he managed with such ability, that while he served the king more effectually in his most unwarrantable electoral views than any former minister, however willing, had dared to do, he still preserved all his credit and popularity with the public, whom he assured and convinced that the protection and defence of Hanover with an army of seventy-five thousand men in British pay was the only possible method of securing our possessions or acquisitions in North America. So much easier is it to deceive than to undeceive mankind.

His own disinterestedness and even contempt of money smoothed his way to power, and prevented or silenced a great share of that envy which commonly attends it. Most men think that they have an equal natural right to riches, and equal abilities to make the proper use of them; but not very many of them have the impudence to think themselves qualified for power. Upon the whole he will make a great and shining figure in the annals of this country, notwithstanding the blot which his acceptance of three thousand pounds per annum pension for three lives, on his voluntary resignation of the seals in the first year of the present king, must make in his character, especially as to the disinterested part of it. However, it must be acknowledged that he had those qualities which none but a great man can have, with a mixture of those failings which are the common lot of wretched and imperfect human nature.

CHESTERFIELD.

THE MARQUIS OF ROCKINGHAM.

A MAN worthy to be held in remembrance, because he did not live for himself. His abilities, industry, and influence were employed, without interruption, to the last moment of his life, to give stability to the liberties of his country; security to its landed property; increase to its commerce; independence to its public counsels; and concord to its empire. These were his ends. For the attainment of these ends, his policy consisted in sincerity, fidelity, directness, and constancy. In opposition, he respected the principles of government in administration he provided for the liberties of the people. He employed his moments of power in realizing every thing which he had professed in a popular situation; the distinguishing mark of his public conduct. Reserved in profession, sure in performance, he laid the foundation of a solid confidence.

He far exceeded all other statesmen in the art of drawing together, without the seduction of selfinterest, the concurrence and cooperation of various dispositions and abilities of men, whom he assimilated to his character, and associated in his labours. For it was his aim through life to convert party connexion and personal friendship (which others had rendered subservient only to temporary views and the purposes of ambition) into a lasting depository of his principles; that their energy should not depend upon his life, nor fluctuate with the intrigues of a court, or with capricious fashions amongst the people. But

that, by securing a succession in support of his maxims, the British constitution might be preserved according to its true genius, on ancient foundations, and institutions of tried utility.

The virtues of his private life, and those which he exhibited in the service of the state, were not in him separate principles. His private virtues, without any change in their character, expanded with the occasion into enlarged public affections. The very same tender, benevolent, feeling, liberal mind, which in the internal relations of life conciliated the genuine love of those who see men as they are, rendered him an inflexible patriot. He was devoted to the cause of freedom, not because he was haughty and intractable, but because he was beneficent and humane.

A sober, unaffected, unassuming piety, the basis of all true morality, gave truth and permanence to his virtues.

He died at a fortunate time, before he could feel, by a decisive proof, that virtue like his must be nourished from its own substance only, and cannot be assured of any external support.

Let his successors, who daily behold this monument, consider that it was not built to entertain the eye, but to instruct the mind. Let them reflect that their conduct will make it their glory or their reproach. Let them feel that similarity of manners, not proximity of blood, gives them an interest in this statue.

Remember; resemble; persevere.

BURKE.

SIR GEORGE SAVILLE.

WHEN an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him. I hope that few things which have a tendency to bless or to adorn life, have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it. I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations. He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagination. With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all. His fortune is among the largest; a fortune which wholly unencumbered, as it is, with one single charge for luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser. This private benevolence, expanding itself into patriotism, renders his whole being the estate of the public, in which he has not reserved a peculium for himself of profit, diversion, or relaxation. During the session, the first in, and the last out of the House of Commons; he passes from the senate to the camp; and seldom seeing the seat of his ancestors, he is always in the senate to serve his country, or in the field to defend it. But in all well wrought compositions, some particulars stand out more eminently than the rest; and the things which will carry his name to posterity are

his two bills; I mean that for a limitation of the claims of the crown upon landed estates; and this for the relief of the Roman Catholics. By the former he has emancipated property; by the latter he has quieted conscience; and by both, he has taught that grand lesson to government and subject no longer to regard each other as adverse parties.

BURKE.

JOHN DUNNING, LORD ASHBURTON. JOHN DUNNING (a name to which no title could add lustre) possessed professional talents which may truly be called inimitable; for, besides their superlative excellence, they were peculiarly his own; and as it would scarcely be possible to copy them, so it is hardly probable that nature or education will give them to another. His language was always pure, always elegant; and the best words dropped easily from his lips into the best places with a fluency at all times astonishing, and, when he had perfect health, really melodious: his style of speaking consisted of all the turns, oppositions, and figures, which the old rhetoricians taught, and Cicero frequently practised, but which the austere and solemn spirit of Demosthenes refused to adopt from his first master, and seldom admitted into his orations, political or forensic. Many at the bar and on the bench thought this a vitiated style; but though dissatisfied as critics, yet, to the confusion of all criticism, they were transported as hearers. That faculty, however, in which no mortal ever sur