stances, however, of the accompanying dissolution were totally different, and on the whole the parallel is not a very close one.

In 1834, a Ministry, which it was quite clear could not go on, was dismissed by William IV., on the occasion of losing its leader in the House of Commons. No great measure was pending-indeed it was in the middle of the vacation -and there was at the time no political excitement. Peel was in the full prime of middle life, and with long experience of all but the very highest office. Pitt had been Chancellor of the Exchequer for a short time only, and was but twenty-four years of age. Pitt's antagonists in debate were men of the highest established fame, whose speeches have come down to us along with his own. What speeches of those who opposed Peel in 1835 will be admired and read in a collected form, as the approved masterpieces of British oratory, eighty years after their delivery, as we now read the speeches of Fox, Sheridan, and Burke?

Lord Stanhope afterwards gives it as his decided opinion, that Pitt was the foremost among English statesmen; a judgment in which few persons will hesitate to concur. No higher tribute can be paid to the memory of Sir Robert Peel than to compare him, either generally or at any particular crisis, with his great predecessor; and he is certainly the only British statesman in whose case such a comparison can be made. Nor will the just claims of the later Minister be diminished if he is held to follow, though next, yet still at a considerable interval, to so illustrious an example. The point, probably, in which the closest agreement may be traced in their characters, lies in the eminently practical turn of the minds of both. The sense of what was absolutely right to be done was in each always coupled with the due consideration of how much could be safely and actually carried into effect. Principle and practice can never have been long apart in the thoughts of either.

But Pitt was the more willing to assume the lead and direction of public opinion, upon which Peel may be said rather to have waited, than to have tried to anticipate or control it. We associate thoughts of a sterner will, of a more perfect consistency, of a loftier purpose, and of a higher courage, with the name of Pitt, and notions of a more elastic policy of immediate expediency with that of Peel. On the second and third great emergencies of his political life, Sir Robert Peel was embarrassed and weakened by the recollections of his conduct on the first. In carrying Catholic Emancipation, as well as in repealing the Corn Laws, he certainly did his work, but in doing it he well nigh broke his tools. In resisting all Parliamentary reform, he possibly gave way more than he otherwise would have done to the ultra-conservative views of some of his supporters, whose forbearance he had so much exhausted on the Catholic question. In his frank acceptance of the Reform Bill, from the time it became the law of the land, he displayed both wisdom and magnanimity; but that Reform Bill would probably have been a better measure, and might have been carried in a manner less dangerous to constitutional principles, if Sir Robert had not assumed so completely the attitude of a bigoted anti-reformer.

When established in power, Pitt at once addressed himself to measures of improvement. He settled the disordered finances of the country; he suppressed smuggling; and he passed that measure for the double government of India which lasted until the functions of the East India Company were recently absorbed entirely by the Crown. He voted in the minority in favour of Alderman Sawbridge's motion for Reform in Parliament, although thinking the proposition ill-timed. Lord Macaulay has designated Pitt in this autumn of 1784, as the greatest subject seen in England for many generations; and he would mark his culminating point at the time of the King's recovery from his derangement, in 1789. It is true that he then enjoyed at the

fullest all the outward circumstances of success. He was acting in complete concert with the King; he had large majorities in both Houses; and nothing had occurred to make it necessary for him to resort to measures tending to disturb his general popularity in the country. But we must be allowed to think that his greatness rose with the difficulties of his position, and we should hesitate to fix any period of his life, at or after which he ceased to be greater than he had previously been. We should be almost willing to call him greatest of all, even at the time when he received the news of Austerlitz, a fortnight before his death.

After Pitt became Prime Minister, the vast demands upon his attention, and his constant devotion to public business, seem to have rendered his letters to Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, less frequent than before. He allowed himself few holidays, yet never lost his zest for society, in which, as Lord Wellesley relates, 'he shone with a calm and steady lustre, more astonishing than his most splendid efforts in Parliament. His manners,' he says, 'were perfectly plain; his wit was quick and ready; he was endowed beyond any man of his time with a gay heart and a social spirit.'

The session of 1785 saw Pitt bringing forward his own measure of Reform in Parliament, and endeavouring upon enlightened principles to promote free commercial intercourse with Ireland, at that time debarred from sending her manufactures into the English market. His scheme of reform was to disfranchise thirty-six rotten boroughs, and to give the seventy-two seats thus placed at his disposal to the counties, and to London and Westminster. Copyholders were to vote in the shires as well as freeholders; and this would have largely added to the number of the county constituencies. But the disfranchisement of the boroughs was not to be compulsory or immediate, and their proprietors were to receive com

13

pensation for the loss of their nomination interests. There was also provision for the future surrender of their rights by other boroughs as they might become decayed, and for a similar transfer of their members to towns of rising importance. The array of interests against the measure was too strong, and the popular demand for it too feeble, to enable the Minister to press it in opposition to the very large majority which appeared against it in the House of Com

mons.

We need not follow in detail the political history of the next three or four years, during which the most interesting events were the commencement of the long affair of Warren Hastings; the negotiation of a liberal treaty of commerce with France; the establishment of valuable continental alliances; and the first movement in the long struggle for the abolition of the slave trade. Pitt himself, in the absence of Mr. Wilberforce from ill-health, moved, in the spring of 1788, a resolution pledging the House of Commons to take the circumstances of the slave trade into consideration. He is thus identified with the earliest public steps taken for the suppression of that infamous traffic, and again to be found in the van of improvement and progress. The adoption by the Minister of a scheme for a Sinking Fund for the redemption of the National Debt, is an admitted mistake.

was

Up to 1788, Pitt's tenure of power, although not free from all difficulties, appeared at least a secure one, but in this year, the King's temporary derangement of mind put him in a most critical position, and for a time threatened to place the Government of the country absolutely in the hands of his great rival. The occasion was without precedent, and the discussions on the Regency Bill involved the nicest and most arduous points of constitutional law.

In the midst of all the unavoidable dangers and anxieties of the situation, Pitt was unmoved from his rectitude of purpose. He con

ceived it to be his duty to invite parliament to make provision for the carrying on of the Government during the King's incapacity; but he knew that he would not be continued as the Minister of the Prince of Wales, and he even contemplated the necessity of returning to practice as a private member of the bar. On the whole, we are disposed to consider this as the most remarkable point of his official life, and his personal character and ability as exhibited to the greatest advantage in it. He had to act under circumstances of unprecedented constitutional difficulty; he knew that in taking what he believed to be the right course, he was excluding himself from office, in the event of the King's continued illness, and his own Lord Chancellor, Lord Thurlow, was in treacherous communication with his political adversaries. His anxieties must have been increased by the embarrassment arising from the neglect of his private affairs. In anticipation of his probable retirement from office, the bankers and merchants of London offered for his acceptance a gift of one hundred thousand pounds. This splendid exercise of generosity in his behalf on the part of the public he declined, as he some time afterwards refused the Garter when pressed upon him by the King; and well might it at this time be said of him that there never had been in the country such a situation as Mr. Pitt's. His Regency Bill, with its wise limitations of the power of the heir apparent, who was to enjoy the temporary exercise of the royal authority, had passed the Lower House against the frantic opposition of the Prince's friends. It had nearly passed the Lords, when the prospect of the King's immediate recovery rendered it happily unnecessary to proceed with the measure. The King regained his health, and Pitt remained at the helm to guide the vessel of the State through the great tempest which was soon to sweep over the face of European politics.

During the earlier stages of the

first French Revolution, Pitt maintained a cautious but hopeful attitude. He was essentially a lover of peace, as was strongly exemplified in the issue under his direction of the Nootka Sound difficulty with Spain. It is clear, too, from his financial measures of 1790, that nothing but the dire exigencies of later years compelled him to augment largely the National Debt. It was his desire, whenever it was possible, to meet expenses, even of an extraordinary nature, by immediate taxation, rather than by the easier method of making a permanent addition to the public burden of debt. If, in the great struggle for order and temperate liberty which was afterwards forced upon England as their natural champion, both war and vast expenditure became inevitable, it was no fault of the Minister who led the nation in its glorious resistance to the extremes of unbridled democracy, as well as of military despotism. If, too, when every nerve was strained, and every faculty was absorbed in that vast contest for constitutional life and independent existence, measures of internal improvement were neglected or abandoned, this also was an almost necessary consequence of such a condition of affairs. On a smaller scale, precisely the same thing took place during the last and successful agitation for parliamentary reform, when all other measures were delayed, and many a well-matured plan of improvement, including some of the most important legal changes which have since been made, was for the time put aside, while all men were wholly engrossed by the excitement of the overwhelming topic of the day. If events had been otherwise ordered, it is clear that Pitt would have continued in the course of reform for which his early political life was conspicuous. It would have been only natural and consistent for him to have done so. True conservatism in the State is like that of nature, in which there is a perpetual growth, and replacement of old parts by new. Gradual and imperceptible but continuous

change constitutes the true law of vital permanence; while organic existence is vigorous and flourishing, the mutation of parts is incessant. The end of change is the sure precursor of the end of life, and is followed by speedy decay and dissolution.

Pitt had some ministerial difficulties from which more modern statesmen are exempt. In addition to two Houses of Parliament to be managed, he had to deal with the King, almost as with a rival for power. Now George III. was a person of very considerable abilities, of active business habits, with whom it was a pleasure as well as a duty to perform all that he believed to belong to his office, and who was endowed with a strength of will which rendered him more than a match, in situations of conflict, for persons of superior intellectual powers to his own. There was also, during a great part of his career, the separate Parliament of Ireland to be manipulated, with all its own peculiar intrigues and wants; and after its establishment with legislative equality by Grattan, in 1782, this was no easy task. During Thurlow's continuance in office, Pitt was constantly embarrassed by the downright treachery, the uncertain support, and the wayward temper of a most uncongenial colleague. Very different was his position in the Cabinet and in the House, from the subordination now expected to the chief of the Government, even from so high a functionary as the keeper of the Sovereign's conscience and the head of the law. How great his power was, and how intolerable it must have been, may be best judged from the manner in which the oppressive incubus was finally shaken off. In 1792, the Chancellor from the woolsack chose to ridicule a financial scheme of the Premier's, which he ventured to call nugatory and impracticable. This explosion exhausted that quality in Pitt which he himself is said to have described as the most indispensable in a Prime Minister, namely, patience; and the insolent Chancellor was deprived of his office;

VOL. LXIV. NO. CCCLXXIX.

15

but it was in terms which were almost deferential, and Thurlow at the same time received fresh marks of the royal favour.

There were prejudices also to be surmounted which happily no longer exist to impede the rise of the ablest men to serve the State in its highest offices. No one thought of asking for the pedigree or questioning the primogeniture of a Peel, a Gladstone, ora Disraeli, when they showed their capacity to hold the foremost rank in the great council of the nation. But when, in 1790, Pitt found it desirable to place in the Upper House some supporter on whom he could better rely than upon his capricious and intractable Lord Chancellor, and for that purpose had his cousin, William Grenville, created a Peer, he had to encounter an expression of opinion which showed that feudal recollections had not yet entirely passed away. The promotion was naturally enough not agreeable to other peers, and Pitt received a remarkable and very amusing letter of remonstrance from the Duke of Richmond, given at length by Lord Stanhope, in which, among other complaints and warnings, he says, 'I believe this country will not be satisfied to see you two younger brothers take the lead of the two Houses of Parliament, and by yourselves govern the country.'

There were also differences in political and social life which must have tended to increase the anxieties of a minister of seventy years since. The game of politics in those days was much more rough and uncertain. There was an absence of that forbearance and amenity in the transaction of business, which, except on rare occasions, may now be said to prevail. Frequent intermarriages between families of opposite politics, and more extended social intercourse, have done much to remove feelings of habitual asperity, and to promote friendly communication between persons holding different opinions on public affairs. To the greater diffusion of social political knowledge also must be ascribed an effect in ren-dering, in some respects, the task

B

of government more easy. Public opinion is now founded on better information, and is at once regulated and represented by an able and powerful newspaper press. The Fourth Estate has been added to the polity of the realm, with equal advantage to the governed, and to those who for the time being may be exercising the powers of government. Under all aspects, therefore, even the ordinary difficulties of ruling the State would seem to have been greater in Pitt's time than in our own; and astonishment at his character is vastly increased when to all these there comes to be added the immense and extraordinary weight of responsibility which was singly thrown upon him from the outbreak of the French Revolution to the close of his life.

We have preferred to dwell upon the circumstances of Pitt's entrance into public life, and his remarkable acquisition of power. It is impossible to do more than glance at some of the events of the remaining years whose history is included in the present instalment of Lord Stanhope's work. A few things only may be mentioned as further indicating to what extent Pitt's sagacious and practical mind was always working for the general good. He erected police-offices with paid magistrates to supersede the inefficient and corrupt doings of the old trading justices; and thus commenced a system of metropolitan protection which was to be long afterwards completed by Sir Robert Peel, among whose most useful measures may be named the

institution of the present London police force. He proposed to the Archbishop of Canterbury the scheme of commuting tithes by means of a varying corn rent, which has since been carried out, and which, if adopted earlier, would have added largely to the revenues and security of the Church of England. To these may be added his attempt to carry a succession duty on real property-a source of public income which was not established until it was successfully proposed by Mr. Gladstone in

1853; and his favourable intentions for the relief of the Roman Catholics in Ireland, resulting in the actual foundation of the College at Maynooth.

For nine years Pitt's Administration was one of peace and of great national advancement. By his skill, courage, and discretion, Great Britain was restored to reputation on the Continent; while the finances and commerce of the country flourished to an unexampled degree at home. In his own words, there never was a time when, from the situation of Europe, many years of peace might have been more reasonably expected. But he had soon to conduct the affairs of the nation during a war of such extent and importance that all previous conflicts are dwarfed in comparison with it. Pitt's policy during this great crisis of the Commonwealth needs no elaborate vindication for those who will impartially study the history of the times, and who will give due consideration to the varied and opposite dangers against which provision had to be made. Frere's wellknown lines in the Anti-Jacobin are as applicable to Pitt as to the ancient orator for whom they were written :

A foe to every wild extreme, 'Mid civil storms, the Roman Sage

Repressed ambition's frantic scheme, And check'd the madding people's rage.

But, if it be necessary to do so, Lord Stanhope has very effectually disposed of the latest renewal of the usual charges made against Pitt in the conduct of the war. Coming from Lord Macaulay, they perhaps required notice; yet it may be almost regretted that the march of the narrative should have been interrupted by criticism, however able and successful, upon another work. In the undertaking of preserving rational liberty and constitutional monarchy against an Europe in arms, and in spite of some domestic disaffection, Pitt stood alone in his greatness. Dundas was his sole supporter of mark in debate, and our military affairs were for a long time badly handled.