men of frank, generous, and For a time business went on with a smooth-compassionate natures; their intercourse had ness and a despatch such as had not been been for many years most affectionate and corknown since the days of the Tudors. During dial. But the ties of blood, of marriage, and the session of 1724, for example, there was of friendship, the memory of mutual services only a single division. It was not impossible and common persecutions, were insufficient to that, by taking the course which Pelham after-restrain that ambition which domineered over wards took-by admitting into the government all the rising talents and ambition of the Whig party, and by making room here and there for a Tory not unfriendly to the House of Brunswick-Walpole might have averted the tremendous conflict in which he passed the latter years of his administration, and in which he was at length vanquished. The Opposition which overthrew him was an opposition created by his own policy, by his own insatiable love of power.

all the virtues and vices of Walpole. He was resolved, to use his own metaphor, that the firm of the house should be, not "Townshend and Walpole," but "Walpole and Townshend." At length the rivals proceeded to personal abuse before witnesses, seized each other by the collar, and grasped their swords. The women squalled. The men parted the combatants.* By friendly intervention the scandal of a duel between cousins, brothers-in-law, old friends, and old colleagues, was prevented. In the very act of forming his ministry, he But the disputants could not long continue to turned one of the ablest and most attached of act together. Townshend retired, and with his supporters into a deadly enemy. Pulteney rare moderation and public spirit, refused to had strong public and private claims to a high take any part in politics. He could not, he situation in the new arrangement. His fortune said, trust his temper. He feared that the rewas immense. His private character was collection of his private wrongs might impel respectable. He was already a distinguished him to follow the example of Pulteney, and to speaker. He had acquired official experience oppose measures which he thought generally in an important post. He had been, through beneficial to the country. He, therefore, never all changes of fortune, a consistent Whig. visited London after his resignation; but passWhen the Whig party was split into two sec-ed the closing years of his life in dignity and tions, Pulteney had resigned a valuable place, repose among his trees and pictures at Rainand had followed the fortunes of Walpole. Yet ham. when Walpole returned to power, Pulteney was not invited to take office. An angry discussion took place between the friends. The minister offered a peerage. It was impossible for Pulteney not to discern the motive of such

Next went Chesterfield. He too was a Whig

*The scene of this extraordinary quarrel was, we beleve, a house in Cleveland Square, now occupied by Mr. Ellice, the Secretary at War. It was then the resi

dence of Colonel Belwyn.

character could drag down such parts; and Winnington, whose private morals lay, justly or unjustly, under imputations of the worst kind. The discontented Whigs were, not perhaps in number, but certainly in ability, experience, and weight, by far the most important part of the Opposition. The Tories furnished little more than rows of ponderous fox-hunters, fat with Staffordshire or Devonshire ale-men who drank to the king over the water, and believed that all the fundholders were Jewsmen whose religion consisted in hating the Dissenters, and whose political researches had

and a friend of the Protestant succession. He was an orator, a courtier, a wit, and a man of letters. He was at the head of ton in days when, in order to be at the head of ton, it was not sufficient to be dull and supercilious. It was evident that he submitted impatiently to the ascendency of Walpole. He murmured against the Excise Bill. His brothers voted against it in the House of Commons. The minister acted with characteristic caution and characteristic energy;-caution in the conduct of public affairs; energy where his own administration was concerned. He withdrew his bill, and turned out all his hostile or waver-led them to fear, like Squire Western, that their ing colleagues. Chesterfield was stopped on the great staircase of St. James's, and summoned to deliver up the staff which he bore as Lord Steward of the Household. A crowd of noble and powerful functionaries-the Dukes of Montrose and Bolton, Lord Burlington, Lord Stair, Lord Cobham, Lord Marchmont, Lord Clinton-were at the same time dismissed from the service of the crown.

Not long after these events, the Opposition was reinforced by the Duke of Argyle, a man vainglorious indeed and fickle, but brave, elo- | quent, and popular. It was in a great measure owing to his exertions that the Act of Settlement had been peaceably executed in Eng. land immediately after the death of Anne, and that the Jacobite rebellion which, during the following year, broke out in Scotland, was suppressed. He too carried over to the minority the aid of his great name, his talents, and his paramount influence in his native country.

land might be sent over to Hanover to be put into the sinking-fund. The eloquence of these patriotic squires, the remnant of the one formidable October Club, seldom went beyond a hearty Ay or No. Very few members of this party had distinguished themselves much in Parliament, or could, under any circumstances, have been called to fill any high office; and those few had generally, like Sir William Wyndham, learned in the company of their new associates the doctrines of toleration and political liberty, and might indeed with strict propriety be called Whigs.

It was to the Whigs in opposition, the patriots, as they were called, that the most distinguished of the English youth, who at this season entered into public life, attached themselves. These inexperienced politicians felt all the enthusiasm which the name of liberty naturally excites in young and ardent minds. They conceived that the theory of the Tory Opposition, and the practice of Walpole's government, were alike inconsistent with the principles of liberty. They accordingly re

In each of these cases taken separately, a skilful defender of Walpole might perhaps make out a case for him. But when we see that during a long course of years all the foot-paired to the standard which Pulteney had set steps are turned the same way-that all the most eminent of those public men who agreed with the minister in their general views of policy left him, one after another, with sore and irritated minds, we find it impossible not to believe that the real explanation of the phenomenon is to be found in the words of his son, "Sir Robert Walpole loved power so much that he would not endure a rival."* Hume has described this famous minister with great felicity in one short sentence-"moderate in exercising power, not equitable in engrossing it." Kind-hearted, jovial, and placible as Walpole was, he was yet a man with whom no person of high pretensions and high spirit could long continue to act. He had, therefore, to stand against an Opposition containing all the most accomplished statesmen of the age, with no better support than that which he received from persons like his brother Horace, or Henry Pelham, whose industrious mediocrity gave him no cause for jealousy; or from clever adventurers, whose situation and character diminished the dread which their talents might otherwise have inspired. To this last class belonged Fox, who was too poor to live without office; Sir William Yonge, of whom Walpole himself said, that nothing but such parts could buoy up such a character, that nothing but such a

up. While opposing the Whig minister, they professed a firm adherence to the purest doctrines of Whigism. He was the schismatic; they were the true Catholics, the peculiar people, the depositaries of the orthodox faith of Hampden and Russell; the one sect which, amidst the corruptions generated by time, and by the long possession of power, had preserved inviolate the principles of the Revolution. Of the young men who attached themselves to this portion of the Opposition, the most distinguished were Lyttleton and Pitt.

When Pitt entered Parliament, the whole political world was attentively watching the progress of an event which soon added great strength to the Opposition, and particularly to that section of the Opposition in which the young statesman enrolled himself. The Prince of Wales was gradually becoming more and more estranged from his father and his father's ministers, and more and more friendly to the patriots.

Nothing is more natural than that, in a mo narchy, where a constitutional Opposition ex ists, the heir-apparent of the throne should put himself at the head of that Opposition. He is impelled to such a course by every feeling of ambition and of vanity. He cannot be more than second in the estimation of the party which is in. He is sure to be the first mem ber of the party which is out. The highest U

of politicians, who had considered themselves as placed under sentence of perpetual exclusion from office, and who, in their despair, had been almost ready to join in a counter-revolution, as the only mode of removing the proscription under which they lay, now saw with pleasure an easier and safer road to power opening before them, and thought it far better to wait till, in the natural course of things, the crown should descend to the heir of the house of Brunswick, than to risk their lands and their necks in a rising for the house of Stuart. The situation of the royal family resembled the situation of those Scotch families in which father and son took opposite sides during the rebellion, in order that, come what might, the estate might not be forfeited.

favour which the existing administration can expect from him is, that he will not discard them. But, if he joins the Opposition, all his associates expect that he will promote them; and the feelings which men entertain towards one from whom they hope to obtain great advantages which they have not, are far warmer than the feelings with which they regard one who, at the very utmost, can only leave them in possession of what they already have. An heir-apparent, therefore, who wishes to enjoy, in the highest perfection, all the pleasure that can be derived from eloquent flattery and profound respect, will always join those who are struggling to force themselves into power. This is, we believe, the true explanation of a fact which Lord Granville attributed to some natural peculiarity in the illustrious house of Brunswick. "This family," said he at Council, we supposé after his daily half-gallon of Bur-wards lived on terms very similar to those on gundy, "always has quarrelled and always will quarrel, from generation to generation." He should have known something of the matter; for he had been a favourite with three successive generations of the royal house. We cannot quite admit his explanation; but the fact is indisputable. Since the accession of George the First, there have been four Princes of Wales, and they have all been almost constantly in opposition.

In April, 1736, Frederic was married to the Princess of Saxe-Gotha, with whom he after

which his father had lived with Queen Caroline. The prince adored his wife, and thought her in mind and person the most attractive of her sex. But he thought that conjugal fidelity was an unprincely virtue; and, in order to be like Henry the Fourth and the Regent Orleans, he affected a libertinism for which he had no taste, and frequently quitted the only woman whom he loved for ugly and disagreeable mistresses.

Whatever might have been the motives The address which the House of Commons which induced Prince Frederic to join the presented to the king on occasion of the party opposed to Sir Robert Walpole, his sup- prince's marriage, was moved, not by the miport infused into many members of that party nister, but by Pulteney, the leader of the Whigs a courage and an energy, of which they stood in opposition. It was on this motion that Pitt, greatly in need. Hitherto, it had been impos- who had not broken silence during the session sible for the discontented Whigs not to feel in which he took his seat, addressed the House some misgivings when they found themselves for the first time. " A contemporary historian," dividing night after night, with uncompromis- says Mr. Thackeray, “describes Mr. Pitt's first ing Jacobites, who were known to be in con- speech as superior even to the models of anstant communication with the exiled family; cient eloquence. According to Tindal, it was or with Tories who had impeached Somers, more ornamented than the speeches of De who had murmured against Harley and St. mosthenes, and less diffuse than those of CiJohn as too remiss in the cause of the Church cero." This unmeaning phrase has been a and the landed interest; and who, if they were hundred times quoted. That it should ever not inclined to attack the reigning family, yet have been quoted, except to be laughed at, is considered the introduction of that family as, strange. The vogue which it has obtained at best, only the less of two great evils-as a may serve to show in how slovenly a way necessary, but a painful and humiliating pre- most people are content to think. Did Tindal, servative against Popery. The minister might who first used it, or Archdeacon Coxe, or Mr. plausibly say that Pulteney and Carteret, in Thackeray, who have borrowed it, ever in their the hope of gratifying their own appetite for lives hear any speaking which did not deserve office and for revenge, did not scruple to serve the same compliment? Did they ever hear the purposes of a faction hostile to the Pro- speaking less ornamented than that of Detestant succession. The appearance of Fre-mosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cideric at the head of the patriots silenced this reproach. The leaders of the Opposition might now boast that their proceedings were sanctioned by a person as deeply interested as the king himself in maintaining the Act of Settlement; and that, instead of serving the purposes of the Tory party, they had brought that party over to the side of Whigism. It must indeed be admitted that, though both the king Pitt's speech, as it is reported in the Gentle and the prince behaved in a manner little to man's Magazine, certainly deserves Tindal's their honour-though the father acted harshly, compliment, and deserves no other. It is just the son disrespectfully, and both childish- as empty and wordy as a maiden speech on ly-the royal family was rather strengthened such an occasion might be expected to be. than weakened by the disagreement of its two But the fluency and the personal advantages most distinguished members. A large class of the young orator instantly caught the ear

cero? We know no living orator, from Lord Brougham down to Mr. Hunt, who is not en titled to the same magnificent eulogy. It would be no very flattering compliment to a man's figure to say, that he was taller than the Polish Count, and shorter than Giant O'Brien ;-fatter than the Anatomie Vivante, and more slender than Daniel Lambert.

and eye of his audience. He was, from the day of his first appearance, always heard with attention; and exercise soon developed the great powers which he possessed..

But it was not solely or principally to outward accomplishments that Pitt owed the vast influence which, during nearly thirty years, he exercised over the House of Commons. He was undoubtedly a great orator; and, from the descriptions of his contemporaries, and the fragments of his speeches which still remain, it is not difficult to discover the nature and extent of his oratorical powers.

He was no speaker of set speeches. His few prepared discourses were complete failures. The elaborate panegyric which he pronounced on General Wolfe was considered as the very worst of all his performances. "No man," says a critic who had often heard him, "ever knew so little what he was going to say." Indeed his facility amounted to a vice. He was not the master, but the slave of his own speech. So little self-command had he when once he felt the impulse, that he did not

was full of an important secret of state. "I must sit still," he once said to Lord Shelburne on such an occasion; "for when once I am up, every thing that is in my mind comes out."

In our time, the audience of a member of Parliament is the nation. The three or four hundred persons who may be present while a speech is delivered may be pleased or disgusted by the voice and action of the orator; but in the reports which are read the next day by hundreds of thousands, the difference between the noblest and the meanest figure, between the richest and the shrillest tones, between the most graceful and the most uncouth gesture, altogether vanishes. A hundred years ago, scarcely any report of what passed within the walls of the House of Commons was suffered to get abroad. In those times, therefore, the impression which a speaker might make on the persons who actually heard him was every thing. The impression out of doors was hard-like to take part in a debate when his mind ly worth a thought. In the Parliaments of that time, therefore, as in the ancient commonwealths, those qualifications which enhance the immediate effect of a speech, were far more important ingredients in the composition of an orator than they would appear to be in Yet he was not a great debater. That he our time. All those qualifications Pitt pos- should not have been so when first he entersessed in the highest degree. On the stage, heed the House of Commons, is not strange. would have been the finest Brutus or Coriola- Scarcely any person had ever become so nus ever seen. Those who saw him in his without long practice an many failures. It decay, when his health was broken, when his was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that the mind was jangled, when he had been removed late Mr. Fox became the most brilliant and from that stormy assembly of which he tho- powerful debater that ever Parliament saw. roughly knew the temper, and over which he Mr. Fox himself attributed his own success to possessed unbounded influence, to a small, a the resolution which he formed when very torpid, and an unfriendly audience, say that young, of speaking, well or ill, at least once his speaking was then, for the most part, a every night. "During five whole sessions," low, monotonous muttering, audible only to he used to say, "I spoke every night but one: those who sat close to him-that, when vio- and I regret only that I did not speak on that lently excited, he sometimes raised his voice night too." Indeed, it would be difficult to for a few minutes, but that it soon sank again name any great debater, except Mr. Stanley, into an unintelligible murmur. Such was the whose knowledge of the science of parliament. Earl of Chatham; but such was not William ary defence resembles an instinct, who has Pitt. His figure, when he first appeared in not made himself a master of his art at the Parliament, was strikingly graceful and com- expense of his audience. manding, his features high and noble, his eye full of fire. His voice, even when it sank to a whisper, was heard to the remotest benches; when he strained it to its full extent, the sound rose like the swell of the organ of a great cathedral, shook the house with its peal, and was heard through lobbies and down staircases, to the Court of Requests and the precincts of Westminster Hall. He cultivated all these eminent advantages with the most assiduous care. His action is described by a very malignant observer as equal to that of Garrick. His play of countenance was wonderful; he frequently disconcerted a hostile orator by a single glance of indignation or scorn. Every tone, from the impassioned cry to the thrilling aside, was perfectly at his command. It is by no means improbable that the pains which he took to improve his great personal advantages had, in some respects, a prejudicial operation, and tended to nourish in him that passion for theatrical effect which, as we have already remarked, was one of the most conspicuous blemishes in his character.

But as this art is one which even the ablest men have seldom acquired without long prac tice, so it is one which men of respectable abilities, with assiduous and intrepid practice, seldom fail to acquire. It is singular that in such an art, Pitt, a man of splendid talents, of great fluency, of great boldness-a man whose whole life was passed in parliamentary con. flict-a man who, during several years, was the leading minister of the crown in the House of Commons-should never have attained to high excellence. He spoke without premeditation; but his speech followed the course of his own thoughts, and not the course of the previous discussion. He could, indeed, trea sure up in his memory some detached expres sion of a hostile orator, and make it the text for sparkling ridicule or burning invecuve Some of the most celebrated bursts of his elo quence were called forth by an unguarded word, a laugh, or a cheer. But this was the only sort of reply in which he appears to have excelled. He was perhaps the only great Eng lish orator who did not think it any advantage

to have the last word; and who generally international law-if right, where societies of spoke by choice before his most formidable men are concerned, be any thing but another opponents. His merit was almost entirely name for might-if we do not adopt the docrhetorical. He did not succeed either in ex- trine of the Buccaniers, which seems to be position or in refutation; but his speeches also the doctrine of Mr. Thackeray, that treaabounded with lively illustrations, striking ties mean nothing within thirty degrees of the apophthegms, well-told anecdotes, happy allu- line-the war with Spain was altogether unsions, passionate appeals. His invective and justifiable. But the truth is, that the promoters sarcasm were tremendous. Perhaps no Eng of that war have saved the historian the trouble lish orator was ever so much feared. of trying them: they have pleaded guilty. "I But that which gave most effect to his de- have seen," says Burke, "and with some care clamation, was the air of sincerity, of vehe- examined, the original documents concerning ment feeling, of moral elevation, which be- certain important transactions of those times. longed to all that he said. His style was not They perfectly satisfied me of the extreme inalways in the purest taste. Several contem-justice of that war, and of the falsehood of the porary judges pronounced it too florid. Wal- colours which Walpole, to his ruin, and guided pole, in the midst of the rapturous eulogy by a mistaken policy, suffered to be daubed which he pronounces on one of Pitt's greatest orations, owns that some of the metaphors were too forced. The quotations and classical stories of the great orator are sometimes too trite for a clever schoolboy. But these were niceties for which the audience cared little. The enthusiasm of the orator infected all who were near him; his ardour and his noble bearing put fire into the most frigid conceit, and gave dignity to the most puerile allusion.

over that measure. Some years after, it was my fortune to converse with many of the principal actors against that minister, and with those who principally excited that clamour. None of them, no, not one, did in the least defend the measure, or attempt to justify their conduct. They condemned it as freely as they would have done in commenting upon any proceeding in history in which they were totally unconcerned." Pitt, on subsequent occasions, gave ample proof that he was not one of those tardy penitents.

His powers soon began to give annoyance to the government, and Walpole determined to make an example of the patriotic cornet. Pitt was The elections of 1741 were unfavourable to accordingly dismissed from the service. Mr. Walpole; and after a long and obstinate strugThackeray absurdly says that the minister took gle he found it necessary to resign. The Duke this step, because he plainly saw that it would of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke opened a have been vain to think of buying over so ho- negotiation with the leading patriots, in the nourable and disinterested an opponent. We hope of forming an administration on a Whig do not dispute Pitt's integrity; but we do not basis. At this conjuncture, Pitt, Lyttleton, and know what proof he had given of it, when he those persons who were most nearly connected was turned out of the army; and we are sure with them, acted in a manner very little to that Walpole was not likely to give credit for their honour. They attempted to come to an inflexible honesty to a young adventurer who understanding with Walpole, and offered, if he had never had an opportunity of refusing any would use his influence with the king in their thing. The truth is, that it was not Walpole's favour, to screen him from prosecution. They practice to buy off enemies. Mr. Burke truly even went so far as to engage for the concur says, in the Appeal to the old Whigs, "Wal-rence of the Prince of Wales. But Walpole pole gained very few over from the Opposition." He knew his business far too well. He knew that for one mouth that is stopped with a place, fifty other mouths will instantly be opened. He knew that it would have been very bad policy in him to give the world to understand that more was to be got by thwart ing his measures than by supporting them. These maxims are as old as the origin of parliamentary corruption in England. Pepys learned them, as he tells us, from the counsellors of Charles the Second.

knew that the assistance of the Boys, as he called the young patriots, would avail him nothing if Pulteney and Carteret should prove intractable, and would be superfluous, if the great leaders of the Opposition could be gained. He, therefore, declined the proposal. It is remarkable that Mr. Thackeray, who has thought it worth while to preserve Pitt's bad college verses, has not even alluded to this story-a story which is supported by strong testimony, and which may be found in so common a book as Coxe's Life of Walpole.

Pitt was no loser. He was made Groom of The new arrangements disappointed almost the Bed-chamber to the Prince of Wales, and every member of the Opposition, and none continued to declaim against the minister with more than Pitt. He was not invited to become a unabated violence and with increasing ability. placeman; and he, therefore, stuck firmly to his The question of maritime right, then agitated old trade of patriot. Fortunate it was for him between Spain and England, called forth all that he did so. Had he taken office at this time. his powers. He clamoured for war with a he would in all probability have shared largely vehemence which it is not easy to reconcile in the unpopularity of Pulteney, Sandys, and with reason or humanity, but which appears Carteret. He was now the fiercest and most to Mr. Thackeray worthy of the highest admi-implacable of those who called for vengeance ration. We will not stop to argue a point on on Walpole. He spoke with great energy and which we had long thought that all well-in- ability in favour of the most unjust and violent formed people were agreed. We could easily how, we think, that, if any respect be due to

* Letter on a Regicide Peace.