ADDRESS TO THE PUBLIC. ANOTHER year having revolved, it becomes our pleasing duty to express our most grateful acknowledgments to the public in general, and our fair patronesses in particular, for the very liberal and constantly increasing encouragement with which our Miscellany is honoured. Our exertions for its improvement have been unremitted, and with the greatest pleasure and gratitude we avow that we are sufficiently convinced they have not been in vain. The original plan of the LADY'S MAGAZINE has been uniformly adhered to since its first establishment. It was intended to be, and we trust has been, a repository for the fugitive productions and first essays of genius, especially female genius, and pleasing and instructive selections from the most approved and entertaining publications of the times; at once avoiding what might be dry and abstruse, and what might be frivolous and trifling, amusement and improvement being equally its object. The utmost care has been at all times taken to exclude from its pages every thing in the least degree tending to indelicacy or licentiousness; it has ever been devoted to the promotion of morality, virtue, and religion. To our Correspondents, to whose invaluable assistance much of the praise we have received is certainly due, we owe the most sincere and grateful acknowledgments. We earnestly solicit the continuance of their numerous favours. : And here we cannot but repeat what we have observed in some former addresses to them, that if we are sometimes under the necessity of suppressing some of the contributions of the younger and less experienced among them, to give them an opportunity to revi e and reproduce them in a more correct form, that ought rather to stimulate them to make new exertions for improvement than to discourage them from future attempts. Our readers will at the same time perceive that we have lately been favoured with several truly valuable communications, especially of the novel class, from Correspondents of superior abilities. We are possessed, likewise, of several others, which have not been begun, but which will be given in the course of the present year. We now enter on the THIRTY-EIGHTH VOLUME of the LADY'S MAGAZINE, inspired with gratitude for past favours, and ardour to merit their continuance; confidently trusting that our attention and exertions will be found to merit the same flattering approbation and encouragement which we have experienced from a candid public, and our amiable and generous patronesses, during a period of seven-and-thirty years. THE LADY'S MAGAZINE. FOR JANUARY, 1807. i WILLIAM MEMOIRS Of the LIFE of the late Right Honourable WILLIAM PITT. (With his Portrait, elegantly engraved.) WILLIAM PITT was the youngest son of the illustrious earl of Chatham, and was born on the twenty-eighth of May 1759, when his father's glory was at its zenith; and when, in consequence of the wisdom of his counsels and the vigour and promptitude of his decisions, British valour was triumphant in every part of the globe. On the accession of his present majesty, that great statesman retired from the situation which he had so honourably filled; and consigning his two eldest sons to the care of others, devoted the whole of his time to the education of William, on a strong, and, as the event shewed, a well-founded persuasion, that, to use his own words, he would one day increase the splendour of the name of Pitt.' His classical knowledge Mr. Pitt acquired under the care of a private tutor at Burton-Pynsent, the seat of his father; and the earl took great pleasure in teaching him while yet a youth to argue with logical precision, and to speak with elegance and force. He himself frequently entered into disputations with him, and encouraged him to converse with others upon subjects far above what could be expected from his years. In the management of these arguments his father would never cease to press him with difficulties, nor would he permit him to stop till the subject of contention was completely exhausted. By being inured to this method, the son acquired that quality which is of the first consequence in public life-a sufficient degree of firmness and presence of mind, as well as a ready delivery, in which he was wonderfully aided by nature. At between fourteen and fifteen years of age, he was placed under the care of a very worthy and enlightened clergyman. Mr. (now Dr.) Wilson, and sent to Pembroke college, Cambridge; where he was admitted under the tuition of Messrs. Turner and Prettyman (the former now Dr. Turner, dean of Norwich; the latter bishop of Lincoln). These able men seconded to the utmost of their power the intentions of his father. In Cambridge he became a model to the young nobility and fellow-commoners; and it was not doubted that if the privileges of his rank had not exempted him from the usual exercises for his bachelor's degree, he would have been found among the first competitors for academical honours. On his admission, according to custom, to his master's degree, the public orator found it needless to search into genealogy, He or even to dwell on the great qualities of his father; for the eyes of the university were fixed on the youth, the enraptured audience as sented to every eneomium, and every breast was filled with the liveliest presages of his future greatness. Mr. Pitt was afterwards entered a student of Lincoln's-Inn, and made such a rapid progress in his legal studies as to be soon called to the bar with every prospect of success. He went once or twice upon the western circuit, and appeared as junior counsel in several causes. was, however, destined to fill a more important station in the government of his country than is usually obtained through the channel of the law. In the year 1781 he was returned a member of the house of commons for the borough of Appleby. Some of his friends at Cambridge had proposed that he should stand a candidate for representing that university; but he declined the honour, except it were unanimously offered to him. His first speech in parliament was delivered on Mr. Burke's motion for financial reform, and in the division on that question he voted with the minority. In fact, he might be considered, though he spoke and voted independently, as having joined the party which had opposed the minister lord North and the American war, and who regarded him with a degree of veneration, recognising in his person the genius of his illustrious father revived, and as it were acting in him. When lord North was succeeded by the marquis of Reckingham in 1782, Mr. Pitt did not form any connection with the new administration. He was then assiduously occupied in the study of political philosophy, and in investigating the history, detail, and spirit of the British constitution. He saw that, notwithstanding the excellence of the system, various corruptions had arisen, and many abuses introduced, which it was of high importance to correct, and which he conceived to emanate from a want of equipoise of the component estates, and a consequent derangement of the balance. Like other young men of lofty genius and grand conceptions, accustomed to generalisation, and not yet acquainted with the practise of affairs, he formed theories at that time which experience taught him afterwards to renounce. He brought forward a motion for a committee to enquire into the state of representation in parliament, and to report their sentiments; in which he was supported by Messrs. Fox and Sheridan. On the death of the marquis of Rockingham, lord Shelburne was appointed to succeed him as first lord of the treasury; and Mr. Pitt accepted the office of chancellor of the exchequer, the duties of which he performed with great merit and distinction, but without taking any very active interest in the party politics of the time. He resigned his office on the thirty-. first of March 1783, when a coalition formed by Mr. Fox with lords North and Thurlow forced lord Shelburne to retire, to make way for hiş opponents. On the seventh of May of that year, he again brought forward a motion, for a reform in parliament, in a less general form than he had done in the preceding year. Instead of moving for a committee of inquiry, he proposed specific propositions, the object of which was to prevent bribery at elections, to disfranchise a borough which should be convicted of gross corruption, and to augment the national representation by the election of one hundred additional members. The motion was negatived by a large majority. The next occasion which Mr. Pitt had of displaying his knowledge was on the introduction of Mr. Fox's India bill, which he attacked with much force of language and splendour of eloquence, as annihilating chartered rights, and creating a new and immense body of influence unknown to the British constitution." Notwithstanding his opposition, in which he was powerfully supported by Mr. Dundas, the measure was carried through the house of commons with a very large majority. The efforts which he had made on this occasion were not, however, fruitless. Petitions were sent in from all quarters against the bill, and on the motion for its commitment in the house of peers it was finally thrown out; in consequence of which the coalition ministry was dissolved by the king, who was always understood to have been hostile to the measure in his individual capacity. On this event the places of chancellor of the exchequer and first lord of the treasury were immediately conferred on Mr. Pitt. Raised to this elevated situation at the early age of twenty-five years, he had new and unprecedented difficulties to combat. Mr. Fox, his opponent, had still a large majority in the house of commons, without the support of which no ministry can be of long duration. Mr. Pitt had no ramily influence, no extended political association, no one of those adventitious props which often supply the place of real advantages; he rested solely upon his own abilities, aided by those whose admiration and confidence his intellectual and moral character had secured, without any means of extending his influence and increasing his frieres but those to be found in his own head and heart. If talents and conduct could not create a ge neral confidence and support, he had no other means of standing secure against attacks of his adversaries. Instead, in these circumstances, of shrinking from the assaults of his opponents, he attacked them on their own ground, and on January the fourteenth, 1784, introduced a bill into parliament for the better management and regulation of the affairs of the East India company. The leading difference between this and Mr. Fox's plan was, that Mr. Pitt left the charter of the company untouched, and the commercial concerns of this corporation of mer. chants under the sole management of the proprietors themselves, and directors of their choice; whereas Mr. Fox had wished to make an entire transfer of the company's affairs to commissioners nominated in parliament, with a duration of autho-. rity for the term of four years. This bill, which resembled in many particulars that which had proved the ruin of Mr. Fox, laid the foundation of the permanence of Mr. Pitt's administration. Parties, however, continued to run so high, that a number of impartial and independent men employed themselves in endeavours to bring about a coalition, with a view of forming an administration from the two contending sides, of which Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox were to be the pillars. A meeting was held at the St. Alban's tavern, on the twenty-six of January 1784, in which an address was signed by fifty-three members of the house of commons, recommending a union to this effect, which was presented to the duke of Portland and Mr. Fitt. The latter expressed a willingness to enter into the views of the committee; but the duke of Portland insisting, that, as a preliminary, he should resign his place, the negociation was suspended. The duke was afterwards invited to a |