A LETTER

ΤΟ

THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM PITT,

&c. &c.

SIR,

HISTORY records too many examples of political apostasy to make any case of that sort new or singular. Yet with all your knowledge in that branch of history, to which congenial sentiments must have naturally pointed your studies, I doubt whether you can produce many instances in which the political apostate, instead of the language which becomes his situation, dares to assume the tone of parade and of triumph; and with the most eccentric originality of insolence labors to convert his own desertion of principle into an argument against these principles themselves, instead of feeling the principles as a stigma on his desertion. We do not find that Curio was shameless enough, when he deserted the cause of his country, to urge against it the boldness of his own apostasy with the same confidence that Cato would have used in its support the authority of his virtue. The annals of ancient or modern apostasy contain nothing so flagrant. It was reserved for our days to add this variety to the various combinations of fraud and insolence, which have in former ages duped and oppressed mankind; and it was peculiarly reserved for a-statesman, whose character reconciles the most repugnant extremes of political depravity, the pliancy of the most abject intrigue, with the vaunting of the most lofty hyprocrisy. It was reserved for him, not alone silently to abandon, not alone even publicly to abjure the doctrines of his former life; not alone to oppose, with ardor, with vehemence, with virulence, those propositions from others, by which he himself had earned popularity, and climbed to unexampled power; but

to convert into a source of obloquy against other men a measure which had been the basis of his own reputation and importance. It was reserved for such a man to repeat those very common-place objections to the measure, and those very common-place slanders against its movers, which had been urged against himself, and which he himself had justly despised, or victoriously refuted.' It was reserved for him, unblushingly to renew all the clamor against novelty, and all those affectionate alarms for the British Constitution, which patriotic boroughmongers had so successfully employed against himself. Yes, Sir, it was reserved for the son of Chatham thus to stigmatise the "dying legacy" of his father, and thus to brand his own "virgin effort."

You will have already perceived, that it is on your late conduct in the case of Parliamentary Reform, that I am to animadvert. Though I feel a dislike, not unmixed with contempt, for politics purely personal, and though I should be the last man to betray and degrade the great cause of Reform, by mingling it with the petty squabbles of party, yet when I see the authority of an apostate character opposed to the cause from which he apostatised, I think it at least fit that that obstacle should be removed, and that the vaporing language of such a delinquent should be counteracted by the merited brand of his crimes.

The cause of Reform demands that the nature of your present opposition to it should be understood. The interest of the people demands that they should well understand the character of him who may yet be likely, in some possible combination of events, to offer himself to them as the champion of Reform, and perhaps ultimately to prove the leader in more extensive and dangerous measures. And it is generally fit that no signal example of triumphant apostasy should pass with impunity.

These are the public reasons, Sir, which lead me to call public attention to your conduct; reasons which have influenced one who has no respect for your principles, and no exaggerated opinion of your abilities, which he has sometimes admired without idolatry, and often opposed without fear. That I am in no abject or devoted sense a partizan, I trust even my present sentiments will prove. I am only, therefore, your enemy so far as I believe you to be the enemy of my country; and I am not unwilling to adopt for

See the debate on Mr. Pitt's motion for Parliamentary Reform on the 7th May, 1782. Compare the reply of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the alarms and arguments of Mr. T. Pitt, proprietor of Old Sarum, with his speech on the notice of Mr. Grey, the 30th April, 1792, in which he expresses those alarms which he had then scouted, and retails those arguments which he had then contemned !-Ergo referens hæc nuncius ibit Pelidæ genitori !

the creed of my personal politics the dying prayer of a great man, "Ut ita cuique eveniat ut quisque de Republica mereatur ?”

The three general grounds then on which I shall proceed to examine your conduct are, your apostasy-your present pretexts for opposing reform-and the probability of such a future conduct in you as may render it extremely important that the people should justly appreciate your character.

Your entrance into public life was marked by circumstances more favorable than any English statesman has ever experienced. With all the vigor of your own talents, with all the reflected lustre of your Father's character, you appeared at a moment when the ungracious toil of opposition was almost past, when little remained but to profit by the effect of other men's efforts, and to urge the fall of a tottering Ministry, whose misconduct had already been fatally proved by national misfortune. The current of popularity had already set strongly against the Minister. The illusions of American conquest and American revenue were dispelled. The eyes of the people were opened to the folly of the Cabinet. You had only to declaim against it. The attention of the people was called to those defects in their Constitution, which permitted such a Cabinet so long to betray the public interest, and to brave the public opinion. You had only to put yourself at the head of the people, to declare yourself the leader of Reform. In this character you had recourse to the same means, and you were assailed by the same objections, with every past and every future Leader of Reform. Despairing that a corrupt body should spontaneously reform itself, you invited the interposition of the people. You knew that dispersed effort must be unavailing. You therefore encouraged them to associate. You were not deterred from appealing to the people by such miserable common places of reproach as those of advertising for grievances, diffusing discontents, and provoking sedition. You well knew that in the vocabulary of corrupt power inquiry is sedition, and tranquillity is synonimous with blind and abject obedience. You were not deterred from joining with the associations of the people by being told that they were to overawe Parliament. You knew the value of a jargon that does not deserve to be dignified by so high a name as sophistry. You felt for it that contempt which every man of sense always feels, and which every man of sincerity will always express.

As you were regardless of the clamor against the necessary means for the accomplishment of your object-as you knew that whoever would substantially serve the people in such a cause, must appeal to the people, and associate with the people; you must have had a just and a supreme contempt for the sophistry which was opposed to the measure of reforming the Representation itself.

You were told (every Reformer has been told, and every Reformer will be told) that of innovations there is no end, that to adopt one is to invite a succession; and that, though you knew the limits of your own Reforms, you could not prescribe bounds to the views which their success might awaken in the minds of others. To so battered a generality it was easy to oppose another common-place. It was easy to urge that, as no Government could be secure if it were to be perpetually changed, no abuse could be reformed if institutions are to be inflexibly maintained. If they call the courage of a Reformer temerity, he is equally entitled to represent their caution as cowardice. If they speak from conjecture of his future interest in confusion, he may from knowledge speak of their actual interest in corruption.

They told you that extravagant speculations were abroad;' that it was no moment to hope for the accomplishment of a temperate Reform, when there were so many men of mischievous and visionary principles, whom your attempts would embolden, and whom your Reforms would not content. You replied, that the redress of real grievances was the surest remedy against imaginary alarms; that the existence of acknowledged corruptions is the only circumstance that renders incendiaries formidable; and that to correct these corruptions is to wrest from them their most powerful

weapon.

Of that

By a conduct thus natural you pursued your measure. conduct indeed I should not now have reminded you, had it not been for the sake of contrasting it with some recent transactions. It is almost unnecessary to add that you found it easy to practise on the generous credulity of the English people, and that, for the first time in the present reign, the King's advisers thought fit to choose their minister because they knew that he was popular, actuated by the double policy of debauching a popular leader, and of surrounding with the splendor of popularity the apostate agent of their will. But with the other parts of your public life I have nothing to do, nor will I trace minutely the progress of your pretended efforts for Parliamentary Reform.

The curtain was dropped in 1785. The farce then closed. Other cares then began to occupy your mind. To dupe the enthusiasts of Reform ceased to be of any further moment, and the question itself slept, until it was revived by Mr. Flood in 1790.

There was little danger of the success of his motion, maintained by himself with little pertinacity, and seconded neither by any Parliamentary connexion, nor by any decisive popular opinion. To it therefore you thought a languid opposition from you sufficient.

Lord Camelford's speech.

You reserved more active opposition for more formidable dangers, and you abandoned the motion of Mr. Flood to the declamation of Mr. Grenville, the logic of Mr. Windham, and the invective of Mr. Burke.

That more formidable danger at length arrived. A Reform in the Representation was brought forward by a gentleman of the most powerful abilities, of high consideration in the country, and of a character the most happily untainted by any of those dubious transactions of which political parties are rarely able, for any long period, to escape at least the imputation. Such a character was odious to apostasy. Such an enemy was formidable to corruption. The debate on the notice of Mr. Grey illustrated the fears of corrupt men, and the malignity of apostates. It was then that alarms which had slumbered so long over incendiary writings were suddenly called forth by the dreadful suggestion of a moderate, and therefore, of a practicable Reform.

Nor is the reason of this difficult to discover. These incendiary publications might render signal service to a corrupt government, by making the cause of freedom odious, and perhaps by provoking immatured and ill-concerted tumults, the suppression of which might increase the strength, and justify the violence, of Government. No such happy effects were to be hoped from the proposition of Mr. Grey. Impracticable schemes are never terrible, but that fatal proposition threatened. the overthrow of corruption itself. Then your exertions were indeed demanded: then your pious zeal for the Constitution was called forth.

Theoretical admirers of the Constitution had indeed supposed its excellence to consist in that trial by jury which you had narrowed by excise; and its salvation to depend on that liberty of the press which you had scared by prosecution. Such might have been the idle ravings of Locke or Montesquieu. But you well knew its practical excellence to depend on very different things.

Already, in your imagination, that citadel of the Constitution, Queenborough, that sanctuary of freedom, Midhurst, tottered to their foundations. Already, even Cornwall itself, the land of freedom, was pierced by the impious din of Reform. Actuated by alarms so honest and so wise for such sacred bulwarks of the Constitution, no wonder that you magnanimously sacrificed your own character. No wonder that you stooped to rake together every clumsy sophism, and every malignant slander that the most frontless corruption had ever circulated, or the most stupid credulity believed. Nor was it even wonderful, when we consider it in this view, that you should have pronounced an elaborate, a solemn, a malignant invective, against the principles which you yourself had professed, the precise measures which you had promoted, and the VOL. XXI. NO. XLI.

Pam.

D