and an usurious profit upon every pound you devote to the necessities of your country. Do I demand of you, my fellow-placemen and brother-pensioners, that you should sacrifice any part of your stipends to the public exigency? On the contrary, am I not daily increasing your emoluments and your numbers in proportion as the country becomes unable to provide for you? Do I require of you, my latest and most zealous proselytes, of you who have come over to me for the special purpose of supporting the wara war, on the success of which you solemnly protest, that the salvation of Britain, and of civil society itself, depend-do I require of you, that you should make a temporary sacrifice, in the cause of human nature, of the greater part of your private incomes? No, gentlemen, I scorn to take advantage of the eagerness of your zeal; and to prove that I think the sincerity of your attachment to me needs no such test, I will make your interest co-operate with your principle: I will quarter many of you on the public supply, instead of calling on you to contribute to it; and, while their whole thoughts are absorbed in patriotic apprehensions for their country, I will dexterously force upon others the favourite objects of the vanity or ambition of their lives.'

"Good God, Sir, that he should have thought it prudent to have forced this contrast upon our attention; that he should triumphantly remind us of every thing that shame should have withheld, and caution would have buried in oblivion! Will those who stood forth with a parade of disinterested patriotism, and vaunted of the sacrifices they had made, and the exposed situation they had chosen, in order the better to oppose the friends of Brissot in England-will they thank the Noble Lord for reminding us how soon these lofty professions dwindled into little jobbing pursuits for followers and dependants, as unfit to fill the offices procured for them, as the offices themselves were unfit to be created?-Will the train of newly titled alarmists, of supernumerary negociators, of pensioned paymasters, agents and commissaries, thank him for remarking to us how profitable their panic has been to themselves, and how expensive to their country? What a contrast, indeed, do we exhibit !-What! in such an hour as this, at a moment pregnant with the national fate, when, pressing as the exigency may be, the hard task of squeezing the money from the pockets of an impoverished people, from the toil, the drudgery of the shivering poor, must make the most practised collector's heart ache while he tears it from them-can it be, that people of high rank, and professing high principles, that they or their families should seek to thrive on the spoils of misery, and fatten on the meals wrested from industrious poverty? Can it be, that this should be the ease with the very persons, who state the unprecedented peril of the country as the sole cause of their being found in the ministerial ranks? The Constitution is in danger, religion is in danger, the very existence of the nation itself is endangered; all personal and party considerations ought to vanish; the war must be supported by every possible exertion, and by every possible sacrifice; the people must not murmur at their burdens, it is for their

salvation, their all is at stake. The time is come, when all honest and disinterested men should rally round the Throne as round a standard ;-for what? ye honest and disinterested men, to receive, for your own private emolument, a portion of those very taxes wrung from the people on the pretence of saving them from the poverty and distress which you say the enemy would inflict, but which you take care no enemy shall be able to aggravate. Oh! shame! shame! is this a time for selfish intrigues, and the little dirty traffic for lucre and emolument? Does it suit the honour of a gentleman to ask at such a moment? Does it become the honesty of a Minister to grant ? Is it intended to confirm the pernicious doctrine, so industriously propagated by many, that all public men are impostors, and that every politician has his price? Or even where there is no principle in the bosom, why does not prudence hint to the mercenary and the vain to abstain a while at least, and wait the fitting of the times? Improvident impatience! Nay, even from those who seem to have no direct object of office or profit, what is the language which their actions speak? The Throne is in danger!

we will support the Throne; but let us share the smiles of Royalty;'-the order of Nobility is in danger!-'I will fight for Nobility,' says the Viscount, but my zeal would be much greater if I were made an Earl.' Rouse all the Marquis within me,' exclaims the Earl, and the peerage never turned forth a more undaunted champion in its cause than I shall prove.' 'Stain my green riband blue,' cries out the illustrious Knight, and the fountain of honour will have a fast and faithful servant.' What are the people to think of our sincerity-What credit are they to give to our professions? Is this system to be persevered in? Is there nothing that whispers to that Right Honourable Gentleman that the crisis is too big, that the times are too gigantic, to be ruled by the little hackneyed and every-day means of ordinary corruption ?”

The discussions, indeed, during the whole of this Session, were marked by a degree of personal acrimony, which in the present more sensitive times would hardly be borne. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Sheridan came, most of all, into collision; and the retorts of the Minister not unfrequently proved with what weight the haughty sarcasms of Power may descend even upon the tempered buckler of Wit.

It was in this Session, and on the question of the Treaty with the King of Sardinia, that Mr. Canning made his first appearance, as an orator, in the House. He brought with him a fame, already full of promise, and has been one of the brightest ornaments of the senate and the country ever since. From the political faith in which he had been educated, under the very eyes of Mr. Sheridan, who had long

been the friend of his family, and at whose house he generally passed his college vacations, the line that he was to take in the House of Commons seemed already, according to the usual course of events, marked out for him. Mr. Sheridan had, indeed, with an eagerness which, however premature, showed the value which he and others set upon the alliance, taken occasion in the course of a laudatory tribute to Mr. Jenkinson,* on the success of his first effort in the House, to announce the accession which his own party was about to receive, in the talents of another gentleman, the companion and friend of the young orator who had now distinguished himself. Whether this and other friendships, formed by Mr. Canning at the University, had any share in alienating him from a political creed, which he had hitherto, perhaps, adopted rather from habit and authority than choice-or, whether he was startled at the idea of appearing for the first time in the world, as the announced pupil and friend of a person who, both by the vehemence of his politics and the irregularities of his life, had put himself, in some degree, under the ban of public opinion or whether, lastly, he saw the difficulties which even genius like his would experience, in rising to the full growth of its ambition, under the shadowing branches of the Whig aristocracy and that superseding influence of birth and connections, which had contributed to keep even such men as Burke and Sheridan out of the Cabinet-which of these motives it was that now decided the choice of the young political Hercules, between the two paths that equally wooed his footsteps, none, perhaps but himself can fully determine. His decision, we know, was in favour of the Minister and Toryism; and, after a friendly and candid explanation to Sheridan of the reasons and feelings that urged him to this step, he entered into terms with Mr. Pitt, and was by him immediately brought into Parlia

ment.

However dangerous it might be to exalt such an exam.

* Now Lord Liverpool.

ple into a precedent, it is questionable whether, in thus resolving to join the ascendant side, Mr. Canning has not conferred a greater benefit on the country than he ever would have been able to effect in the ranks of his original friends. That Party, which has now so long been the sole depositary of the power of the State, had, in addition to the original narrowness of its principles, contracted all that proud obstinacy in antiquated error, which is the invariable characteristic of such monopolies; and which, however consonant with its vocation, as the chosen instrument of the Crown, should have long since invalided it in the service of a free and enlightened people. Some infusion of the spirit of the times into this body had become necessary, even for its own preservation,-in the same manner as the inhalement of youthful breath has been recommended, by some physicians to the infirm and superannuated. This renovating inspiration the genius of Mr. Canning has supplied. His first political lessons were derived from sources too sacred to his young admiration to be forgotten. He has carried the spirit of these lessons with him into the councils which he joined, and by the vigour of the graft, which already, indeed, shows itself in the fruits, bids fair to change altogether the nature of Toryism.

Among the eminent persons summoned as witnesses on the Trial of Horne Tooke, which took place in the November of this year, was Mr. Sheridan; and, as his evidence contains some curious particulars, both with regard to himself and the state of political feeling in the year 1790, I shall here transcribe a part of it:

"He, (Mr. Sheridan,) said he recollects a meeting to celebrate the establishment of liberty in France in the year 1790. Upon that occasion he moved a Resolution drawn up the day before by the Whig club. Mr. Horne Tooke, he says, made no objection to his motion, but proposed an amendment. Mr. Tooke stated that an unqualified approbation of the French Revolution, in the terms moved, might produce an ill effect out of doors, a disposition to a revolution in this country, or, at least be misrepresented to have that object; he adverted to the circumstance of their having all of them national cockades in their hats; he proposed to add some qualifying expression to the approbation of the French Revolution, a de

claration of attachment to the principles of our own Constitution; he said Mr. Tooke spoke in a figurative manner of the former Government of France; he described it as a vessel so foul and decayed, that no repair could save it from destruction, that in contrasting our state with that, he said, thank God, the main timbers of our Constitution are sound; he had before observed, however, that some reforms might be necessary; he said that sentiment was received with great disapprobation, and with very rude interruption, insomuch that Lord Stanhope, who was in the chair, interfered; he said it had happened to him, in many public meetings, to differ with and oppose the prisoner, and that he has frequently seen him received with very considerable marks of disapprobation, but he never saw them affect him much; he said that he himself objected to Mr. Tooke's amendment; he thinks he withdrew his amendment, and moved it as a separate motion; he said it was then carried as unanimously as his own motion had been; that original motion and separate motion are in these words:—“That this meeting does most cordially rejoice in the establishment and confirmation of liberty in France; and it beholds with peculiar satisfaction the sentiments of amity and good will which appear to pervade the people of that country towards this kingdom, especially at a time when it is the manifest interest of both states that nothing should interrupt the harmony which at present subsists between them, and which is so essentially necessary to the freedom and happiness, not only of the French nation, but of all mankind.' Mr. Tooke wished to add to his motion some qualifying clause, to guard against misunderstanding and misrepresentation:-that there was a wide difference between England and France; that in France the vessel was so foul and decayed, that no repair could save it from destruction, whereas, in England, we had a noble and stately vessel, sailing proudly on the bosom of the ocean; that her main timbers were sound, though it was true, after so long a course of years, she might want some repairs. Mr. Tooke's motion was,—' That we feel equal satisfaction that the subjects of England, by the virtuous exertions of their ancestors, have not so arduous a task to perform as the French have had, but have only to maintain and improve the Constitution which their ancestors have transmitted to them.'-This was carried unanimously."

The Trial of Warren Hastings still "dragged its slow length along," and in the May of this year Mr. Sheridan was called upon for his Reply on the Begum Charge. It was usual, on these occasions, for the Manager who spoke to be assisted by one of his brother Managers, whose task it was to carry the bag that contained his papers, and to read out whatever Minutes might be referred to in the course of the argument. Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor was the person who undertook this office for Sheridan; but, on