sun had risen on an animated debate, Wedder- | rank had still the charm of novelty, he had burne moved that Lord Clive had at the same borne up against his constitutional misery time rendered great and meritoric as services But he had now nothing to do, and nothing to to his country, and this motion passed without wish for. His active spirit in an inactive situ a division. ation drooped and withered like a plant in an uncongenial air. The malignity with which his enemies had pursued him, the indignity with which he had been treated by the com. mittee, the censure, lenient as it was, which the House of Commons had pronounced, the knowledge that he was regarded by a large portion of his countrymen as a cruel and perfidious tyrant, all concurred to irritate and depress him. In the mean time, his temper was tried by acute physical suffering. During his contracted several painful distempers. In or der to obtain ease he called in the help of opium; and he was gradually enslaved by this treacherous ally. To the last, however, his genius occasionally flashed through the gloom. It was said that he would sometimes, after sitting silent and torpid for hours, rouse himself to the discussion of some great question, would display in full vigour all the talents of the soldier and the statesman, and would then sink back into his melancholy repose. The result of this memorable inquiry appears to us, on the whole, honourable to the justice, moderation, and discernment of the Commons. They had, indeed, no great temptation to do wrong. They would have been very bad judges of an accusation brought against Jenkinson or against Wilkes. But the question respecting Clive was not a party question, and the House accordingly acted with the good sense and good feeling which may always be expected from an assembly of English gentle-long residence in tropical climates, he had men, not blinded by faction. The equitable and temperate proceedings of he British Parliament were set off to the greatest advantage by a foil. The wretched government of Louis XV. had murdered, directly or indirectly, almost every Frenchman who had served his country with distinction in the East. Labourdonnais was flung into the Bastile, and, after years of suffering, left it only to die. Dupleix, stripped of his immense fortune, and broken-hearted by humiliating attendance in antechambers, sank into an obscure grave. Cally was dragged to the common place of execution with a gag between his lips. The Commons of England, on the other hand, treat ed their living captain with that discriminating justice which is seldom shown except to the dead. They laid down sound general principles; they delicately pointed out where he had deviated from those principles; and they tempered a gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always partial to England, and always eager to expose the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems at this time to have meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his designs to Dr. Moore when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, many just and humane sentiments poignantly expressed, many grotesque blunders, many sneers at the Mosaic chronology, much scandal about the Catholic missionaries, and much sublime theophilanthropy stolen from the New Testament, and put into the mouths of virtuous and philosophical Brahmins. The disputes with America had now become so serious, that an appeal to the sword seemed inevitable; and the ministers were desirous to avail themselves of the services of Clive. Had he still been what he was when he raised the siege of Patna, and annihilated the Dutch army and navy at the mouth of the Ganges, it is not improbable that the resistance of the Colonists would have been put down, and that the inevitable separation would have been deferred for a few years. But it was too late. His strong mind was fast sinking under many kinds of suffering. On the 22d of November 1774, he died by his own hand. He had just completed his forty-ninth year. In the awful close of so much prosperity and glory, the vulgar saw only a confirmation of all their prejudices; and some men of real piety and talents so far forgot the maxims both of religion and of philosophy, as confidently to ascribe the mournful event to the just ven geance of God and the horrors of an evil conscience. It is with very different feelings that we contemplate the spectacle of a great mind ruined by the weariness of satiety, by the pangs of wounded honour, by fatal diseases, and more fatal remedies. Clive committed great faults; and we have not attempted to disguise them. But his faults, when weighed against his merits, and viewed in connection with his temptations, do not ap pear to us to deprive him of his right to an honourable place in the estimation of pos terity. Clive was now secure in the enjoyment of his fortune and his honours. He was sur rounded by attached friends and relations, and he had not yet passed the season of vigorous bodily and mental exertion. But clouds had long been gathering over his mind, and now From his first visit to India dates the renow settled on it in thick darkness. From early of the English arms in the East. Till he ap youth he had been subject to fits of that strange peared, his countrymen were despised as mere melancholy "which rejoiceth exceedingly and pedlars, while the French were revered as a is glad when it can find the grave." While people formed for victory and command. His still a writer at Madras, he had twice attempt-courage and capacity dissoived the charın. ed to destroy himself. Business and prosperity had produced a salutary effect on his spirits. In India, while he was occupied by great affairs, in England, while wealth and With the defence of Arcot commences that long series of Oriental triumphs which closes the fall of Ghazni. Nor must we forget tha! he was only twenty-five years old when be an proved himself ripe for military command. |lishmen were sent only to get rich by any This is a rare if not a singular distinction. It is true that Alexander, Condé, and Charles the Twelfth won great battles at a still earlier age; but those princes were surrounded by veteran generals of distinguished skill, to whose suggestions must be attributed the victories of the Granicus, of Rocroi, and of Narva. Clive, an inexperienced youth, had yet more experience than any of those who served under him. He had to form himself, to form his officers, and to form his army. The only man, as far as we recollect, who at an equally early age ever gave equal proof of talents for war, was NapoIcon Bonaparte. From Clive's second visit to India dates the political ascendency of the English in that country. His dexterity and resolution realized, in the course of a few months, more than all the gorgeous visions which had floated before the imagination of Dupleix. Such an extent of cultivated territory, such an amount of reveque, such a multitude of subjects, was never added to the dominion of Rome by the most successful proconsul. Nor were such wealthy spoils ever borne under arches of triumph, down the Sacred Way, and through the crowded Forum, to the threshold of Tarpeian Jove. The fame of those who subdued Antiochus and Tigranes grows dim when compared with the splendour of the exploits which the young English adventurer achieved at the head of an ariny not equal in numbers to one-half of a Roman legion. From Clive's third visit to India dates the parity of the administration of our Eastern empire. When he landed at Calcutta in 1765, Bengal was regarded as a place to which Eng means, in the shortest possible time. He first made dauntless and unsparing war on that gi gantic system of oppression, extortion, and corruption. In that war he manfully put to hazard his ease, his fame, and his splendid fortune. The same sense of justice which forbade us to conceal or extenuate the faults of his earlier days, compels us to admit that those faults were nobly repaired. If the reproach of the Company and of its servants has been taken awayif in India the yoke of foreign masters, else where the heaviest of all yokes, has been found lighter than that of any native dynasty—if to that gang of public robbers which once spread terror through the whole plain of Bengal, has succeeded a body of functionaries not more highly distinguished by ability and diligence than by integrity, disinterestedness, and public spirit-if we now see men like Munro, Elphin. stone, and Metcalfe, after leading victorious armies, after making and deposing kings, return, proud of their honourable poverty, from a land which once held out to every greedy factor the hope of boundless wealth-the praise is in no small measure due to Clive. His name stands high on the roll of conquerors. But it is found in a better list-in the list of those who have done and suffered much for the happiness of mankind. To the warrior, history will assign a place in the same rank with Lucullus and Trajan. Nor will she deny to the reformer, a share of that veneration with which France cherishes the memory of Turgot, and with which the latest generation of Hindoos will contemplate the statue of Lord Wilżam Bentinck, | LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR OCTOBER, 1838.] MR. COURTENAY has long been well known to politicians as an industrious and useful official man, and as an upright and consistent member of Parliament. He has been one of the most moderate, and, at the same time, one of the least pliant members of the Conservative party. His conduct has, on some questions, been so Whigish, that both those who applauded and those who condemned it have questioned his claim to be considered as a Tory. But his Toryism, such as it is, he has held fast to through all changes of fortune and tashion; and he has at last retired from public | life, leaving behind him, to the best of our belief, no personal enemy, and carrying with him the respect and good-will, of many who strongly dissent from his opinions. This book, the fruit of Mr. Courtenay's leisure, is introduced by a preface, in which he informs us, that the assistance furnished to him from various quarters "has taught him the superiority of literature to politics for developing the kindlier feelings, and conducing to an agreeable life." We are truly glad that Mr. Courtenay is so well satisfied with his new employment, and we heartily congratulate him on having been driven by events to make an exchange which, advantageous as it is, few people make while they can avoid it. He has little reason, in our opinion, to envy any of those who are still engaged in a pursuit, from which, at most, they can only expect that, by relinquishing liberal studies and social pleasures, by passing nights without sleep, and summers without one glimpse of the beauty of nature, they may attain that laborious, that invidious, that closely watched slavery which is mocked with the name of Power. only are these passages out of place, but scae of them are intrinsically such that they would become the editor of a third-rate party rews. paper better than a gentleman of Mr. Courte nay's talents and knowledge. For example, we are told that "it is a remarkable circum stance, familiar to those who are acquainted with history, but suppressed by the new Whigs, that the liberal politician of the seventeenth century and the greater part of the eighteenth, never extended their liberality to the native Irish or the professors of the ancient religion." What schoolboy of fourteen is ignorant of this remarkable circumstance? What Whig, new or old, was ever such an idiot as to think that it could be suppressed? Really, we might as well say that it is a remarkable circumstance, familiar to people well read in history, but carefully suppressed by the clergy of the Established Church, that in the fifteenth century England was Catholic. We are tempted to make some remarks on another passage, which seems to be the peroration of a speech intended to be spoken against the Reform bill: but we forbear. We doubt whether it will be found that the memory of Sir William Temple owes much to Mr. Courtenay's researches. Temple is one of those men whom the world has agreed to praise highly without knowing much about them, and who are therefore more likely to lose than to gain by a close examination. Yet he is not without fair pretensions to the most honourable place among the statesmen of his time. A few of them equalled or surpassed him in talents; but they were men of no good repute for honesty. A few may be named whose patriotism was purer, nobler, and more disinterested than his; but they were men of no eminent ability. Morally, he was above Shaftes bury; intellectually, he was above Russell. The volumes before us are fairly entitled o the praise of diligence, care, good sense, and mpartiality; and these qualities are sufficient o make a book valuable, but not quite suffi- To say of a man that he occupied a high cient to make it readable. Mr. Courtenay has position in times of misgovernment, cf cor not sufficiently studied the arts of selection and ruption, of civil and religious faction, and that, compression. The information with which he nevertheless, he contracted no great stain and furnishes us must still, we apprehend, be con- bore no part in any crime;-that he won the sidered as so much raw material. To manu-esteem of a profligate court and of a turbulent facture it will be highly useful, but it is not yet in such a form that it can be enjoyed by the dle consumer. To drop metaphor, we are afraid that this work will be less acceptable to those who read for the sake of reading, than to those who read in order to write. We cannot help adding, though we are extremely unwilling to quarrel with Mr. Courtenay about politics, that the book would not be at all the worse if it contained fewer snarls against the Whigs of the present day. Not * Memoirs of the Life, Works, and Correspondence of Sir William Temple. By the Right Hon. THOMAS PERE GRINE COURTENAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London. 1836. people, without being guilty of any great sub serviency to either, seems to be very high praise; and all this may with truth be said of Temple. A Yet Temple is not a man to our taste. temper not naturally good, but under strict command,-a constant regard to decorum,---a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life,-a disposition to be content with small and certain winnings rather than go on doubling the stake, these seem to us to be the most remarkable features of his character. This sort of moderation. when united, as in him it was, with very con siderable abilities, is, under ordinary circumstances, scarcely to be distinguished from the highest and purest integrity; and yet may be perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, with coldness of heart, and with the most intense selfishness. Temple, we fear, had not sufficient warmth and elevation of sentiment to deserve the name of a virtuous man. He did not betray or oppress his country: nay, he rendered considerable service to her; but he risked nothing for her. No temptation which either the King or the Opposition could hold out ever induced him to come forward as the supporter either of arbitrary or of factious measures. But he was most careful not to give offence by strenuously opposing such measures. He never put himself prominently before the public eye, except at conjunctures when le was almost certain to gain, and could not possibly lose ;-at conjunctures when the interest of the state, the views of the court, and the passions of the multitude all appeared for an instant to coincide. By judiciously availing himself of several of these rare moments, he succeeded in establishing a high character for wisdom and patriotism. When the favourable crisis was passed, he never risked the reputation which he had won. He avoided the great offices of state which a caution almost pusillanimous, and confined himself to quiet and secluded departments of public business, in which he could enjoy moderate but certain advantage without incurring envy. If the circumstances of the country became such that it was impossible to take any part in politics without some danger, he retired to his Library and his Orchard; and, while the nation groaned under oppression, or resounded with tumult and with the din of civil arms, amused himself by writing Memoirs and tying up Apricots. His political career bore some resemblance to the military career of Louis XIV. Louis, lest his royal dignity should be compromised by failure, never repaired to a siege, till it had been reported to him by the most skilful officers in his service that nothing could prevent the fall of the place. When this was ascertained, the monarch, in his helmet and cuirass, appeared among the tents, held councils of war, dictated the capitulation, received the keys, and then returned to Versailles to hear his flatterers repeat that Turenne had been beaten at Mariendal, that Condé had been forced to raise the siege of Arras, and that the only warrior whose glory had never been obscured by a single check was Louis the Great! Yet Condé and Turenne will always be considered captains of a very different order from the invincible Louis; and we must own that many statesmen who have committed very great faults, appear to us to be deserving of more esteem than the faultless Temple. For in truth his faultlessness is chiefly to be ascribed to his extreme dread of all responsibility;--to his determination rather to leave his country in a scrape than to run any chance of being in scrape himself. He seems to have been averse from danger; and it must be admitted that the dangers to which a public man was exposed, in those days of conflicting tyranny and sedition, were of the most serious kind. He could not bear discomfort, bodily o▾ mental. His lamentations when, in the course of his diplomatic journeys, he was put a little out his way, and forced, in the vulgar phrase, to rough it, are quite amusing. He talks of riding a day or two on a bad Westphalian road, of sleeping on straw for one night, of travelling in winter when the snow lay on the ground, as if he had gone on an expedition to the North Pole or to the source of the Nile. This kind of valetudinarian effeminacy, this habit of cod. dling himself, appears in all parts of his con. duct. He loved fame, but not with the love of an exalted and generous mind. He loved it as an end, not at all as a means;-as a personal luxury, not at all as an instrument of advantage to others. He scraped it together and treasured it up with a timid and niggardly thrift; and never employed the hoard in any enterprise, however virtuous and honourable, in which there was hazard of losing one particle. No wonder if such a person did little or nothing which deserves positive blame. But much more than this may justly be demanded of a man possessed of such abilities and placed in such a situation. Had Temple been brought before Dante's infernal tribunal, he would no have been condemned to the deeper recesses of the abyss. He would not have been boiled with Dundee in the crimson pool of Bulicame, or hurled with Danby into the seething pitch of Malebolge, or congealed with Churchill in the eternal ice of Giudecca; but he would per haps have been placed in a dark vestibule next to the shade of that inglorious pontiff "Che fece per viltate il gran rifiuto.” Of course a man is not bound to be a politi cian any more than he is bound to be a soldier; and there are perfectly honourable ways of quitting both politics and the military profession. But neither in the one way of life, nor in the other, is any man entitled to take all the sweet and leave all the sour. A man who belongs to the army only in time of peace,— who appears at reviews in Hyde Park, escorts the sovereign with the utmost valour and fidelity to and from the House of Lords, and retires as soon as he thinks it likely that he may be ordered on an expedition-is justly though to have disgraced himself. Some portion of the censure due to such a holiday-soldier may justly fall on the mere holiday-politician, who flinches from his duties as soon as those du. ties become difficult and disagreeable ;—that is to say, as soon as it becomes peculiarly im portant that he should resolutely perform thera. But though we are far indeed from consider. ing Temple as a perfect statesmen, though we place him below many statesmen who have committed very great errors, we cannot deny that, when compared with his contemporaries, he makes a highly respectable appearance. The reaction which followed the victory of the popular party over Charles the First, had produced a hurtful effect on the national charac ter; and this effect was most discernible in the classes and in the places which had been mosi strongly excited by the recent Revolution. The deterioration was greater in London than in the country, and was greatest of all in the courtly and official circles. Almost all that remained of what feelings; yet they had not acquired a strong had been good and noble in the Cavaliers and passion for innovation. Accustomed to see old Roundheads of 1642, was now to be found in establishments shaking, falling, lying in ruins the middling orders. The principles and feel- all around them,--to live under a succession ngs which prompted the "Grand Remon- of constitutions, of which the average dura strance" were still strong among the sturdy tion was about a twelvemonth,--they had no yeomen, and the decent God-fearing merchants. religious reverence for prescription;-nothing The spirit of Derby and Capel still glowed in of that frame of mind which naturally springs many sequestered manor-houses; but among from the habitual contemplatior. of immemorial those political leaders who, at the time of the antiquity and immovable stability. AccustomRestoration, were still young, or in the vigoured, on the other hand, to see change after change of manhood, there was neither a Southampton welcomed with eager hope and ending in dis nor a Vane, neither a Falkland nor a Hamp-appointment,--to see shame and confusion of den. That pure, fervent, and constant loyalty face follow the extravagant hopes and predic which, in the preceding reign, had remained tions of rash and fanatical innovators--they unshaken on fields of disastrous battle, in had learned to look on professions of public foreign garrets and cellars, and at the bar of spirit, and on schemes of reform, with distrust the High Court of Justice, was scarcely to be and contempt. They had sometimes talked found among the rising courtiers. As little, or the language of devoted subjects--sometimes still less, could the new chiefs of parties lay that of ardent lovers of their country. But claim to the great qualities of the statesmen their secret creed seems to have been, that who had stood at the head of the Long Parlia- loyalty was one great delusion, and patriotism ment. Hampden, Pym, Vane, Cromwell, are another. If they really entertained any predi discriminated from the ablest politicians of lection for the monarchical or for the popula ine succeeding generation, by all the strong part of the constitution,--for Episcopacy or for lineaments which distinguish the men who Presbyterianism,--that predilection was feeble produce revolutions from the men whom revo- and languid; and instead of overcoming, as in lutions produce. The leader in a great change, the times of their fathers, the dread of exile, conthe man who stirs up a reposing community, fiscation, and death, was rarely of proof to resist and overthrows a deeply-rooted system, may be the slightest impulse of selfish ambition or of a very depraved man; but he can scarcely be selfish fear. Such was the texture of the Pres. destitute of some moral qualities which extort byterianism of Lauderdale, and of the specula even from enemies a reluctant admiration-- tive republicanism of Halifax. The sense of fixedness of purpose, intensity of will, enthu- political honour seemed to be extinct. With siasm which is not the less fierce or perse- the great mass of mankind, the test of integrity vering, because it is sometimes disguised under in a public man is consistency. This test, the semblance of composure, and which bears though very defective, is perhaps the best that down before it the force of circumstances and any, except very acute or very near observers, the opposition of reluctant minds. These are capable of applying; and does undoubtedly qualities, variously combined with all sorts of enable the people to form an estimate of the virtues and vices, may be found, we think, in characters of the great, which, on the whole, most of the authors of great civil and religious approximates to correctness. But during the movements,--in Cæsar, in Mohammed, in latter part of the seventeenth century, incenHildebrand, in Dominic, in Luther, in Robes- sistency had necessarily ceased to be a dispierre; and these qualities were found, in no grace; and a man was no more taunted with scanty measure, among the chiefs of the party it, than he is taunted with being black at Timwhich opposed Charles the First. The cha- buctoo. Nobody was ashamed of avowing racter of the men whose minds are formed in what was common to him with the whole the midst of the confusion which follows a nation. In the short space of about seven great revolution is generally very different. years, the supreme power had been held by the Heat, the natural philosophers tell us, produces Long Parliament, by a Council of Officers, by rarefaction of the air, and rarefaction of the air Barebone's Parliament, by a Council of Officers produces cold. So zeal makes revolutions, again, by a Protector according to the Instru and revolutions make men zealous for nothing. ment of Government, by a Protector according The politicians of whom we speak, whatever to the humble petition and advice, by the Long may be their natural capacity or courage, are Parliament again, by a third Council of Officers, almost always characterized by a peculiar by the Long Parliament a third time, by the levity, a peculiar inconstancy, an easy, apa- Convention, and by the king. In such times, thetic way of looking at the most solemn ques- consistency is so inconvenient to a man who tions, a willingness to leave the direction of affects it, and to all who are connected with their course to fortune and popular opinion, a him, that it ceases to be regarded as a virtue, notion that one public cause is pretty nearly and is considered as impracticable obstinacy as good as another, and a firm conviction that and idle scrupulosity. Indeed, in such times, it is much better to be the hireling of the worst a good citizen may be bound in duty to serve cause than to be a martyr to the best. a succession of governments. Blake did su in one profession, and Hale in another; and the conduct of both has been approved by pos terity. But it is clear that when inconsistency with respect to the most important public questions has ceased to be a reproach, incon sistency with respect to questions of m.ner This was most strikingly the case with the English statesmen of the generation which followed the Restoration. They had neither the nthusiasm of the Cavalier, nor the enthusiasm of the Republican. They had been early emancipated from the dominion of old usages and |