infinitely more trouble to the ministers of It was a favourite exercise among the Greek Charles II. than to any minister of later times; sophists to write panegyrics on characters profor, in the time of Charles II. the House was verbial for depravity. One professor of rheto checking ministers in whom it did not confide. ric sent to Socrates a panegyric on Busiris; Now that its ascendency is fully established, it and Isocrates himself wrote another which has either confides in ministers or turns them out. come down to us. It is, we presume, from an This is undoubtedly a far better state of things ambition of the same kind that some writers than that which Temple wished to introduce. have lately shown a disposition to eulogize The modern cabinet is a far better Executive Shaftesbury. But the attempt is vain. The Council than his. The worst House of Com- charges against him rest on evidence not to be mons that has sat since the Revolution was a invalidated by any arguments which human far more efficient check on misgovernment wit can devise; or by any information which than his fifteen independent councillors would may be found in old trunks and escrutoires. have been. Yet, every thing considered, it seems to us that his plan was the work of an observant, ingenious, and fertile mind. It is certain that, just before the Restoration, he declared to the regicides that he would be damned, body and soul, rather than suffer a On this occasion, as on every occasion on hair of their heads to be hurt; and that, just which he came prominently forward, Temple after the Restoration, he was one of the judges had the rare good fortune to please the public who sentenced them to death. It is certain as well as the sovereign. The general exulta- that he was a principal meniber of the mos! tion was great when it was known that the old profligate administration ever known; and Council, made up of the most odious tools of that he was afterwards a principal member of power, was dismissed-that small interior the most profligate Opposition ever known. It committees, rendered odious by the recent is certain that, in power, he did not scruple to memory of the Cabal, were to be disused-and violate the great fundamental principle of the that the king would adopt no measure till it constitution, in order to exalt the Catholics; had been discussed and approved by a body, and that, out of power, he did not scruple to of which one half consisted of independent violate every principle of justice, in order to gentlemen and noblemen, and in which such destroy them. There were in that age honest persons as Russell, Cavendish, and Temple men,-William Penn is an instance-who himself had seats. Town and country were in valued toleration so highly, that they would a ferment of joy. The bells were rung, bon-willingly have seen it established, even by an fires were lighted, and the acclamations of England were re-echoed by the Dutch. who considered the influence obtained by Temple as a certain omen of good for Europe. It is, indeed, much to the honour of his sagacity, that every one of his great measures should, in such times, have pleased every party which he had any interest in pleasing. This was the case with the Triple Alliance-with the Treaty which concluded the Second Dutch War-with the marriage of the Prince of Orange-and, finally, with the institution of this new Council. The only people who grumbled were those popular leaders of the House of Commons who were not among the thirty; and if our view of the measure be correct, they were precisely the people who had good reason to grumble. They were precisely the people whose activity and whose influence the new Council was intended to destroy. But there was very soon an end of the bright hopes and loud applauses with which the publication of this scheme had been hailed. The perfidious levity of the king and the ambition of the chiefs of parties produced the instant, entire, and irremediable failure of a plan which nothing but firmness, public spirit, and selfdenial on the part of all concerned in it could conduct to a happy issue. Even before the project was divulged, its author had already found reason to apprehend that it would fail. Considerable difficulty was experienced in framing the list of councillors. There were two men in particular about whom the king and Temple could not agree,-two men deeply tainted with the vices common to the English statesmen of that age, but unrivalled in talents, address, and influence. These were the Earl of Shaftesbury, and George Saville Viscount Halifax. He illegal exertion of the prerogative. There were many honest men who dreaded arbitrary power so much, that, on account of the alliance between Popery and arbitrary power, they were disposed to grant no toleration to Papists On both those classes we look with indulgence, though we think both in the wrong. But Shaftesbury belonged to neither class. united all that was worst in both. From the friends of toleration he borrowed their contempt for the constitution; and from the friends of liberty their contempt for the rights of conscience. We never can admit that his conduct as a member of the Cabal was redeemed by his conduct as a leader of Opposition. On the contrary, his life was such, that every part of it, as if by a skilful contrivance, reflects infamy on every other. We should never have known how abandoned a prostitute he was in place if we had not known how desperate an incen diary he was out of it. To judge of him fairly we must bear in mind that the Shaftesbury who in office, was the chief author of the Declara tion of Indulgence, was the same Shaftesbury who, out of office, excited and kept up the sa vage hatred of the rabble of London against the very class to whom that Declaration of Indulgence was intended to give illegal relief. It is amusing to see the excuses that are made for him. We will give two specimens. It is acknowledged that he was one of the ministry who had made the alliance with France against Holland, and that this alliance was most pernicious. What, then, is the de fence? Even this-that he betrayed his mas ter's counsels to the Electors of Saxony and Brandenburg, and tried to rouse all the Protestant powers of Germany to defend the States. Again, it is acknowledged that he was deeply concerned in the Declaration of Indulgence, While Shaftesbury was still living, his cha- "politician, With more heads than a beast in vision," and the Ahithophel of Dryden. Butler dwells on Shaftesbury's unprincipled versatility; on his wonderful and almost instinctive skill in discerning the approach of a change of fortune; and in the dexterity with which he extricated himself from the snares in which he left his associates to perish. "Our state-artificer foresaw Which way the world began to draw. Can by their crimes prognosticate, All ways he could to insure his throat." In Dryden's great portrait, on the contrary, violent passion, implacable revenge, boldness amounting to temerity, are the most striking features. Ahithophel is one of the "great wits And againto madress near allied." "A daring pilot in extremity, The dates of the two poems will, we think, thought for the morrow;-he treated the court as if the king were already a prisoner in his hands;-he built on the favour of the multitude, as if that favour were not proverbially inconstant. The signs of the coming reaction were discerned by men of far less sagacity than his; and scared from his side men more consistent than he had ever pretended to be. But on him they were lost. The counsel of Ahithophel,-that counsel which was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God,-was turned into foolishness. He who had become a byword for the certainty with which he foresaw. and the suppleness with which he evaded danger, now, when beset on every side with snares and death, seemed to be smitten with a blindness as strange as his former clearsightedness. and turning neither to the right ror to the left strode straight on with desperate hardihood te his doom. Therefore, after having early ac It has never, we believe, been remarked, that two of the most striking lines in the description of Ahithophel are borrowed, and from a most obscure quarter. In Knolles' History of the Turks, printed more than sixty years before the appearance of Absalom and Ahithophel, are the following verses, under a portrait of the Sultan Mustapha I.:~ "Greatnesse on goodnesse loves to slide, not stand, And leaves for Fortune's ice Vertue's firme land."* Dryden's words are "But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, The circumstance is the more remarkable, because Dryden has really no couplet more intensely Drydenjan, both in thought and expression, than this, of which the whole thought, and almost the whole expression, are stolen. As we are on this subject, we cannot refrain from observing that Mr. Courtenay has done Dryden injustice, by inadvertently attributing to him some feeble lines which are in Tate's part of Absalom and Ahitophel. ty; and that, though an uncertain friend, he was a placable enemy. He voted in favour of Lord Strafford, the victim of the Whigs. He did his utmost to save Lord Russell, the victim of the Tories. And on the whole, we are inclined to think that his public life, though far indeed from faultless, has as few great stains as that of any politician who took an active part in affairs during the troubled and disastrous period of ten years which elapsed between the fall of Lord Danby and the RevoHis mind was much less turned to particu quired, and long preserved, the reputation of infallible wisdom and invariable success, he lived to see a mighty ruin wrought by his own ungovernable passions;-to see the great party which he had led, vanquished, and scattered, and trampled down;-to see all his own devilish enginery of lying witnesses, partial sheriffs, packe 1 juries, unjust judges, bloodthirsty mobs, ready to be employed against himself and his most devoted followers;-to fly from that proud city whose favour had almost raised him to be Mayor of the Palace;-lution. to hide himself in squalid retreats; to cover his gray head with ignominious disguises;-lar observations, and much more to general and he died in hopeless exile, sheltered by a state which he had cruelly injured and insulted, from the vengeance of a master whose favour he had purchased by one series of crimes, and forfeited by another. speculation, than that of Shaftesbury. Shaftes bury knew the king, the Council, the Parlia ment, the city, better than Halifax; but Halifax would have written a far better treatise on political science than Shaftesbury. Shaftesbury shone more in consultation, and Halifax in expedients, and Halifax in arguments. Nothing that remains from the pen of Shaftesbury will bear a comparison with the political tracts of Halifax. Indeed, very little of the prose of that age is so well worth reading as the "Character of a Trimmer," and the "Anatomy of an Equivalent." What particularly strikes us in those works, is the writer's passion for generalization. He was treating of the most excit ing subjects in the most agitated times-he was himself placed in the very thick of the civil conflict:-yet there is no acrimony, nothing inflammatory, nothing personal. He preserves an air of cold superiority, a certain philosophical serenity, which is perfectly marvellous, he treats every question as an abstract question, begins with the widest propositions Halifax had, in common with Shaftesbury, and with almost all the politicians of that age, controversy:-Shaftesbury was more fertile in a very loose morality where the public were concerned; but in his case the prevailing infection was modified by a very peculiar constitution both of heart and head;-by a temper singularly free from gall, and by a refining and skeptical understanding. He changed his course as often as Shaftesbury; but he did not change it to the same extent, or in the same direction. Shaftesbury was the very reverse of a trimmer. His disposition led him generally to do his utmost to exalt the side which was up, and to depress the side which was down. His transitions were from extreme to extreme. While he stayed with a party, he went all lengths for it-when he quitted it, he went all lengths against it. Halifax was emphatically a trimmer,-a trimmer both by intellect and by constitution. The name was fixed on him by his contemporaries; and he was so far from being ashamed of it that he assumed it as a badge of honour. He passed from faction to faction. But instead of adopting and inflaming the passions of those whom he joined, he tried to diffuse among them something of the spirit of those whom he had just left. While he acted with the Opposition, he was suspected of being a spy of the court; and when he had joined the court, all the Tories were dismayed by his republican doctrines. He wanted neither arguments nor eloquence to exhibit what was commonly regarded as his wavering policy in the fairest light. He trimmed, he said, as the temperate zone trims between intolerable heat and intolerable cold -as a good government trims between despotism and anarchy-as a pure church trims between the errors of the Papists and those of the Anabaptists. Nor was this defence by any means without weight; for though there is abundant proof that his integrity was not of strength to withstand the temptations by which his cupidity and vanity were sometimes assailed, yet his dislike of extremes, and a forgiving and compassionate temper which seems to have been natural to him, preserved him from all participation in the worst crimes of his time. If both parties accused him of deserting them, both were compelled to admit that they had great obligations to his humaniVOL. III-47 argues those propositions on general grounds and often, when he has brought out his theo rem, leaves the reader to make the application, without adding an allusion to particular men or to passing events. This speculative turn of mind rendered him a bad adviser in cases which required celerity. He brought forward, with wonderful readiness and copiousness, arguments, replies to those arguments, rejoinders to those replies, general maxims of policy, and analogous cases from history. But Shaftesbury was the man for a prompt decision. Of the parliamen tary eloquence of these celebrated rivals, we can judge only by report; and so judging, we should be inclined to think that, though Shaftesbury was a distinguished speaker, the superiority belonged to Halifax. Indeed the readiness of Halifax in debate, the extent of his knowledge, the ingenuity of his reasoning, the liveliness of his expression, and the silver clearness and sweetness of his voice, seem to have made the strongest impression on his contemporaries. By Dryden he is described as "Of piercing wit and pregnant thought, Endued by nature and by learning taught To move assemblies." His oratory is utterly and irretrievably lost to us, like that of Somers, of Bolingbroke, of Charles Townshend-of many others who were accustomed to rise amidst the breathless expectation of senates, and to sit down amidst reiterated bursts of applause. But old men who lived to admire the eloquence of Pultenes felt. in its meridian, and that of Pitt in its splendid | all business. Accordingly, there soon arose a dawn, still murmured that they had heard no- small interior cabinet, consisting of Essex, thing like the great speeches of Lord Halifax Sunderland, Halifax, and Temple. For a time on the Exclusion Bill. The power of Shaftes- perfect harmony and confidence subsisted bebury over large masses was unrivalled. Ha- tween the four. But the meetings of the thirty lifax was disqualified by his whole character, were stormy. Sharp retorts passed between moral and intellectual, for the part of a dema- Shaftesbury and Halifax, who led the opposite gogue. It was in small circles, and, above all, parties. In the Council, Halifax generally had in the House of Lords, that his ascendency was the advantage. But it soon became apparent that Shaftesbury still had at his back the majority of the House of Commons. The discontents, which the change of ministry had for a moment quieted, broke forth again with redoubled violence; and the only effect which the late measures appeared to have produced was, that the Lord President, with all the dignity and authority belonging to his high place, stood at the head of the Opposition. The impeachment of Lord Danby was eagerly prosecuted. The Commons were determined to exclude the Duke of York from the throne. All offers of compromise were rejected. It must not be forgotten, however, that in the midst of the confusion, one inestimable law,— the only benefit which England has derived from the troubles of that period, but a benefit which may well be set off against a great mass of evil,-the Habeas Corpus Act, was pushed through the Houses, and received the royal assent. Shaftesbury seems to have troubled himself very little about theories of government. Halifax was, in speculation, a strong republican, and did not conceal it. He often made hereditary monarchy and aristocracy the subjects of his keen pleasantry, while he was fighting the battles of the court, and obtaining for himself step after step in the peerage. In this way he attempted to gratify at once his intellectual vanity and his more vulgar ambition. He shaped his life according to the opinion of the multitude, and indemnified himself by talking according to his own. His colloquial powers were great; his perceptions of the ridiculous exquisitely fine; and he seems to have had the rare art of preserving the reputation of good-breeding and good-nature, while habitually indulging his trong propensity to mockery. Temple wished to put Halifax into the new Council, and to leave out Shaftesbury. The king objected strongly to Halifax, to whom he had taken a great dislike, which is not accounted for, and which did not last long. Temple replied that Halifax was a man eminent both by his station and by his abilities, and would, if excluded, do every thing against the new arrangement, that could be done by eloquence, sarcasm, and intrigue. All who were consulted were of the same mind; and the king yielded, but not till Temple had almost gone on his knees. The point was no sooner settled than his majesty declared that he would have Shaftesbury too. Temple again had recourse to entreaties and expostulation. Charles told him that the enmity of Shaftesbury would be at least as formidable as that of Halifax; and this was true: but Temple might have replied that by giving power to Halifax they gained a friend, and that by giving power to Shaftesbury they only strengthened an enemy. It was vain to argue and protest. The king only laughed and jested at Temple's anger; and Shaftesbury was not only sworn of the Council, but appointed Lord President. Temple was so bitterly mortified by this step, that he had at one time resolved to have nothing to do with the new administration; and seriously thought of disqualifying himself from sitting in the Council by omitting to take the sacrament. But the urgency of Lady Temple and Lady Giffard induced him to abandon that intention. The Council was organized on the 21st of April, 1679; and on the very next day one of the fundamental principles on which it had been constructed was violated. A secret committee, or, in the modern phrase, a cabinet of nine members was formed. But as this committee included Shaftesbury and Monmouth, it contained within itself the elements of as much faction as would have sufficed to impede The king, finding the Parliament as troublesome as ever, determined to prorogue it; and he did so without even mentioning his intention to the Council by whose advice he had pledged himself, only a month before, to conduct the government. The councillors were generally dissatisfied, and Shaftesbury swore with great vehemence that if he could find out who the secret advisers were he would have their heads. The Parliament rose: London was deserted; and Temple retired to his villa, whence, on council days, he went to Hampden Court. The post of Secretary was again and again pressed on him by his master, and by his three colleagues of the inner cabinet. Halifax, in particular, threatened laughingly to burn down the house at Sheen. But Temple was immovable. His short experience of English politics had disgusted him; and he felt himself so much oppressed by the responsibility under which he at present lay, that he had no inclination to add to the load. When the term fixed for the prorogation had nearly expired, it became necessary to consider what course should be taken. The king and his four confidential advisers thought that a new Parliament might be more manageable, and could not possibly be more refractory than that which they now had, and they therefore determined on a dissolution. But when the question was proposed at Council, the majority, jealous, it should seem, of the small directing knot, and unwilling to bear the unpopularity of the measures of government while excluded from all power, joined Shaftesbury, and the members of the cabinet were left alone in the minority. The king, however, had made up his mind, and ordered the Parliament to be instantly dissolved. Temple's Council was now nothing more than an ordinary Privy Council | decidedly unfavourable to the government; and Shaftesbury impatiently expected the day when the Houses were to meet. The king, guided by the advice of the inner cabinet, determined on a step of the highest importance. He told the Council that he had resolved to prorogue the new Parliament for a year, and requested them not to object; for he had, he if indeed it were not something less; and though Temple threw the blame of this on the king, on Lord Shaftesbury, on everybody but himself, it is evident that the failure of his plan is to be traced to its own inherent defects. His Council was too large to transact business which required expedition, secrecy, and cordial cooperation. A cabinet was therefore formed within the Council. The cabinet and the ma-said, considered the subject fully, and had jority of the Council differed; and, as was to be expected, the cabinet carried their point. Four votes outweighed six-and-twenty. This being the case, the meetings of the thirty were not only useless, but positively obnoxious. made up his mind. All who were not in the secret were thunderstruck-Temple as much as any. Several members rose and entreated to be heard against the prorogation. But the king silenced them, and declared that his resolution was unalterable. Temple, greatly hurt at the manner in which both himself and the Council had been treated, spoke with great spirit. He would not, he said, disobey the king At the ensuing election, Temple was chosen for the University of Cambridge. The only objection that was made to him by the members of that learned body was, that in his little work on Holland he had expressed great ap-by objecting to a measure on which his maprobation of the tolerant policy of the States; and this blemish, however serious, was overlooked in consideration of his high reputation, and of the strong recommendations with which he was furnished by the court. jesty was determined to hear no argument; but he would most earnestly entreat his majesty, if the present Council was incompetent to advise him, to dissolve it and select another; for it was absurd to have councillors who did not counsel, and who were summoned only to During the summer he remained at Sheen, and amused himself with rearing melons; leav-be silent witnesses of the acts of others. The ing to the three other members of the inner cabinet the whole direction of public affairs. Some unexplained cause began, about this time, to alienate them from him. They do not appear to have been made angry by any part of his conduct, or to have disliked him personally. But they had, we suspect, taken the measure of his mind, and satisfied themselves that he was not a man for that troubled time, and that he would be a mere encumbrance to them: living themselves for ambition, they despised his love of ease. Accustomed to deep stakes in the game of political hazard, they despised his piddling play. They looked on his cautious measures with the sort of scorn with which the gamblers at the ordinary, in Sir Walter Scott's novel, regarded Nigel's practice of never touching a card but when he was certain to win. He soon found that he was left out of their secrets. The king had, about this time, a dangerous attack of illness. The Duke of York, on receiving the news, returned from Holland. The sudden appearance of the detested Popish successor excited anxiety throughout the country. Temple was greatly amazed and disturbed. He hastened up to London and visited Essex, who professed to be astonished and mortified, but could not disguise a sneering smile. Temple then saw Halifax, who talked to him much about the pleasures of the country, the anxieties of office, and the vanity of all human things, but carefully avoided politics, and when the duke's return was mentioned, only sighed, shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and lifted up his eyes and hands. In a short time Temple found that his two friends had been quizzing him; and that they had themselves sent for the duke in order that his Royal Highness might, if the king should die, be on the spot to frustrate the designs of Monmouth. king listened courteously. But the members of the cabinet resented this reproof highly; and from that day Temple was almost as much estranged from them as from Shaftesbury. He wished to retire altogether from business. But just at this time, Lord Russell, Lord Ca vendish, and some other councillors of the popular party, waited on the king in a body, de[clared their strong disapprobation of his measures, and requested to be excused from attending any more at Council. Temple feared that if, at this moment, he also were to withdraw, he might be supposed to act in concert with those decided opponents of the court, and to have determined on taking a course hostile to the government. He therefore continued to go occasionally to the board, but he had no longer any real share in the direction of public affairs. He was soon convinced, by a still stronger proof, that though he had not exactly offended his master, or his colleagues, in the cabinet, he had ceased to enjoy their confidenec. The result of the general election had been At length the long term of the prorogation expired. In October, 1680, the Houses met; and the great question of the Exclusion was revived. Few parliamentary contests in our history appear to have called forth a greater display of talent; none certainly ever called forth more violent passions. The whole nation was convulsed by party spirit. The gentlemen of every county, the traders of every town, the boys at every public school, were divided into exclusionists and abhorrers. The book-stalls were covered with tracts on the sacredness of hereditary right, on the omnipotence of Parlia ment, on the dangers of a disputed succession, and on the dangers of a Popish reign. It was in the midst of this ferment that Temple took his seat, for the first time, in the House of Commons. The occasion was a very great one. talents, his long experience of affairs, his un spotted public character, the high posts which he had filled, seemed to mark him out as a man on whom much would depend. He acted like himself. He saw that, if he supported the Ex clusion, he made the king and the heir-pre sumptive his enemies; and that, if he opposed |