gave a very different explanation of her con- | royal highness, "you are the very man to be duct. She would gladly, she said, see her sons envoy at some small proud German court where and daughters mix in the world, if they could there is nothing to do." do so without risk to their morals. But the profligacy of the people of quality alarmed her. The young men were all rakes; the young women made love, instead of waiting till it was made to them. She could not bear to expose those whom she loved best to the contaminating influence of such society. The moral advan-reigner, was not likely to be a judicious advi tages of the system of education which formed the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumberland, and the Queen of Denmark, may perhaps be questioned. George the Third was indeed no libertine; but he brought to the throne a mind only half opened, and was for some time entirely under the influence of his mother and of his Groom of the Stole, John Stuart Earl of Bute.

commendation for having pointed out and justly reprobated some great abuses which sprang up during the long domination of the Whigs. But it is far easier to point out and reprobate abuses than to propose reforms; and the reforms which Bolingbroke proposed would either have been utterly inefficient, or would have produced much more mischief than they would have removed.

Scandal represented the Groom of the Stoi⚫ as the favoured lover of the Princess-Dowager He was undoubtedly her confidential friend. The influence which the two united exercised over the mind of the king, was for a time un. bounded. The princess, a woman and a fo ser about affairs of state; the earl could scarcely be said to have served even a noviciate in poli tics. His notions of government had been ac quired in the society which had been in the habit of assembling round Frederic at Kew and Leicester House. That society consisted principally of Tories, who had been reconciled to the house of Hanover by the civility with which the prince had treated them, and by the The Earl of Bute was scarcely known, even hope of obtaining high preferment when he by name, to the country which he was soon to should come to the throne. Their political govern. He had indeed, a short time after he creed was a peculiar modification of Toryism. came of age, been chosen to fill a vacancy It was the creed neither of the Tories of the which, in the middle of a parliament, had taken seventeenth nor of the Tories of the nineteenth place among the Scotch representative peers. century; it was the creed, not of Filmer and He had disobliged the Whig ministers by giv- Sacheverell, not of Perceval and Eldon, but of ing some silent votes with the Tories, had con- the sect of which Bolingbroke may be consisequently lost his seat at the next dissolution,dered as the chief doctor. This sect deserves and had never been re-elected. Near twenty years had elapsed since he had borne any part in politics. He had passed some of those years at his seat in one of the Hebrides, and from that retirement he had emerged as one of the household of Prince Frederic. Lord Bute, excluded from public life, had found out many ways of amusing his leisure. He was a tolerabe actor in private theatricals, and was particularly successful in the part of Lothario. A The revolution had saved the nation from handsome leg, to which both painters and sa- one class of evils, but had at the same timetirists took care to give prominence, was among such is the imperfection of all things humanhis chief qualifications for the stage. He de- engendered or aggravated another class of vised quaint dresses for masquerades. He evils which required new remedies. Liberty dabbled in geometry, mechanics, and botany. and property were secure from the attacks of He paid some attention to antiquities and works prerogative. Conscience was respected. N‹ of art, and was considered in his own circle as government ventured to infringe any of the a judge of painting, architecture, and poetry. rights solemnly recognised by the instrumen It is said that his spelling was incorrect. But which had called William and Mary to the though, in our time, incorrect spelling is justly throne. But it cannot be denied that, under considered as a proof of sordid ignorance, it the new system, the public interests and the would be most unjust to apply the same rule public morals were seriously endangered by to people who lived a century ago. The novel corruption and faction. During the long strug of Sir Charles Grandison was published about gle against the Stuarts, the chief object of the time at which Lord Bute made his appear- the most enlightened statesmen had been to ance at Leicester House. Our readers may strengthen the House of Commons. The strug perhaps remember the account which Char-gle was over, the victory was won, the House lotte Grandison gives of her two lovers. One of Commons was supreme in the state; and of them, a fashionable baronet who talks French all the vices which had till then been latent in and Italian fluently, cannot write a line in his the representative system were rapidly deve own language without some sin against ortho-loped by prosperity and power. Scarcely had graphy; the other, who is represented as a the executive government become really remost respectable specimen of the young aristocracy, and something of a virtuoso, is described as spelling pretty well for a lord. On the whole, the Earl of Bute might fairly be called a man of cultivated mind. He was also a man of undoubted honour. But his under-ously at the command of the highest bidder. standing was narrow, and his manners cold and haughty. His qualifications for the part of a statesman were best described by Frederic, who often indulged in the unprincely luxury of neering at his dependents. "Bute," said his

sponsible to the House of Commons, when it began to appear that the House of Commons was not really responsible to the nation. Many of the constituent bodies were under the abso lute control of individuals; many were notori

The debates were not published; it was very seldom known out of doors how a gentleman had voted. Thus, while the ministry was ac countable to the Parliament, the majority of the Parliament was accountable to nobody. Under

such circumstances nothing could be more natura. than that the members should insist on being paid for their votes, should form themselves into combinations for the purpose of raising the price of their votes, and should at critical conjunctures extort large wages by threatening a strike. Thus the Whig ministers of George the First and George the Second were compelled to reduce corruption to a system, and to practise it on a gigantic scale.

If we are right as to the cause of these abuses, we can scarcely be wrong as to the remedy. The remedy was surely not to deprive the House of Commons of its weight in the state. Such a course would undoubtedly have put an end to parliamentary corruption and to parliamentary factions: for, when votes cease to be of importance, they will cease to be bought, and when knaves can get nothing by combining, they will cease to combine. But to destroy corruption and faction by introducing despotism, would have been to cure bad by worse. The proper remedy evidently was, to make the House of Commons responsible to the nation; and this was to be effected in two ways-first, by giving publicity to parliamentary proceedings, and thus placing every member on his trial before the tribunal of public opinion; and secondly, by so reforming the constitution of the House, that no man should be able to sit in it who had not been returned by a respectable and independent body of constituents.

| upright designs? By what means? Inter dicting himself from tl e use of corrup influ ence, what motive was he to address to the Dod. ingtons and Winningtons? Was cupidity, strengthened by habit, to be laid asleep by a few fine sentences about virtue and union?

Absurd as this theory was, it had many ad. mirers, particularly among men of letters. It was now to be reduced to practice; and the result was, as any man of sagacity must have foreseen, the most piteous and ridiculous of failures.

On the very day of the young king's accession, appeared some signs which indicated the approach of a great change. The speech which he made to his council was not submitted to the cabinet. It was drawn up by Bute, and contained some expressions which might be construed into reflections on the conduct of affairs during the late reign. Pitt remon strated, and begged that these expressions migh be softened down in the printed copy; but it was not till after some hours of altercation that Bute yielded; and, even after Bute had yielded, the king affected to hold out till the following afternoon. On the same day on which this singular contest took place, Bute was not only sworn of the privy council, bu! introduced into the cabinet.

Soon after this, Lord Holdernesse, one of the secretaries of state, in pursuance of a plan concerted with the court, resigned the seals. Bute was instantly appointed to the vacant place. A general election speedily followed, and the new secretary entered parliament in the only way in which he then could enter it, as one of the sixteen representative peers of Scotland.*

Bolingbroke and Bolingbroke's disciples recommended a very different mode of treating the diseases of the state. Their doctrine was, that a vigorous use of the prerogative by a patriot king would at once break all factious combinations, and supersede the pretended ne- Had the ministers been firmly united, it can cessity of bribing members of Parliament. The scarcely be doubted that they would have been king had only to resolve that he would be able to withstand the court. The parliamentmaster, that he would not be held in thraldomary influence of the Whig aristocracy, comby any set of men, that he would take for min- bined with the genius, the virtue, and the isters any persons in whom he had confidence, fame of Pitt, would have been irresistible. without distinction of party, and that he would | restrain his servants from influencing, by immoral means, either the constituent bodies or the representative body. This childish scheme proved that those who proposed it knew nothing of the nature of the evil with which they pretended to deal. The real cause of the prevalence of corruption and faction was, that a House of Commons, not accountable to the people, was more powerful than the king. Bolingbroke's remedy could be applied only by a king more powerful than the House of Commons. How was the patriot prince to govern in defiance of the body without whose consent he could not equip a sloop, keep a battalion under arms, send an embassy, or defray even the charges of his own household? Was he to dissolve the Parliament? And what was he likely to gain by appealing to Sudbury and Old Sarum against the venality of their representatives? Was he to send out privy seals? Was he to levy ship-money? If so, this boasted reform must commence in all probability by civil war, and, if consummated, must be consummated by the establishment of absolute monarchy. Or was the patriot king to carry the House of Commons with him in his

But there had been in the cabinet of George the Second latent jealousies and enmities, which now began to show themselves. Pitt had been estranged from his old ally Legge, the chancellor of the exchequer. Some of the ministers were envious of Pitt's popularity; others were, not altogether without cause, disgusted by his imperious and haughty demeanour; others, again, were honestly op posed to some parts of his policy. They admitted that he had found the country in the depths of humiliation, and had raised it to the height of glory; they admitted that he had conducted the war with energy, ability, and splendid success. But they began to hint that the drain on the resources of the state was unexampled, and that the public debt was increasing with a speed at which Montague or Godolphin would have stood aghast. Some of the acquisitions made by our fleets and armies were, it was acknowledged, profitable as well as honourable; but, now that George the Second was dead, a courtier might ven

In the reign of Anne, the House of Lords had resolved that, under the 23d article of Union, no Scotch peer could be created a peer of Great Britain. solution was not annulled till the year 1782.

This re

ure to ask why England was to become a par- | posed to be intimately acquainted with the ty in a dispute between two German powers. whole fiscal system of the country. He had What was it to her whether the house of paid especial attention to the law of Parlia Hapsburg or the house of Brandenburg ruled ment, and was so learned in all things relating in Silesia? Why were the best English regi- to the privileges and orders of the House of ments fighting on the Maine? Why were the Commons, that those who loved him least Prussian battalions paid with English gold? pronounced him the only person competent The great minister seemed to think it beneath to succeed Onslow in the Chair. His speeches him to calculate the price of victory. As long were generally instructive, and sometimes, as the Tower guns were fired, as the streets from the gravity and earnestness with which were illuminated, as French banners were he spoke, even impressive; but never brilcarried in triumph through the streets of Lon-liant, and generally tedious. Indeed, even don, it was to him matter of indifference to when he was at the head of affairs, he somewhat extent the public burdens were augment- times found it difficult to obtain the ear of the ed. Nay, he seemed to glory in the magnitude of these sacrifices, which the people, fascinated by his eloquence and success, had too readily made, and would long and bitterly regret. There was no check on waste or embezzlement. Our commissaries returned from the camp of Prince Ferdinand to buy boroughs, to rear palaces, to rival the magnificence of the old aristocracy of the realm. Already had we borrowed, in four years of war, more than .he most skilful and economical government would pay in forty years of peace. But the prospect of peace was as remote as ever. It could not be doubted that France, smarting and prostrate, would consent to fair terms of accommodation; but this was not what Pitt wanted. War had made him powerful and popular with war, all that was brightest in his life was associated: for war, his talents were peculiarly fitted. He had at length begun to love war for its own sake, and was more disposed to quarrel with neutrals than to make peace with enemies.

House. In disposition as well as in intellect, he differed widely from his brother-in-law. Pitt was utterly regardless of money. He would scarcely stretch out his hand to take it; and, when it came, he threw it away with childish profusion. Grenville, though strictly upright, was grasping and parsimonious. Pitt was a man of excitable nerves, sanguine in hope, easily elated by success and popularity, keenly sensible of injury, but prompt to for give; Grenville's character was stern, melan choly, and pertinacious. Nothing was more remarkable in him than his inclination al ways to look on the dark side of things. He was the raven of the House of Commons, always croaking defeat in the midst of triumphs, and bankruptcy with an overflowing exchequer. Burke, with general applause, compared Grenville, in a time of quiet and plenty, to the evil spirit whom Ovid described looking down on the stately temples and wealthy haven of Athens, and scarce able to refrain from weeping because she could find nothing at which to weep. Such a man was not likely to be popular. But to unpopularity Grenville opposed a dogged determination, which sometimes forced even those who

It was natural that Pitt and Grenville, being such as they were, should take very different views of the situation of affairs. Pitt could see nothing but the trophies; Grenville could see nothing but the bill. Pitt boasted that England was victorious at once in America, in India, and in Germany-the umpire of the Continent the mistress of the sea. Grenville cast up the subsidies, sighed over the army extraordinaries, and groaned in spirit to think that the nation had borrowed eight millions in ons year.

Such were the views of the Duke of Bedford and of the Earl of Hardwicke; but no member of the government held these opinions so strongly as George Grenville, the treasurer of the navy. George Grenville was brother-in-hated him to respect him. law of Pitt, and had always been reckoned one of Pitt's personal and political friends. But it is difficult to conceive two men of talents and integrity more utterly unlike each other. Pitt, as his sister often said, knew nothing accurately except Spenser's Fairy Queen. He had never applied himself steadily to any branch of knowledge. He was a wretched financier. He never became familiar even with the rules of that House of which he was the brightest ornament. He had never studied public law as a system; and was, indeed, so ignorant of the whole With a ministry thus divided, it was not difsubject, that George the Second, on one occa- ficult for Bute to deal. Legge was the first sion, complained bitterly that a man who had who fell. He had given offence to the young never read Vattel should presume to under-king in the late reign, by refusing to support a take the direction of foreign affairs. But these defects were more than redeemed by high and rare gifts; by a strange power of inspiring great masses of men with confidence and affection; by an eloquence which not only delighted the ear, but stirred the blood and brought tears into the eyes; by originality devising plans; by vigour in executing them. Grenville, on the other hand, was by Lature and habit a man of details. He had Dren bred a lawyer; and he had brought the industry and acuteness of the Temple into official and parliamentary life. He was sup

creature of Bute at a Hampshire election. He was now not only turned out, but in the closet, when he delivered up his seal of office, was treated with gross incivility.

Pitt, who did not love Legge, saw this event with indifference. But the danger was now fast approaching himself. Charles the Third of Spain had early conceived a deadly hatred of England. Twenty years before, when he was King of the Two Sicilies, he had been eager to join the coalition against Maria Theresa. But an English fleet had suddenly ap peared in the Bay of Naples. An English

captain had landed, had proceeded to the palace, had laid a watch on the table, and had told his majesty that, within an hour, a treaty of neutrality must be signed, or a bombardment would commence. The treaty was signed; the squadron sailed out of the bay twenty-four hours after it had sailed in; and from that day the ruling passion of the humbled prince was aversion to the English name. He was at length in a situation in which he might hope to gratify that passion. He had recently become King of Spain and the Indies. He saw, with envy and apprehension, the triumphs of our navy, and the rapid extension of our colonial empire. He was a Bourbon, and sympathized with the distress of the house from which he sprang. He was a Spaniard; and no Spaniard could bear to see Gibraltar and Minorca in the possession of a foreign power. Impelled by such feelings, Charles concluded a secret treaty with France. By this treaty, known as the Family Compact, the two powers bound themselves, not in express words, but by the clearest implication, to make war on England in common. Spain postponed the declaration of hostilities only till her fleet, laden with the treasures of America, should have arrived.

The existence of the treaty could not be kept a secret from Pitt. He acted as a man of his capacity and energy might be expected to act. He at once proposed to declare war against Spain, and to intercept the American fleet. He had determined, it is said, to attack without delay both Havanna and the Philippines.

His wise and resolute counsel was rejected. Bute was foremost in opposing it, and was supported by almost the whole cabinet. Some of the ministers doubted, or affected to doubt, the correctness of Pitt's intelligence; some shrank from the responsibility of advising a course so bold and decided as that which he proposed; some were weary of his ascendency, and were glad to be rid of him on any pretext. One only of his colleagues agreed with him, his brother-in-law, Earl Temple.

his wife had been created a peeress in her own right, and a pension of three thousand pounds a-year, for three lives, had been bestowed on himself. It was doubtless thought that the rewards and honours conferred on the great minister would have a conciliatory effect on the public mind. Perhaps, too, it was thought that his popularity, which had partly arisen from the contempt which he had always shown for money, would be damaged by a pension; and, indeed, a crowd of libels instantly ap peared, in which he was accused of having sold his country. Many of his true friends thought that he would have best consulted the dignity of his character by refusing to accept any pecuniary reward from the court. Nevertheless, the general opinion of his talents, virtues, and services remained unaltered. Addresses were presented to him from several large towns. London showed its admiration and affection in a still more marked manner. Soon after his resignation came the Lord Mayor's day. The king and the royal family dined at Guildhall. Pitt was one of the guests. The young sovereign, seated by his bride in his state coach, received a remarkable lesson. He was scarcely noticed. All eyes were fixed on the fallen minister; all acclamations directed to him. The streets, the balconies, the chimney-tops, burst into a roar of delight as his chariot passed by. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs from the windows. The common people clung to the wheels, shook hands with the footmen, and even kissed the horses. Cries of "No Bute!" "No Newcastle salmon!" were mingled with the shouts of "Pitt for ever!" When Pitt entered Guildhall, he was welcomed by loud huzzas and clapping of hands, in which the very magistrates of the city joined. Lord Bute, in the mean time, was hooted and pelted through Cheapside, and would, it was thought, have been in some danger, if he had not taken the precaution of surrounding his carriage with a strong body-guard of boxers. Many persons blamed the conduct of Pitt on this occasion as disrespectful to the king. Indeed, Pitt himself afterwards owned that he had done wrong. He was led into this error, as he was afterwards led into more serious errors, by the influence of his turbulent and mischievous brother-in-law, Temple.

Pitt and Temple resigned their offices. To Pitt the young king behaved at parting in the most gracious manner. Pitt, who, proud and fiery everywhere else, was always meek and humble in the closet, was moved even to tears. The king and the favourite urged him to accept some substantial mark of royal gratitude. Would he like to be appointed governor of Canada? A salary of £5000 a-year should be annexed to the office. Residence would not be required. It was true that the governor of Canada, as the law then stood, could not be a member of the House of Commons. But a bill should be brought in, authorizing Pitt to hold his government together with a seat in Parliament, and in the preamble should be set forth his claims to the gratitude of his country. Pitt answered, with all delicacy, that his anxieties were rather for his wife and family than for himself, and that nothing would be so acceptable to him as a mark of royal goodness, which might be beneficial to those who were The session of Parliament which followed dearest to him. The hint was taken. The Pitt's retirement passed over without any vio. same gazette which announced the retirement lent storm. Lord Bute took on himself the of the secretary of state, announced also, that, most prominent part in the House of Lords. In consideration of his great public services, He had become secretary of state, and indeed

The events which immediately followed Pitt's retirement raised his fame higher than ever. War with Spain proved to be, as he had predicted, inevitable. News came from the West Indies that Martinique had been taken by an expedition which he had sent forth. Havanna fell; and it was known that he had planned an attack on Havanna. Manilla capitulated; and it was believed that he had meditated a blow against Manilla. The American fleet, which he had proposed to intercept, had unloaded an immense cargo of bullion in the haven of Cadiz, before Bute could be convinced that the court of Madrid really entertained hostile intentions.

prime minister, without having once opened as in reality. That coalition, which a few his lips in public except as an actor. There months before had seemed all-powerful, had was, therefore, no small curiosity to know how been dissolved. The retreat of Pitt had de he would acquit himself. Members of the prived the government of popularity. New. House of Commons crowded the bar of the castle had exulted in the fall of the illustrious Lords, and covered the steps of the throne. It colleague whom he envied and dreaded, and was generally expected that the orator would had not foreseen that his own doom was al break down; but his most malicious hearers hand. He still tried to flatter himself that he were forced to own that he had made a better was at the head of the government; but insults figure than they expected. They, indeed, ridi- heaped on insults at length undeceived him. culed his action as theatrical, and his style as Places which had always been considered as tumid. They were especially amused by the in his gift, were bestowed without any refer long pauses which, not from hesitation but ence to him. His expostulations only called from affectation, he made at all the emphatic forth significant hints that it was time for him words, and Charles Townshend cried out, to retire. One day he pressed on Bute the "Minute guns!" The general opinion how- claims of a Whig prelate to the archbishopric ever was, that if Bute had been early practised of York. "If your grace thinks so highly of in debate, he might have become an impres- him," answered Bute, "I wonder that you did sive speaker. not promote him when you had the power." Still the old man clung with a desperate grasp to the wreck. Seldom, indeed, have Christian meekness and Christian humility equalled the meekness and humility of his patient and abject ambition. At length he was forced to understand that all was over. He quitted that court where he had held high office during fortyfive years, and hid his shame and regret among the cedars of Claremont. Bute became first lord of the treasury.

In the Commons, George Grenville had been intrusted with the lead. The task was not, as yet, a very difficult one: for Pitt did not think fit to raise the standard of opposition. His speeches at this time were distinguished, not only by that eloquence in which he excelled all his rivals, but also by a temperance and a modesty which had too often been wanting to his character. When war was declared against Spain, he justly laid claim to the merit of having foreseen what had at length become The favourite had undoubtedly committed a manifest to all, but he carefully abstained great error. It is impossible to imagine a tool from arrogant and acrimonious expressions; better suited to his purposes than that which and this abstinence was the mare honourable he thus threw away, or rather put into the to him, because his temper, never very placid, hands of his enemies. If Newcastle had been was now severely tried, both by gout and by suffered to play at being first minister, Bute calumny. The courtiers had adopted a mode might securely and quietly have enjoyed the of warfare, which was soon turned with far substance of power. The gradual introduction more formidable effect against themselves. of Tories into all the departments of the goHalf the inhabitants of the Grub Street garrets vernment might have been effected without paid their milk-scores, and got their shirts out any violent clamour, if the chief of the great of pawn, by abusing Pitt. His German war, Whig connection had been ostensibly at the his subsidies, his pension, his wife's peerage, head of affairs. This was strongly represented were shin of beef and gin, blankets and baskets to Bute by Lord Mansfield, a man who may of small coal, to the starving poetasters of the justly be called the father of modern Toryism, Fleet. Even in the House of Commons, he of Toryism modified to suit an order of things was, on one occasion during this session, as- under which the House of Commons is the sailed with an insolence and malice which most powerful body in the state. The theories called forth the indignation of men of all par- which had dazzled Bute could not impose on ties; but he endured the outrage with majestic the fine intellect of Mansfield. The temerity patience. In his younger days he had been with which Bute provoked the hostility of but too prompt to retaliate on those who at-powerful and deeply-rooted interests, was distacked him; but now, conscious of his great services, and of the space which he filled in the eyes of all mankind, he would not stoop to personal squabbles. "This is no season," he said, in the debate on the Spanish war, "for altercation and recrimination. A day has arrived when every Englishman should stand forth for his country. Arm the whole; be one people; forget every thing but the public. I Jet you the example. Harassed by slanderers, sinking under pain and disease, for the public forget both my wrongs and my infirmities!" On a general review of his life, we are inclined to think that his genius and virtue never shone with so pure an effulgence as during the session of 1762.

The session drew towards the close; and Bute, emboldened by the acquiescence of the Houses, resolved to strike another great blow, and to become first minister in name as well

pleasing to Mansfield's cold and timid nature. Expostulation, however, was vain. Bute was impatient of advice, drunk with success, eager to be, in show as well as in reality, the head of the government. He had engaged in an undertaking, in which a screen was absolutely necessary to his success, and even to his safety. He found an excellent screen ready in the very place where it was most needed; and he rudely pushed it away.

And now the new system of government came into full operation. For the first time since the accession of the house of Hanover, the Tory party was in the ascendant. The prime minister himself was a Tory. Lord Egremont, who had succeeded Pitt as secretary of state, was a Tory, and the son of a Tory. Sir Francis Dashwood, a man of slender parts, of small experience, and of notoriously im moral character, was made chancellor of the