the king, and of a set of persons who, about | saw his face, except on public days. The this time, began to be designated as the king's whole band, however, always had early and friends. The character of this faction has been drawn by Burke with even more than his usual force and vivacity. Those who know how strongly, through his whole life, his judgment was biassed by his passions, may not unnaturally suspect that he has left us rather a caricature than a likeness; and yet there is scarcely, in the whole portrait, a single touch of which the fidelity is not proved by facts of unquestionable authenticity. The public generally regarded the king's friends as a body of which Bute was the directing soul. It was to no purpose that the earl professed to have done with politics, that he absented himself year after year from the levee and the drawing-room, that he went to the north, that he went to Rome. The notion, that, in some inexplicable manner, he dictated all the measures of the court, was fixed in the minds, not only of the multitude, but of some who had good opportunities of obtaining information, and who ought to have been superior to vulgar prejudices. Our own belief is that these suspicions were unfounded, and that he ceased to have any communication with the king on political matters some time before the dismissal of George Grenville. The supposition of Bute's influence is, indeed, by no means necessary to explain the phenomena. The king, in 1765, was no longer the ignorant and inexperienced boy who had, in 1760, been managed by his mother and his groom of the stole. He had, during several years, observed the struggles of parties, and conferred daily on high questions of state with able and experienced politicians. His way of life had developed his understanding and character. He was now no longer a puppet, but had very decided opinions both of men and things. Nothing could be more natural than that he should have high notions of his own prerogatives, should be impatient of opposition, and should wish all public men to be detached from each other and dependent on himself alone; nor could any thing be more natural than that, in the state in which the political world then was, he should find instruments fit for his purposes. Thus sprang into existence and into note a reptile species of politicians never before and never since known in our country. These men disclaimed all political ties, except those which bound them to the throne. They were willing to coalesce with any party, to abandon any party, to undermine any party, to assault any party, at a moment's notice. To them, all administrations and all oppositions were the same. They regarded Bute, Grenville, Rockingham. Pitt, without one sentiment either of predilection or of aversion. They were the king's friends. It is to be observed that this friendship implied no personal intimacy. These people had never lived with their master, as Dodington at one time lived with his father, or as Sheridan afterwards lived with his son. They never hunted with him in the morning, or played cards with him in the evening; never shared his mutton, or walked with him among his turnips. Only one or two of them ever accurate information as to his personal inclinations. None of these people were high in the administration. They were generally to be found in places of much emolument, little labour, and no responsibility; and these places they continued to occupy securely while the cabinet was six or seven times reconstructed. Their peculiar business was not to support the ministry against the opposition, but to support the king against the ministry. Whenever his majesty was induced to give a reluctant assent to the introduction of some bill which his constitutional advisers regarded as necessary, his friends in the House of Commons were sure to speak against it, to vote against it, to throw in its way every obstruction compatible with the forms of Parliament. If his majesty found it necessary to admit into his closet a Secretary of State or a First Lord of the Treasury whom he disliked, his friends were sure to miss no opportunity of thwarting and humbling the obnoxious minister. In return for these services, the king covered them with his protection. It was to no purpose that his responsible servants complained to him that they were daily betray. ed and impeded by men who were eating the bread of the government. He sometimes justified the offenders, sometimes excused them, sometimes owned that they were to blame, but said that he must take time to consider whether he could part with them. He never would turn them out; and, while every thing else in the state was constantly changing, these sycophants seemed to have a life-estate in their offices. It was well known to the king's friends, that though his majesty had consented to the repeal of the Stamp Act, he had consented with a very bad grace; and that though he had eagerly welcomed the Whigs, when, in his extreme need and at his earnest entreaty, they had undertaken to free him from an insupportable yoke, he had by no means got over his early prejudices against his deliverers. The ministers soon found that, while they were encountered in front by the whole force of a strong opposition, their rear was assailed by a large body of those whom they had regarded as auxiliaries. Two Nevertheless, Lord Rockingham and his adherents went on resolutely with the bill for repealing the Stamp Act. They had on their side all the manufacturing and commercial interests of the realm. In the debates the government was powerfully supported. great orators and statesmen, belonging to two different generations, repeatedly put forth all their powers in defence of the biii. The House of Commons heard Pitt for the last time, and Burke for the first time, and was in doubt to which of them the palm of eloquence should be assigned. It was indeed a splendid sunset and a splendid dawn. For a time the event seemed doubtful. In several divisions the ministers were hard pressed. On one occasion, not less than twelve of the king's friends, all men in office, voted against the government. It was to no purpose that Lord Rockingham remonstrated with the king. His majesty confessed that | bribing members of Parliament. His enemies there was ground for complaint, but hoped that accused him and his friends of weakness, of gentle means would bring the mutineers to a haughtiness, of party spirit; but calumny itself better mind. If they persisted in their mis- never dared to couple his name with corrup conduct, he would dismiss them. At length the decisive day arrived. The gallery, the lobby, the Court of Requests, the staircases, were crowded with merchants from all the great ports of the island. The debate lasted till long after midnight. On the division, the ministers had a great majority. The dread of civil war, and the outcry of all the trading towns of the kingdom, had been too strong for the combined strength of the court and the opposition. tion. Unhappily his government, though one of the best that has ever existed in our country, was also one of the weakest. The king's friends assailed and obstructed the ministers at every turn. To appeal to the king was only to draw forth new promises and new evasions. His majesty was sure that there must be some misunderstanding. Lord Rockingham had bet ter speak to the gentlemen. They should be dismissed on the next fault. The next fault It was in the first dim twilight of a February was soon committed, and his majesty still con morning that the doors were thrown open, and tinued to shuffle. It was too bad. It was quite that the chiefs of the hostile parties showed abominable; but it mattered less as the prorothemselves to the multitude. Conway was re- gation was at hand. He would give the delinceived with loud applause. But when Pitt ap-quents one more chance. If they did not alter peared, all eyes were fixed on him alone. All hats were in the air. Loud and long huzzas accompanied him to his chair, and a train of admirers escorted him all the way to his home. Then came forth Grenville. As soon as he was recognised, a storm of hisses and curses broke forth. He turned fiercely on the crowd, and caught one man by the throat. The bystanders were in great alarm. If a scuffle began, none could say how it might end. Fortunately the person who had been collared only said, "If I may not hiss, sir, I hope I may laugh," and laughed in Grenville's face. The majority had been so decisive, that all the opponents of the ministry, save one, were disposed to let the bill pass without any further contention. But solicitation and expostulation were thrown away on Grenville. His indomitable spirit rose up stronger and stronger under the load of public hatred. He fought out the battle obstinately to the end. On the last reading he had a sharp altercation with his brother-in-law, the last of their many sharp altercations. Pitt thundered in his loftiest tones against the man who had wished to dip the ermine of a British king in the blood of the British people. Grenville replied with his wonted intrepidity and asperity. "If the tax," he said, "were still to be laid on, I would lay it on. For the evils which it may produce my accuser is answerable. His profusion made it necessary. His declarations against the constitutional powers of king, lords, and commons, have made it doubly necessary. I do not envy him the huzza. Í glory in the hiss. If it were to be done again, I would do it." their conduct next session, he should not have one word to say for them. He had already resolved that, long before the commencement of the next session, Lord Rockingham should cease to be minister. We have now come to a part of our story which, admiring as we do the genius and the many noble qualities of Pitt, we cannot relate without much pain. We believe that, at this conjuncture, he had it in his power to give the victory either to the Whigs or to the king's friends. If he had allied himself closely with Lord Rockingham, what could the court have done? There would have been only one alternative, the Whigs or Grenville; and there could be no doubt what the king's choice would be. He still remembered, as well he might, with the utmost bitterness, the thraldom from which his uncle had freed him, and said about this time, with great vehemence, that he would sooner see the devil come into his closet than Grenville. And what was there to prevent Pitt from allying himself with Lord Rockingham ? On all the most important questions their views were the same. They had agreed in condemning the peace, the Stamp Act, the general warrants, the seizure of papers. The points in which they differed were few and unimportant. In integrity, in disinterestedness, in hatred of corruption, they resembled each other. Their personal interests could not clash. They sat in different houses, and Pitt had always declared that nothing should induce him to be first lord of the treasury. If the opportunity of forming a coalition The repeal of the Stamp Act was the chief beneficial to the state, and honourable to all measure of Lord Rockingham's government. concerned, was suffered to escape, the fault But that government is entitled to the praise was not with the Whig ministers. They beof having put a stop to two oppressive prac-haved towards Pitt with an obsequiousness tices, which, in Wilkes's case, had attracted the notice and excited the just indignation of the public. The House of Commons was induced by the ministers to pass a resolution, condemning the use of general warrants, and another resolution, condemning the seizure of papers in cases of libel. It must be added, to the lasting honour of Lord Rockingham, that his administration was the first which, during a long course of years, pad the courage and the virtue to refrain from which, had it not been the effect of sincere admiration and of anxiety for the public interests, might have been justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to understand that, if he chose to join their ranks, they were ready to receive him, not as an associate, but as a leader. They had proved their respect for him by bestowing a peerage on the person who, at that time, enjoyed the largest share of his confidence, Chief Justice Pratt. What then was there to divide Pitt from the Whigs? What, on the other hand, was there in common between him and the king's friends, that he should lend himself to their purposes-he who had never owed any thing to flattery or intrigue, ne whose eloquence and independent spirit had overawed two generations of slaves and jobbers, he who had twice been forced by the enthusiasm of an admiring nation on a reluctant prince? part of his life, with the wealthiest of the couquerors of Bengal and Tanjore. At Burton Pynsent, he ordered a great extent of ground to be planted with cedars. Cedars enough for the purpose were not to be found in Somersetshire. They were therefore collected in Lon don, and sent down by land carriage. Relays of labourers were hired; and the work went on all night by torchlight. No man could be more abstemious than Pitt; yet the profusion of his kitchen was a wonder even to epicures. appetite was capricious and fanciful; and at whatever moment he felt inclined to eat, he expected a meal to be instantly on the table. Other circumstances might be mentioned, such as separately are of little moment, but such as, when taken together, and when viewed in connection with the strange events which followed, justify us in believing that his mind was already in a morbid state. Unhappily the court had gained Pitt, not, it is true, by those ignoble means which were employed when such men as Rigby and Wed-Several dinners were always dressing; for his derburn were to be won, but by allurements suited to a nature noble even in its aberrations. The king set himself to seduce the one man who could turn the Whigs out without letting Grenville in. Praise, caresses, promises, were lavished on the idol of the nation. He, and he alone, could put an end to faction, could bid defiance to all the powerful connections in the land united, Whigs and Tories, Rockinghams, Bedfords, and Grenvilles. These blandishments produce a great effect. For though Pitt's spirit was high and manly, though his eloquence was often exerted with formidable effect against the court, and though his theory of government had been learned in the school of Locke and Sidney, he had always regarded the person of the sovereign with profound veneration. As soon as he was brought face to face with royalty, his imagination and sensibility became too strong for his principles. His Whigism thawed and disappeared; and he became, for the time, a Tory of the old Ormond pattern. Nor was he by any means unwilling to assist in the work of dissolving all political connections. His own weight in the state was wholly independent of such connections. He was therefore inclined to look on them with dislike, and made far too little distinction between gangs of knaves associated for the mere purpose of robbing the public, and confederacies of honourable men for the promotion of great public objects. Nor had he the sagacity to perceive that the strenuous efforts which he made to annihilate all parties tended only to establish the ascendency of one party, and that the basest and most hateful of all. Soon after the close of the session of Parliament, Lord Rockingham received his dismissal. He retired, accompanied by a firm body of friends, whose consistency and uprightness enmity itself was forced to admit. None of them had asked or obtained any pension or any sinecure, either in possession or in reversion. Such disinterestedness was then rare among politicians. Their chief, though not a man of bril liant talents, had won for himself an honourable fame, which he kept pure to the last. He had, in spite of difficulties which seemed almost insurmountable, removed great abuses and averted a civil war. Sixteen years later, in a dark and terrible day, he was again called upon to save the state, brought to the very brink of ruin by the same perfidy and obstinacy which had embarrassed, and at length overthrown, his first administration. Pitt was planting in Somersetshire when he was summoned to court by a letter written with the royal hand. He instantly hastened to London. The irritability of his mind and body were increased by the rapidity with which he travelled; and when he reached his journey's end he was suffering from fever. Ill as he was, he saw the king at Richmond, and undertook to form an administration. It may be doubted whether he would have been thus misled, if his mind had been in full Pitt was scarcely in the state in which a health and vigour. But the truth is, that he man should be who has to conduct delicate and had for some time been in an unnatural state arduous negotiations. In his letters to his wife, of excitement. No suspicion of this sort had he complained that the conferences in which yet got abroad. His eloquence had never it was necessary for him to bear a part heated shone with more splendour than during the his blood and accelerated his pulse. From recent debates. But people afterwards called other sources of information we learn, that his to mind many things which ought to have language, even to those whose co-operation he roused their apprehensions. His habits were wished to engage, was strangely peremptory gradually becoming more and more eccentric. and despotic. Some of his notes written at A horror of all loud sounds, such as is said to this time have been preserved, and are in a have been one of the many oddities of Wallen-style which Louis the Fourteenth would have stein, grew upon him. Though the most affec- been too well bred to employ in addressing tionate of fathers, he could not at this time any French gentleman. bear to hear the voices of his own children,| In the attempt to dissolve all parties, Pitt and laid out great sums at Hayes in buying up met with some difficulties. Some Whigs, whom houses contiguous to his own, merely that he the court would gladly have detached from might have no neighbours to disturb him with Lord Rockingham, rejected all offers. The their noise. He then sold Hayes, and took Bedfords were perfectly willing to break with possession of a villa at Hampstead, where he Grenville; but Pitt would not come up to their again began to purchase houses to right and terms. Temple, whom Pitt at first meant to left. In expense, indeed, he vied, during this place at the head of the treasury, proved in tractable. A coldness indeed had, during some | them all in perfect subordination to himself, and in perfect harmony with each other. We shall soon see how the experiment succeeded. On the very day on which the new prime minister kissed hands, three-fourths of that popularity which he had long enjoyed without a rival, and to which he owed the greater part of his authority, departed from him. A violent outcry was raised, not against that part of his conduct which really deserved severe condem months, been fast growing between the brothersin-law, so long and so closely allied in politics. Pitt was angry with Temple for opposing the repeal of the Stamp Act. Temple was angry with Pitt for refusing to accede to that family league which was now the favourite plan at Stowe. At length the Earl proposed an equal partition of power and patronage, and offered, on this condition, to give up his brother George. Pitt thought the demand ex-nation, but against a step in which we can see orbitant, and positively refused compliance. A bitter quarrel followed. Each of the kinsmen was true to his character. Temple's soul festered with spite, and Pitt's swelled into contempt. Temple represented Pitt as the most odious of hypocrites and traitors. Pitt held a different, and perhaps a more provoking tone. Temple was a good sort of man enough, whose single title to distinction was, that he had a large garden, with a large piece of water, and a great many pavilions and summerhouses. To his fortunate connection with a great orator and statesman he was indebted for an importance in the state which his own talents could never have gained for him. That importance had turned his head. He had begun to fancy that he could form administrations, and govern empires. It was piteous to see a well-meaning man under such a delusion. In spite of all these difficulties, a ministry was made such as the king wished to see, a ministry in which all his majesty's friends were comfortably accommodated, and which, with the exception of his majesty's friends, contained no four persons who had ever in their lives been in the habit of acting together. Men who had never concurred in a single vote found themselves seated at the same board. The office of paymaster was divided between two persons who had never exchanged a word. Most of the chief posts were filled either by personal adherents of Pitt, or by members of the late ministry, who had been induced to remain in place after the dismissal of Lord Rockingham. To the former class belonged Pratt, now Lord Camden, who accepted the great seal, and Lord Shelburne, who was made one of the secretaries of state. To the latter class belonged the Duke of Grafton, who became First Lord of the Treasury, and Conway who kept his old position both in the government and in the House of Commons. Charles Townshend, who had belonged to every party, and cared for none, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Pitt himself was declared prime minister, but refused to take any laborious office. He was created Earl of Chatham, and the privy seal was delivered to him. It is scarcely necessary to say, that the failare, the complete and disgraceful failure, of this arrangement, is not to be ascribed to any want of talents in the persons whom we have named. None of them were deficient in abilities; and four of them, Pitt himself, Shelburne, Camden, and Townshend, were men of high intellectual eminence. The fault was not in the materials, but in the principle on which the materials were put together. Pitt had mixed up these conflicting elements. in the full confidence that he should be able to keep nothing to censure. His acceptance of a peer- The clamour against Pitt appears to have had a serious effect on the foreign relations of the country. His name had till now acted like a spell at Versailles and Saint Ildefonso, English travellers on the Continent had remarked, that nothing more was necessary to silence a whole room-full of boasting Frenchmen, than to drop a hint of the proha bility that Mr. Pitt would return to power. In | House of Lords, were in defence of his conduct The breach which had been made in the government by the defection of so many of the Rockinghams, Chatham hoped to supply by the help of the Bedfords. But with the Bedfords ne could not deal as he had dealt with other parties. It was to no purpose that he bade high for one or two members of the faction, in the hope of detaching them from the rest. They were to be had; but they were to be had only in the lot. There was indeed for a moment some wavering and some disputing among them. But at length the counsels of the shrewd and resolute Rigby prevailed. They determined to stand firmly together, and plainly intimated to Chatham that he must take them all, or that he should get none of them. The event proved that they were wiser in their generation than any other connection in the state. In a few months they were able to dictate their own terms. The most important public measure of Lord Chatham's administration was his celebrated interference with the corn-trade. The harvest had been bad; the price of food was high; and he thought it necessary to take on himself the responsibility of laying an embargo on the exportation of grain. When Parliament met, this proceeding was attacked by the opposition as unconstitutional, and defended by the ministers as indispensably necessary. At last, an act was passed to indemnify all who had been concerned in the embargo. The first words uttered by Chatham, in the It gradually became clearer and clearer that he was in a distempered state of mind. His attention had been drawn to the territorial acquisitions of the East India Company, and he determined to bring the whole of that great subject before Parliament. He would not, however, confer on the subject with any of his colleagues. It was in vain that Conway, who was charged with the conduct of business in the House of Commons, and Charles Townshend, who was responsible for the direction of the finances, begged for some glimpse of light as to what was in contemplation. Chatham's answers were sullen and mysterious. He must decline any discussion with them; he did not want their assistance; he had fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in the House of Commons. This person was a member who was not connected with the government, and who neither had, nor deserved to have, the ear of the House-a noisy, purseproud, illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mis-pronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be supposed that these strange proceedings produced a ferment through the whole political world. The city was in commotion. The East India Company invoked the faith of char ters. Burke thundered against the ministers The ministers looked at each other, and knew not what to say. In the midst of the confusion, Lord Chatham proclaimed himself gouty, and retired to Bath. It was announced, after some time, that he was better, and that he would shortly return, that he would soon put every thing in order. A day was fixed for his arrival in London. But when he reached the Castle inn at Marlborough, he stopped, shut himself up in his room, and remained there some weeks. Everybody who travelled that road was amazed by the number of his attendants. Footmen and grooms, dressed in his family livery, filled the whole inn, though one of the largest in England, and swarmed in the streets of the little town. The truth was, that the invalid had insisted that, during his stay, all the waiters and stable-boys of the Castle should wear his livery. His colleagues were in despair. The Duke of Grafton proposed to go down to Marlborough in order to consult the oracle. But he was informed that Lord Chatham must decline all conversation on business. In the mean time, all the parties which were out of office, Bedfords, Grenvilles, and Rockinghams, joined to oppose the distracted government on the vote for the land-tax. They were reinforced |