had given them reason to apprehend the most alarming consequences. That it had lately undergone material alterations, by which the commons' house of parliament had received an improper and dangerous bias, he believed it would be idle for him to attempt to prove. That beautiful frame of government, which had made us the envy and admiration of mankind, and in which the people were entitled to hold so distinguished a share, was so far dwindled and departed from its original purity, that the representatives ceased in a great degree to be connected with the people. It was not his intention to enter into any inquiry respecting the proper mode of reform, or to consider what would most completely tally and square with the original frame of the constitution: this he left to a committee; but he still felt it his duty to state some facts and circumstances which, in his opinion, made this object of reform essentially necessary. He believed, indeed, that there was no member of that house who would not acknowledge that the representation was incomplete. It was perfectly understood that there were some of the boroughs under the influence of the treasury, and others totally possessed by them. It was manifest that such boroughs had not one quality of representation in them. They had no share or concern in the general interests of the country; and they had in fact no stake for which to appoint guardians in the popular assembly. The influence of the treasury in some boroughs was also contested, not by the electors of those boroughs, but by some powerful man, who assumed or pretended to an hereditary property in what ought only to be the rights and privileges of the electors. There were other boroughs, which had now in fact no actual existence but in the return of members to that house. They had no existence in property, in population, in trade, or in weight of any kind. Another set of boroughs and towns claimed to themselves the right of bringing their votes to market. They had no other market, no other property, and no other stake in the country, than the property and price which they procured for their votes. Such boroughs were the most dangerous of all others. So far from consulting the interests of their country in the choice which they made, they held out their borough to the best purchaser; and in fact some of them belonged more to the nabob of Arcot, than they did to the people of England. They were towns and boroughs more within the jurisdiction of the Carnatic, than the limits of the empire of Great Britain; and it was a fact pretty well known, and generally understood, that the nabob of the Carnatic had no less than seven or eight members in that house. There was no man in that house who possessed more reverence for the constitution, and more respect even for its vestiges, than himself. But he was afraid that the reverence and enthusiasm which Englishmen entertained for the constitution would, if not suddenly prevented, be the means of destroying it; for, such was their enthusiasm, that they would not even remove its defects, for fear of touching its beauty. But so great was his reverence for the beauties of that constitution, that he wished to remove those defects, as he clearly perceived that they were defects which altered the radical principles of the constitution. That a reform of the present parliamentary representation was indispensably necessary, was the sentiment of some of the first and greatest characters in the kingdom; and he should also observe that he well knew it to be the sentiment of his much honoured father, the late earl of Chatham,

who was firmly of opinion that a reform of the representation was ab solutely requisite for the security of the liberties of the people of this country." He concluded with moving "that a committee should be appointed to inquire into the state of the representation in parliament, and to report to the house their observations thereon.” This proposition was seconded by Alderman Sawbridge, and supported by Sir George Saville. Mr Fox, although then a minister, spoke in favour of reform; and instanced the county of Middlesex, which, he said, was so little represented, that although it contained one-eighth part of the whole number of the electors of Great Britain, although it paid one-sixth part of the land-tax, and a full third of all other taxes,-yet it had not more than a fifty-fifth part of the representation. The motion, however, on a division, was rejected; but the majority was small, for it only consisted of 40, the numbers being 161 to 121.

When Lord Shelburne became premier, Pitt-then only twenty-three years of age was called to the office of chancellor of the exchequer ; and when, in the course of a few months, the Coalition drove his lordship from office, the premiership itself was offered by the king to the youthful chancellor, but declined. Bishop Tomline praises this act, and regards it "as sufficient to refute the charge of inordinate ambition which has been sometimes urged against Mr Pitt;" but it may fairly be asked whether this act was not one quite as much of mere prudence as self-denial? What chance could he and his party have had at this juncture, in resisting a coalition so powerful and indefatigable as that which had just prevailed against Shelburne,-a coalition too against which-as has been well observed-after Fox's East India bill had trebled its unpopularity-he himself with so much difficulty kept his ground. The Coalition, however, would have gladly availed themselves of Pitt's talents by retaining him in the office of chancellor; but he peremptorily declined any negotiation with the party. When the illfated India bill was brought before the house, it experienced a systematic and determined opposition from the ex-chancellor of the exchequer, who chiefly insisted upon two objections: the one founded in the infringement, or rather the violation, of the charter, the other on the new and unconstitutional influence it was calculated to create. He allowed that the government of India wanted reform, but he contended that this was a tyrannical alteration that broke through every principle of justice and integrity. By the bill before the house an attack was made on the most solemn charters; it also pointed a fatal blow against the integrity and the faith of parliament; and, in addition to this, it broke through every tie by which man was bound to man. The charter in question, he argued, was not indebted for its birth or its pretensions to the foolish prepossession, or the mad prodigality, of a Plantagenet, a Tudor, or a Stuart: it was a fair purchase made of the public, an equal compact for reciprocal advantages between the proprietors and the nation at large. The Coalition having wrecked itself upon this bill, and the king being determined to shake off his ministers whatever the effort might cost, Pitt was again solicited to accept the premiership, and at last consented to make the bold experiment. He was now only in his twenty-fifth year; the opposition he knew he would have to encounter was headed by men of the highest talents; and the Coalition party was still paramount in the house. Yet, in the face of all these obsta

cles, the young statesman undertook the premiership, and ultimately triumphed by an appeal to the people in a general election, in which upwards of 160 of his opponents were unseated, and he gained the original object of his ambition in being returned for Cambridge, although but a few months before, on his repeating his attempt to stand for that university, some of the heads of houses had almost shut the door in his face, and expressed great astonishment "at the young man's impudence in daring so to disturb the peace of the university!" He now passed an India bill, differing in several points from that which he had unsuc cessfully proposed in the preceding parliament. But the new minister was placed in a very delicate and embarrassing situation by a motion of Mr Alderman Sawbridge, (June 16th, 1784,) “that a committee be appointed to inquire into the present state of the commons of Great Britain in parliament." The alderman affected to be desirous of resigning this business to the chancellor of the exchequer, who had on a former occasion brought forward questions upon the same subject, and in whose hands, he conceived, it would assuredly be attended with a greater prospect of success. Mr Pitt, however, extricated himself with great adroitness; but from that moment he appears to have lost all pretensions to consistency. He declined the proposal on account, he said, of the pressure of public business which did not leave his mind sufficiently at leisure to enter on the disquisition and arrangement of a subject so peculiarly complicated and extensive. He added, that "this was not, in his opinion, the proper time for bringing forward the question; and that it might be urged with a greater probability of success on some future occasion." He declared his own resolution to offer something on the subject early in the next session; and although the precipitate discussion had not his approbation, the business itself should have every support he was able to afford it. The previous question was moved and carried by his friend, Lord Mulgrave, towards the close of the debate! Mr Pitt being now invested with full power as premier, exercised all the functions of office, without check or control. Finding that he possessed a decisive majority, both in the cabinet and the two houses of parliament, he appears from this moment to have yielded himself wholly up to a temperament naturally lofty in the extreme, and to have cared but little for that popularity which he had courted with equal assiduity and success so long as it was necessary to his advantage. On the 29th of March, 1786, he proposed, in a speech of six hours' duration,' his famous scheme of a Sinking fund. The proposition which he submitted to the house was, the appropriation of the annual sum of one million to be invariably applied to the liquidation of the national debt. This annual million he proposed to vest in the hands of certain commissioners, to be by them applied regularly to the purchase of stock; so that no sum should ever lie within the grasp large enough to tempt him to violate this sacred deposit. The interests annually dis

Pitt's facility as a speaker was strikingly shown on this occasion. He had passed the morning in making calculations on the subject, and in preparing the resolutions he intended to bring forward; after having taken a short walk, to arrange his ideas, he dined with his sister and another lady, with whom he conversed with great gaiety and apparent unconcern, for some time; he then went down to the house, and delivered his elaborate and far-extended speech, as Fox properly termed it, without committing a single blunder of calculation, or omitting one necessary argument.

charged, were, conformably to this plan, to be added to, and incorporated with, the original fund, so that it would operate with a determinate and accelerated velocity. This fund was also to be assisted by the annuities granted for different terms, which would from time to time fall in within the limited period of twenty-eight years; at the expiration of which, he calculated that the fund would produce an income of four millions per annum! The commissioners to be nominat under the act, were the chancellor of the exchequer, the speaker of the house of commons, the master of the rolls, the governor and deputy-governor of the bank of England, and the accomptant-general of the high court of chancery. Strange to say, this clumsy and ridiculous scheme was received with approbation by all parties. The only amendment of any material consequence suggested on Pitt's plan was, in the progress of the bill, offered by Fox, "that whenever a new loan should hereafter be made, the commissioners should be empowered to accept the loan, or such proportion of it, as should be equal to the cash then in their hands; the interest and douceur annexed to which should be applied to the purposes of the sinking fund." This amendment was readily and candidly accepted by Pitt, and the bill finally passed with great approbation. The merest tyro in political arithmetic of our own days would have told the minister that, as in the family so in the state, the excess of income above expenditure is the only real sinking fund by which any debt, whether private or public, can be discharged.2

In 1788 the famous Regency question was brought on by the illness of his majesty. A motion was made by Pitt, for the appointment of a committee to inspect the journals for precedents. "With respect

to precedents, there were," said Fox, "notoriously none which applied to the present instance; and he affirmed that all that was requisite to their ultimate decision was now embodied in a report upon their table. By that report they had ascertained the incapacity of the sovereign; and he advanced, as a proposition deducible from the principles of the constitution, and the analogy of the law of hereditary succession, that whenever the sovereign was incapable of exercising the functions of his high office, the heir-apparent, if of full age and capacity, had as indisputable a claim to the exercise of the executive authority, in the name and on the behalf of the sovereign, during his incapacity, as in the case of his natural demise." "13 Pitt immediately, with much apparent warmth, declared, "that the assertion which had been made by Fox was little short of treason against the constitution; and he pledged himself to prove, that the heir-apparent, in the instance in question, had no more legal right to the exercise of the executive power than any other of his majesty's subjects; and that it belonged entirely to the two remaining branches of the legislature to make such a provision for supplying the temporary deficiency as they might think proper. To assert an inherent right in the prince of Wales to assume the government, he said, was virtually to revive those exploded ideas of the divine and indefeasi

On this subject, and the nature and operation of Sinking funds' in general, we have pleasure in referring the reader to an admirable article in the Edinburgh Review,' vol. xxxix.

When Fox first stated his opinion in parliament on this important subject, Pitt, it is said, exultingly slapped his thigh, and exclaimed, "I'll un-whig the gentleman for the remainder of his life !"

ble authority of princes, which had so justly sunk into contempt and almost into oblivion. Kings and princes derive their power from the people; and to the people alone, through the organ of their representatives, did it appertain to decide in cases for which the constitution had made no specific or positive provision." Thus, in this famous political question, it was remarkable that Fox, the steady, uniform, and powerful advocate of the people, appeared to lean to prerogative; while Pitt, who had been loudly and justly accused of deserting the principles of liberty, stood forth their intrepid and zealous assertor. All those popu

lar arguments and primary axioms of government on which the friends of liberty delight to dwell were upon this occasion urged by Pitt with energy and eloquence. If he was sincere in this, his sentiments, as will appear in the sequel, afterwards underwent an entire revolution.

At the opening of the session of 1792, the table of the house of commons was covered with petitions from all parts of the kingdom, imploring the abolition of the slave-trade. On the 2d of April Wilberforce moved the question of abolition in a most eloquent speech, in which he declared “that from his exertions in this cause he had found happiness, though not hitherto success. It enlivened his waking, and soothed his evening-hours; and he could not recollect without singular satisfaction, that he had demanded justice for millions who could not ask it for themselves." Whitebread distinguished himself by the energy and animation of his remarks. He observed, "that a fatality attended the arguments of those who defended this detestable and shocking trade. In an account of selling the stock of a plantation, one of the evidences in favour of the slave-merchants said, that the slaves fetched less than the common price, because they were damaged.' Damaged! what is this but an acknowledgment that they are worn down by labour, sickness, by every species of ill treatment. A trade attended with such dreadful evils ought not to be thought of; it cannot be mentioned without horror, nor continued without violating every moral and religious obligation!" Dundas, now advanced to the dignity of secretary of state by the resignation of the duke of Leeds, recommended to the house the adoption of a middle and moderate plan, such as would reconcile the interests of the West India islands with the eventual abolition of the trade; and concluded by moving "that the word gradual might be inserted before abolition." But Pitt declared his decided disapprobation of the amendment; and in a speech fraught with argument and eloquence, conjured the house not to postpone even for an hour the great and necessary work of abolition. Reflect," said he, "on the eighty thousand persons annually torn from their native land! on the connections which are broken! on the friendships,-attachments,―relationships that are burst asunder! There is something in the horror of this trade that surpasses all the bounds of imagination! How shall we repair the mischiefs we have brought upon that continent! If, knowing the miseries we have caused, we refuse even now to put a stop to them, how greatly aggravated will be the guilt of Britain !" On the 27th of the same month he thus expressed himself on the same subject: "I do not understand complimenting away the lives of so many human beings. I do not understand the principle on which a few individuals are to be complimented, and their minds set at rest, at the expense, and total sacrifice, of the interest, the security, the happiness, of a whole.

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